Brad Johnson PhD, author of Athena Rising, joins Art of Mentoring’s Melissa Richardson to discuss why women need “doors opened”, our research findings on how men have reacted to the impacts of #MeToo and what that means for women and mentoring.
Why Mentoring Matters
Cross Gender report
SPOTLIGHT ON
Cross Gender Relations in a Post #MeToo World
Does #MeToo Mean the End of Mentoring for Women?
After #MeToo exploded on the world stage, we took the opportunity to survey over 600 people to understand the flow-on effect on interpersonal workplace relationships, how this has impacted cross-gender mentoring, and more specifically the mentoring of women.
Access our Spotlight Report to discover in detail the fears and barriers men and women face, and learn practical tips on how to foster effective mentoring between the genders, particularly from a woman’s perspective.
Coaching and Mentoring—Same, Similar or Different?
Coaching and Mentoring—Same, Similar or Different?
I always smile when I hear people trying to explain the difference between coaching and mentoring. Particularly when coaches try to describe mentoring and vice versa. Each tends to think their own discipline is somehow better than the other. Bob Garvey, one of Europe’s leading coaching and mentoring academic practitioners, compares the pursuit of truth for the two terms to the Pepsi–Coca Cola wars of the 1970s and 1980s.1
Is there a real thing? Can people really taste the difference?
As someone who’s been involved in coaching and mentoring for over 20 years, I think the differences are becoming more difficult to pin down. The reason is there’s a growing overlap, as each group learns from the other.
Inside coaching and mentoring conversations
When it comes to developmental coaching and developmental mentoring, there is far more in common than there are differences. Both have at their heart the intention of using the conversation to help the coachee or mentee to develop their own capacity—to find solutions, to see new perspectives, to move in new directions. Many people think mentors only give advice and coaches ask questions but never give advice. Having observed hundreds of coaches and mentors over two decades, my belief is, this simply isn‘t true. Great mentors do much more than hand out words of wisdom, and coaches actually do sometimes give advice—although the most skilled coaches would call this out and ask the coachee’s permission first.
Although many of the dialogue skills a mentor uses, are also coaching skills, the content and context of the conversations may be different. Mentoring is often about the person’s future professional and career development, whereas coaching may be more focused on the person’s performance in the role and ability to meet agreed targets right now. Mentoring is mentee–driven and the mentee ‘owns’ the agenda whereas the workplace coaching agenda is often driven by the coachee’s line manager.
How about we draw the line in the sand now. Below are some of the similarities and differences I see between mentoring and coaching in the workplace:
A closer look at the roles of mentor and coach
Mentors generally take on broader roles for their mentees, than coaches for their coachees. Whilst coaches do their work primarily through dialogue, mentors extend beyond conversation. They’re role models. They often open their personal and professional networks to their mentees. They may allow mentees to shadow and observe them at work. Some mentors like to do things with their mentees; for example, attend a conference together. A mentor in a program I managed shared one example I’ll never forget. The mentee was struggling with handling difficult, aggressive people. The mentor suggested a trip to the local parliament to observe and then discuss how politicians behaved during question time. I’m sure that was very educational!
What is mentoring, then?
This is one of my favourite definitions of mentoring:
Helping someone with the quality of their thinking about issues important to them.
(Clutterbuck & Megginson)
Good mentoring provides a space for reflection in which mentees are ‘learners’ who are encouraged and given different perspectives. The aim is to allow them to come to their own conclusions and develop their own solutions. Great mentors help mentees see their own talents and potential. (I’m sure coaches reading this will exclaim—“but that’s what coaches do!” —and yes, they’re probably right).
Does it really matter how we define coaching and mentoring as long as they’re happening inside organisations?
Possibly not. But that’s not very helpful if you’ve been tasked with ‘building a coaching and mentoring culture’, as so many organisations today are doing today.
If we take a bird’s eye view from the strategic level at what the organisation is trying to achieve, it’s actually easier to see the differences and how mentoring can be applied in a very different way than coaching.
A strategic approach to mentoring
Mentoring has grown in popularity in recent years because it is a cost-effective, programmatic way, to achieve particular organisational goals. Put in place inside an organisation or membership body, with managers or experienced members as mentors, mentoring programs can involve relatively large numbers, especially nowadays with the help of technology. Mentors are typically not paid, therefore cost per mentee is very low, compared to, say, the cost of engaging external coaches. You can expect to pay between $500 and $1500 per mentoring pair for a well-managed, effective mentoring program run over six to twelve months. This is cheaper than one individual coaching session with many executive coaches!
