Mentoring: An Effective Process of Empowerment

(Article published in the book of All India Association of Catholic Schools in their 44th National AINACS Convention on 22nd Oct. 2011).

1.  Mentoring: A Means of Self Discovery.

“If you touch me soft and gentle, if you look at me and smile at me, if you listen to me before you talk, I will grow, really grow”, said Bradley.  Mentoring is a collaborative, mutually beneficial partnership between a Mentor (who   possesses greater skills, knowledge and experience) and a Protégé (who is looking to increase his or her skills, knowledge and experience). Mentoring is a means of developing and fine tuning human resources.  It is about guiding others in their personal quest for growth through learning; a stimulating journey of self-discovery and development which provides opportunities for personal fulfillment and achievement; a method for encouraging human growth through the partnership between two people built upon trust.  It is a process in which the mentor offers ongoing support and development opportunities to the mentee.  Addressing issues and blockages identified by the mentee, the mentor offers guidance, counseling and support in the form of pragmatic and objective assistance.  An organization can use the art of mentoring as a tool to help bring out the best in its younger employees, teachers and students.  The mentor helps the mentees understand and recognize the long-term plans the school/organisation has for them, and helps them make the most of the learning experiences inherent in their current jobs. A mentoring relationship also motivates the teachers / employees / managers involved and can be a valuable means of delaying ‘plateauing'.

 “The best mentors are the people in your life who push you just a little bit outside your comfort zone” -Leigh Curl.  Interestingly, the concept of mentoring stems from Greek mythology. Mentor was Odysseus's friend and teacher to his son Telemachus. In Homer's Odyssey, Athena, the goddess, assumed the form of Mentor to proffer advice to Odysseus and Telemachus. Since then the word “Mentor” has become synonymous with someone who is a wise advisor. The nomenclature  epitomises a person who guides another towards the path of education, growth, maturity, development, progress and prosperity. An organization can use the art of mentoring as a tool to help bring out the best in its younger employees, leveraging the synergy for individual and organizational growth and success.  By this process we support and encourage people to manage their own learning in order that they may optimise their potential, develop their skills, improve their performances and groom into the person they want to be. Thus, as said by John C. Crosby, “Mentoring is a brain to pick, an ear to listen, and a push in the right direction.”

2. Coaching Vs Mentoring: Given the frequent confusion between these two terms, it is worth drawing out the differences more finely. Although coaching and mentoring share some tools and approaches, coaching is primarily focused on performance within the current job and emphasizes the development of skills. Mentoring is primarily focused on longer-term goals and on developing capabilities.

Coaching	Mentoring
Concerned with task	Concerned with implications beyond the task
Focuses on skills and performances	Focuses on capability and potential
Primarily a line manager role	Works best off-line
Agenda set by or with the coach	Agenda set by the learner
Emphasizes feedback to the learner	Emphasizes feedback and reflection by the learner
Typically addresses a short-term need	Typically a longer-term relationship, often ‘for life'
Feedback and discussion primarily explicit	Feedback and discussion primarily about implicit, intuitive issues and behaviours

3. Jesus: A mentor par excellence.

Jesus worked only three years. He walked with His followers; taught them; corrected their attitudes; he provided leadership through his own example; He empowered them; He transformed them; made  fishers of men; among the leaders he chose after long prayers, one  denied him thrice and another betrayed him.  Finally, he was crucified and it was presumed that Jesus and his movement would end with it.  But they lived and died for him; what a great mentor he was!  He continues to teach and guide, empower and transform all those who follow him even  today.

4.  The ten Fundamental Competencies Needed For Effective Mentoring 

4.1 Self-awareness (understanding self): Mentors need high self-awareness in order to recognize and manage their own behaviour within the helping relationship and to   empathise sufficiently. The activist, task-focused manager often has relatively little insight into these areas - indeed, he or she may actively avoid reflection on such issues, depicting them as ‘soft' and of low priority. Such conditioned attitudes and learned behaviour may be difficult to break. Providing managers with psychometric tests and other forms of insight-developing questionnaire can be useful if they are open to insights in those areas. However, it is easy to dismiss such feedback, even when it also comes from external sources, such as working colleagues. SWOT analysis would be an effective means to self understanding. If nothing else, the model helps open up some of the hidden boxes in the Johari window! An important debate here is whether low self-awareness is the result of low motivation to explore the inner self (disinterest), or high motivation to avoid such exploration, or is it simply an inability to make complex emotional and rational connections (in which case there may be physiological aspects to consider as well). The approach to helping someone develop self-awareness will be different in each case and one needs to adopt a flexible mentee- centered  approach to be effective enough.

