ISBI Daily - Friday

ISBI DAILY Friday 7 that process of being an undergrad. What did you learn from mentoring others? I’ve found that it’s important to understand people’s communication style, and that’s still a work in progress for me. I like to talk to people. I like to talk too much, sometimes. [Laughs] How is my communication style? Oh, it’s wonderful. Is it? Yeah. You have a very open and friendly persona, which makes it very comfortable to talk to you. Thank you. What should I improve? I don’t think you’ve got a lot to improve on. [ Laughs ] If you think of something, please tell me. [ Laughs ] Okay, I will. But I think there are different ways that people like to receive feedback, and it’s important to be cognizant and try and learn those, especially for graduate students, because they are at a somewhat vulnerable and developmental stage. Too much positive reinforcement or negative reinforcement, students react differently. And so, obviously I try to focus on the side of positive reinforcement, but just understanding that feedback style. I bring you back to the time when you studied. What was the most precious teaching that you received from your teachers? I had a wonderful mentor. His name was Geoffrey McLennan. He was an interventional pulmonologist, and I think the thing that I admire the most about him was his foresight in idea development. He was always reaching for a very lofty goal. But he had a very special way of exciting people about his idea and bringing them on board. So probably he was a good communicator. Yeah, he was a great communicator. Communication is important for you. Yeah, it is. It is. Communication is really important for me. How each one of us can improve his or her communication? I think it is being open and cognizant that we all have intrinsic motivators, but they’re not all aligned. And so, part of communicating is understanding what people’s motivators are and speaking to that. Something that has helped me is finding some people that you admire, aspects of what they’ve achieved or aspects of how they behave professionally, or aspects of how they mentor, and really take time to understand how they’re doing that aspect, so that you can learn and model some of that yourself. I think focusing on those positive attributes of people helps inspire. Jessica’s PhD student Johanna Uthoff. Find out about her work at her poster at 11:30 in the Ambassador Ballroom. Jessica Sieren