Because mentoring can impact more people, structured mentoring programs can be aimed at solving key organisational problems. Think mentoring when you want to:
Unless your organisation has a large team of internal coaches, it’s very unlikely you can tackle these systemic issues with coaching. Usually, coaching is used at an individual level for senior managers or emerging top talent, as an investment in that person for the future. The goals of each coaching engagement are idiosyncratic—whatever the particular individual needs to work on—and agreed with his/her manager.
When we starting with a new client, we encourage them to think strategically about what problem or issue they want to tackle with mentoring, rather than just making it available to everyone. Because executive coaching is usually reserved for the senior elite or a few key people, mentoring is a great way to engage and develop the often–forgotten middle layers of the organisation.
We’d love to hear from you about how your organisation uses coaching and mentoring. If you have stories to share, we have an engaged community who would be interested to hear them!
© Melissa Richardson, 2019
1. Garvey, Bob (2011). A Very Short, Fairly Interesting and Reasonably Cheap Book About Coaching and Mentoring, Sage Publications, London.
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Five ways to solve mentoring engagement issues and why
Five ways mentoring solves most engagement issues (and why it matters)
Organisations spend a great deal of money on turnover-related expenses each year. Many also invest heavily in engagement surveys, in an effort to predict where they’re vulnerable to low productivity and loss of key talent. Engagement has been found to contribute to a raft of benefits including: Higher productivity, achievement of work goals, reduced turnover and accidents, higher customer satisfaction and higher profitability.[1]
But what exactly is engagement, what is the result of high engagement, what drives it, and what role can mentoring play in that?
Is engagement the Holy Grail?
In published articles and research, I found many definitions for engagement, but no universally accepted definition (as with most HR concepts). It can be described as a performance concept, an attitude or a psychological state. A common theme seems to be that engagement is defined “to some degree by its outcomes and something given by the employee which can benefit the organisation”[2].
Schaufeli et al[3] characterised engagement by:
- Vigour: Elevated levels of energy and mental flexibility while working.
- Dedication: Being fully occupied by and motivated in one’s work.
- Absorption: Being happily immersed in work.
The British Institute for Employment Studies (IES) distinguishes between engagement with the job and engagement with the organisation, as it’s possible to have one without the other.
In their model, job engagement is highly associated with enhanced:
- Job satisfaction
- Job performance
- Low intention to resign
High organisational engagement is linked to “organisational citizenship behaviours” which are positively related to the success of the organisation.[4]
Another similar model of engagement was conceptualised by Aon Hewitt. This model focuses on the degree to which employees:
- “Say”: Speak positively about the organisation.
- “Stay”: Have a sense of belonging.
- “Strive”: Motivated to expend effort in job and for the company[5].
Let’s move on to the link between mentoring and engagement. Mentored individuals have been found to have higher engagement than those who are not mentored,[6] but how does it work?
The complex drivers of engagement
IES offers a nice visual model of job engagement, organisational engagement, their drivers and outcomes.
I’ll use this model to explain where and how mentoring can add value within five of these drivers and help deliver higher job and organisational engagement.
1. Job Characteristics
Most workplace mentoring is performed by people other than the line manager, who usually has the greatest influence over designing jobs to maximise engagement. However, we see time and time again in our mentoring programs, that an employee, with the help of a mentor, can be empowered to have fruitful conversations about how to enrich his/her own role. Mentoring is highly related to job/ role satisfaction for both mentors and mentees.
2. Leadership style
Transformational leadership has been demonstrated to play a role in employee engagement. This style of leadership guides followers through inspiration and motivation, by taking an interest in their needs, encouraging them and supporting them to try new approaches. This could just as well be describing good developmental mentoring! In fact, there is increasing evidence that leadership and mentoring are overlapping concepts. The microskills of good mentoring – active listening, asking questions, guiding, challenging – are the skills that good leaders need. Mentors learn these skills in training provided as part of well-managed mentoring programs and can then practise them with their mentees. So, participating as mentors in structured programs is in fact a leadership development activity.
Whilst never a replacement for having a competent manager, a great mentor can act as a role model for the kind of leadership that many employees desire to receive, but often don’t. By enrolling its best leaders as mentors in a mentoring program, an organisation can disseminate good leadership throughout the organisation.
3. Values Congruence
A team member whose personal values line up with those of the organisation, is more willing to be fully engaged.[7] But too often, employees aren’t aware of the values their employer wishes to embed because they’re not explicitly communicated and leaders don’t necessarily walk the talk. Organisations can use mentoring as a socialisation opportunity to communicate a consistent set of values in line with the organisation’s vision and mission, and appoint good role models as mentors.