4.2 Behavioral awareness (understanding others):  Like self-awareness, understanding how others behave and why they do so is a classic component of emotional intelligence. To help others manage their relationships, the mentor must have a reasonably good insight into patterns of behaviour between individuals and groups of people. Predicting the consequences of specific behaviours or courses of action, is one of the many practical applications of this insight. Developing clearer insight into the behaviours of others comes from frequent observation and reflection. Supervision groups can help the mentor recognize common patterns of behavior by creating opportunities for rigorous analysis.

4.3 Business or professional savvy: There is not a great deal to be done here in the short term - there are very few shortcuts to experience and judgment. However, the facilitator can help the potential mentor understand the need for developing judgment and plan to acquire relevant experience. Again, the art of purposeful reflection is a valuable support in building this competence. By reviewing the learning from a variety of experiences, the manager widens his or her range of templates and develops a sense of patterns in events. The more frequently he or she is able to combine stretching experience with focused reflection - either internally or in a dialogue with others - the more substantial and rapid is the acquisition of judgment. A useful method of helping people develop business acumen is to create learning sets, where a skilled facilitator encourages people to share their experiences and look for patterns that lead to improvement.

4.4 Sense of proportion/good humor: Is good humor a competence? I would argue strongly that it is. Laughter, used appropriately, is invaluable in developing rapport, in helping people  see matters from a different perspective, in releasing emotional tension. It is also important that mentor and mentee should enjoy the sessions they have together. Enthusiasm is far more closely associated with learning than boredom is! In practice, good humor is a vehicle for achieving a sense of proportion - a broader perspective that places the organization’s goals and culture in the wider social and business context. People acquire this kind of perspective by ensuring that they balance their day-to-day involvement with work tasks against a portfolio of other interests. Some of these may be related to work - for example, developing a broader strategic understanding of how the business sector is evolving. Others are unrelated to work and may encompass science, philosophy or any other intellectually stimulating endeavor. In general, the broader the scope of knowledge and experience the mentor can apply, the better sense of proportion he or she can bring.

4.5 Communication competence: Communication is not a single skill: it is a combination of a number of skills. Those most important for the mentor include:

·   Listening - opening the mind to what the other person is saying, demonstrating interest/attention, encouraging him or her to speak, holding back on filling the silences.

·   Observing as receiver - being open to the visual and other non-verbal signals, recognizing what is not said.

·   Parallel processing - analyzing what the other person is saying, reflecting on it, preparing responses; effective communicators do all of these in parallel, slowing down the dialogue as needed to ensure that they do not overemphasize preparing responses at the expense of analysis and reflection; equally, they avoid becoming so mired in their internal thoughts that they respond inadequately or too slowly.

·   Projecting - crafting words and their emotional ‘wrapping' in a manner appropriate for the situation and the recipient(s).

·   observing as projector - being open to the visual and other non-verbal signals, as clues to what the recipient is hearing/understanding; adapting tone, volume, pace, intonation and language appropriately.

·   Exiting - concluding a dialogue or segment of dialogue with clarity and alignment of understanding (ensuring that the message has been received in both directions).

4.6 Conceptual modeling: Effective mentors have a portfolio of models they can draw upon to help mentees understand the issues they face. These models can be self-generated (e.g. the result of personal experience), drawn from elsewhere (e.g. models of company structure, interpersonal behaviours, strategic planning, career planning) or - at the highest level of competence - generated on the spot as an immediate response.

According to the situation and the learning styles of the mentee, it may be appropriate to present these models in verbal or visual form. Alternatively, the mentor may not present them at all - simply use them as the framework for asking penetrating questions. Developing the skills of conceptual modeling takes time, once again. It requires a lot of reading, often beyond the normal range of materials that cross the individual's desk. Training in presentation skills and how to design simple diagrams can also help. But the most effective way can be for the mentor to seize every opportunity to explain complex ideas in a variety of ways, experimenting to see what works with different audiences. Eventually, there develops an intuitive, instinctive understanding of how best to put across a new idea.

4.7 Commitment to one's own continued learning: Effective mentors become role models for self-managed learning. They seize opportunities to experiment and take part in new experiences. They read widely and are reasonably efficient at setting and following personal development plans. They actively seek and use behavioral feedback from others. These skills can be developed with practice. Again, having a role model to follow for themselves is a good starting-point.

4.8 Strong interest in developing others: Effective mentors have an innate interest in achieving through others and in helping others recognize and achieve their potential. This instinctive response is important in establishing and maintaining rapport and  enthusiasm in the mentee, building confidence in what he or she could become. While it is possible to ‘switch on' someone to the self-advantage of helping others, it is probably not feasible to stimulate an altruistic response.

4.9 Building and maintaining rapport/relationship management: The skills of rapport-building are difficult to define. When asked to describe rapport in their experience, managers' observations can be distilled into five characteristics:

·   Trust - Will they do what they say? Will they keep confidences?

·   Focus - Are they concentrating on me? Are they listening without judging?

