Examples
Worked examples
- Is an instance
A university postdoc mentoring scheme requires a one-page written agreement (meeting cadence, goals, exit clause) before a pairing counts as active.
Counter-examples
Looks similar, but isn't
- Not an instance
Two colleagues who meet informally for career chats with no shared document or defined goals — informal mentoring, not a mentoring agreement.
Editorial commentary
A mentoring agreement is a short written document, agreed jointly by a mentor and mentee at the start of a formal mentoring relationship, that records shared expectations before problems arise. It typically covers: meeting frequency and format (e.g. monthly, 30-60 minutes); the goals of the relationship from the mentee’s side (skill development, career planning, navigating a specific transition) and any boundaries from the mentor’s side (what is and is not in scope); confidentiality — what discussed in mentoring stays private and what, if anything, must be escalated (e.g. a disclosure of misconduct or safety concern); and an explicit, no-fault exit clause allowing either party to end the pairing without having to justify the decision to a program administrator.
Mentoring agreements are standard practice in formal institutional and learned-society mentoring schemes, where a program office matches pairs and wants a consistent minimum structure across many relationships. They are also recommended, though less commonly used, in informal pairings that arise organically (a postdoc mentoring a new PhD student in the same lab, for instance) precisely because informal pairings are where mismatched expectations most often go unspoken until they cause friction. Agreements are typically reviewed on a fixed cadence (annually is common) rather than left to run indefinitely without check-in.
Example: A university’s postdoc mentoring scheme requires every matched pair to complete a one-page agreement within the first month covering meeting cadence, goals, and an exit clause, before the relationship counts as active in the program.
Counter-example: Two colleagues who informally grab coffee every few weeks to talk through career questions, with no shared document, goals, or defined end point, are engaged in informal mentoring — useful, but not a mentoring agreement as the term is used here.
References
- National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, The Science of Effective Mentorship in STEMM (2019)
- Vitae Researcher Development Framework
Also known as
Mentoring contract · Mentor-mentee agreement
Machine-readable encodings
Use in your systems
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