4. Perceived organisational support
This means when employees believe that their contribution and wellbeing is important to their employer. In the mentoring programs we run, we include questions about the impact the mentoring experience has had on mentors and mentees, in a variety of ways, including on their feelings about the organisation. Highly positive impacts are routinely observed amongst both groups. People in mentoring relationships scored highly in a recent study, on company perception, development opportunities, and work environment — they felt their organisation is a better place to work and they were more positive about the senior leaders, than their non-mentored peers.[8]
Our own surveys show employees want their organisation to provide them with development opportunities. Mentoring helps people to identify their strengths and development needs[9] and pursue career goals.
5. Workplace relationships
People focus a lot on the employee-manager relationship. But broader workplace relationships also contribute to organisational engagement. In mentoring programs, a mentee develops a strong, trusting relationship with another person who is usually not their direct manager. Mentees also develop relationships with other members of the program cohort, with whom they share the experience. They often access their mentors’ networks to extend their contacts more broadly across the organisation. Mentors too, connect with other mentors and mentees in their program cohort.
If your organisation suffers from engagement issues, especially at lower levels (senior leaders are usually more highly engaged), then the introduction of a well-designed and managed mentoring program is a low cost, high impact intervention.
[1] Madan, Poornima and Srivastava, Shalini (2016). Investigating the role of mentoring in managerial effectiveness-employee engagement relationship: an empirical study of Indian private sector bank managers. European Journal of Cross-Cultural Competence and Management, Vol. 4, No. 2.
[2] Sange, Rbiya and Srivasatava, R.K. (2012) Employee Engagement and Mentoring: An Empirical Study of Sales Professionals, Synergy, Vol. X No. I, p. 38
[3] Schaufeli, W., Salanova, M., Gonzalez-Roma, V. and Bakker, A. (2002). ‘The measurement of
burnout and engagement: a confirmatory factor analytic approach’, Journal of Happiness
Studies, Vol. 3, pp.71–92.
[4] Edwards, Megan (2018). Bridging the gap: an evidence-based approach to employee engagement. IES Member Paper, downloaded from https://www.employment-studies.co.uk/system/files/resources/files/mp141_Bridging_the_gap_evidence-based_approach_to_employee_engagement_0.pdf
[5] Aon Hewitt (2015) Trends in Global Employee Engagement, downloaded from https://www.sigmoidcurve.com/assets/Uploads/2015-trends-in-global-employee-engagement-sigmoid-connect.pdf
[6] Sange & Srivasatave, op cit
[7] Rich B L, Lepine J A, Crawford E R (2010), ‘Job Engagement: antecedents and effects on job performance’, Academy of Management Journal, Vol. 53, No. 3
[8] Sange & Srivasatava, op cit
[9] Sange & Srivasatava, ibid.
© Melissa Richardson, 2019
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How Mentoring Can Facilitate Mergers
How mentoring can facilitate mergers
The immediate aftermath of a merger poses a number of major challenges. While many of these challenges relate to integration of systems and structures, the people challenges are often the most difficult and long lasting. In particular:
- Ensuring that senior level talent does not leave. Headhunters target merger situations, because the uncertainty causes people to seek security by looking at other job possibilities “just in case”
- Developing trust between executives in the formerly separate companies. The level of trust is especially diminished, when there is a real or perceived difference in power between the merging organizations. “Conqueror syndrome” is a commonly observed phenomenon that obstructs whole-hearted engagement of executives in creating the new organization
- Cross-organizational communications. In a typical merger situation, communication quality and openness diminish, partly because of a lack of trust but also because it takes time to build new informal networks.
- Survivor syndrome. If there have to be job losses, the survivors often feel guilty and relived at the same time. Their motivation and their ability to take the managed risks that the new business needs both decrease and it may take a year or more before they recover confidence.
Introducing a well-designed mentoring programme for top talent can make radical and positive difference to managing each of these challenges, for very little cost. In well-designed mentoring programmes, people engaged in mentoring are typically at least one third less likely to leave. (One classic case study shows a 1300% differential!) Because mentoring relationships work by building rapid rapport amongst people, who have different background or experience, they are arguably the fastest method of creating intra-organizational trust.
Mentors and mentees typically help each other build networks and in a merger situation, this activity comes it the fore. And, if survivor syndrome does become an issue, mentors (if they have been properly trained) provide the safe environment, where people can discuss their fears and concerns, and regain their resilience and refocus upon performance, both for themselves and for their teams.
There has been no empirical research around the impact of mentoring in merger situations, but a rough estimate, based on experience, is that it has the potential to contribute over the first year a minimum of 5% to productivity, profitability, share price, and retention of talent – not least by how it helps overcome the four key challenges above.