·   Empathy - Do they have goodwill towards me? Do they try to understand my feelings, and            viewpoints?

·   Congruence - Do they acknowledge and accept my goals?

·   Empowerment - Is their help aimed at helping me stand on my own feet?

·   To a considerable extent, the skills of building and maintaining rapport are contained in the other competencies already described. However, additional help in developing rapport- building skills may be provided through situational analysis - creating opportunities for the individual to explore with other people how and why he or she feels comfortable and uncomfortable with them in various circumstances. This kind of self-knowledge can be invaluable in developing more sensitive responses to other people's needs and emotions. The mentor can also be encouraged to think about the contextual factors in creating rapport. Avoiding meeting on the mentor's home ground (eg. in his or her office) may be an obvious matter, but where would the mentee feel most comfortable? Sensitivity to how the meeting environment affects the mentoring dialogue can be developed simply by talking the issues through, both in formal or informal training and with the mentee.

4.10 Goal clarity: The mentor must be able to help the mentee sort out what he or she wants to achieve and why. This is quite difficult  if one does not have the skills to set and pursue clear goals of ones own. Goal clarity appears to stem out of an amalgamtion of skills including systematic analysis and decisiveness. Like so many of the other mentoring competencies, it may best be developed through opportunities to reflect and to practice.

5.  St. Aloysius College/St. Aloysius Institute of Technology: Mentoring - A Case Study

In both the institutions taken for this case study, classes are divided into mentoring groups of 8 to 10 students who are closely mentored by one or two teachers.  Among each students’  group there is a nominated mentor leader(according to academic merit) and an assistant mentor leader who  monitor   daily roles and responsibilities, mentoring class activities and the mentoring group wise class assembly.  Every Saturday one period is allotted to mentoring activities during which the class sits according to  mentoring groups. In these weekly classes, pre designed topics are discussed and participatory activities  are conducted to ensure the active interest  and involvement of every student.  Every Friday during the break time, the class teacher meets the mentoring teachers to discuss issues pertaining to mentoring so that  the actual mentoring classes on Saturday would be practically rewarding to every mentee. Students are required toremain in their  respective mentoring groups on Friday and Saturday during the break time so that they can have sufficient time to bond  each other, understand individual perceptions and connect on issues of mutual interest in an informal ambience.

6. Conclusion: Mentoring is an essential skill to enhance capabilities.

There is a story of a ship builder, Marcus who was given a rough stone by his friend, Barnabas. Marcus examined the odd-looking red stone in his hand. “It’s a red-looking rock, Master.” Marcus placed the stone on the bench between them.Barnabas then took out a cut and polished ruby. He held it up to the light and let the sun sparkle through it, showing off the stone’s beauty. “This is one of the most magnificent stones in Athens.” He tossed it to Marcus who almost dropped the stone as it bounced off his hand and into his lap. Barnabas laughed and asked Marcus to explain both stones again- “What is the difference between the two stones, Marcus?”

“Well, one seems to be a red rock and the other an exceptional gem. One is available, the other is not, I guess.”  Barnabas replied, “on the contrary, son, the rough stone you so casually placed on the bench is soon to become the most valuable ruby in all Greece. It is ruby of the finest quality. All it lacks is  the finishing strokes from the hands of a master jeweler. Once he smoothens the rough edges and applies a dab of polish, the world will see how beautiful the stone can truly be.  Friends, people are  very much the same as this rough stone. Put in the hands of a master, they too can become more than the eye can  at first glance perceive. It takes the vision and the skill of a master leader to bring them to their full potential.  Look at the men on your crew. With your guiding hand, they can each become much more than the eye sees. It will take your hand to guide them and clip away the rough edges. Always see them as they will become, not as they are. Focusing on what one could become, is mentoring.

Mentors are visionary leaders, the builders of a new dawn, working with imagination, insight, and a purpose. They present a challenge that calls forth the best in people and brings them together around a shared inward- onward journey of evolution. They work with the power of commitment to a cause and alignment with a higher purpose. Their eyes are on the horizon, not just on the close at hand. They are social innovators and change agents, seeing the larger picture and thinking strategically.  There is a profound interconnectedness between the leader and the whole; true visionary leaders serve the good of the whole. They recognize that there is some truth on both sides of most polarized issues in our society today. They search for solutions that transcend the usual adversarial approaches and address the causal level of problems. They find a higher synthesis of the best of both sides of an issue and address the systemic root causes of problems to create conspicuous breakthroughs.  To mentor is to reach out and touch the hands, the hearts and the minds of tomorrow.  A teacher can tell you what she expects of you.  A mentor though awakens your own expectations and draws home the truth behind Khalil Gibran’s oft quoted words, “No man can reveal to you aught but what which already lies half asleep in the dawning of your knowledge”.

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