© David Clutterbuck 2014
The Coach-AI Partnership
The Coach-AI Partnership
If coaches are to benefit from the rise of Artificial Intelligence, then they will need to embrace the new technology and integrate it with their practice. But what does that mean?
The coach-AI partnership fulfills several functions:
- It provides real-time information about what is going on in the conversation, in the client and in the coach
- It allows instant access to other sources of relevant and potentially relevant information
- The AI can suggest questions and lines of enquiry (meaning that you as coach have to spend less time thinking about what you are going to ask next)
- You can check your intuitions for confirming or disconfirming evidence
- It creates opportunities for in-depth review of each coaching session, from the perspective of alternative approaches (for example, “You chose not to follow this clue, but how might the conversation have gone, if you did?”) or better wording of questions. Of course, this is a learning process for both the coach and the AI
Making the coach-AI partnership work
The key to successful partnerships will lie in questions such as the following:
What am I not noticing? For example:
- The client avoids questions that address a particular area.
- The micropauses, skin temperature changes, posture shifts and so on that indicate discomfort or other emotions: for example, an AI can learn to recognise the physical patterns that indicate when a client is lying to themselves.
- How I am reacting to the client.
What patterns are emerging? For example:
- Linguistic: for example, repeated words or phrase that appear to have a particular meaning or emotive undertone.
- Narrative: for example, a tendency to self-sabotage or a set of limiting assumptions in the client about themselves or others.
- Conversational: for example, is it going round in large circles? (The structure of conversation is usually too complex for humans to follow in the moment.) What can I as a coach learn from the patterns of this conversation that will improve my practice?
What other bodies of knowledge might be relevant? For example:
- If I am feeling manipulated by the client, what are the signs of sociopathy that I might look out for? (And the AI can, of course, compare the conversation with those signs.)
- What do we know generally about people in the client’s situation?
- What strategic planning models might be helpful here?
What’s too complex for me to analyze? For example:
- Where the client is faced with multiple, complicated choices, you will be able to ask the AI to turn these into a decision-tree, which you and the client can work through together.
How can I test my intuition?
- The AI can either provide data relevant to the client in front of you, or a general overview of similar situations.
The dangers of an AI-coach partnership
Three main dangers stand out, tough there may be many more that emerge with practice.
The first is that coach and AI may become such a strong partnership that the client is left out and feels both under scrutiny and manipulated. It will be essential, therefore, to develop a three-way partnership in which the client is also able to access the AI.
The process of pausing and reviewing during coaching conversations will become even more important than at present, as both coach and client take the opportunity to review not just the conversation as they have experienced it, but also to request observations from the AI. As yet, we have no protocols for this situation, but there will need to be an understanding of whether it is most beneficial to the client to have constant data feed from the AI, or periodic-pause interactions with the AI, or a mixture of the two.
Another related danger is that the coach (or the client, if they are also AI-enabled) becomes distracted by the flow of information that the quality of their listening and attentiveness suffers.
Thirdly, humans instinctively respond to complexity-in-the-moment by focussing on process. The journey towards coach maturity is one that starts with models and processes and gradually let’s go of them as we become more confident in letting the client and the conversation follow their own path. If we become overwhelmed with information, we may revert to mechanistic, plodding conversations. If that happens, it is we as coaches, who have become the robots!
David Clutterbuck 2018
The 3 Best Ways to Build Trust for Mentors
The three best ways for mentors to build trust… and you might not like it!
Trust between mentor and mentee is said to be the cornerstone of an effective mentoring relationship. It can take time and sometimes a little effort to build trust and rapport, but it’s worth the trouble.
The very nature of the relationship puts the mentor in a higher power position than the mentee, so whilst both members of the dyad are responsible for building a trusting relationship, it is incumbent on the mentor to work just that little bit harder.
So, what can mentors do to build trust quickly?
Behaviours of Trusted Leaders Mentors
Stephen Covey claims to have identified 13 common behaviours of trusted leaders:
- Talk Straight
- Demonstrate Respect
- Create Transparency
- Right Wrongs
- Show Loyalty
- Deliver Results
- Get Better
- Confront Reality
- Clarify Expectation
- Practice Accountability
- Listen First
- Keep Commitments
- Extend Trust [1]
One could easily substitute the word ‘mentor’ for ‘leader’. Many of the behaviours on this list are behaviours we would expect of a masterful mentor. But which are the critical ones, and are there particular behaviours that mentors must display to foster trust with their mentees?
Given how important trust in mentoring seems to be, there are surprisingly few studies that examine exactly what mentors do to build trust. One qualitative study found that the trust mentees feel for their mentors is determined by the professional competence of the mentor, their consistency, their ability to communicate, their interest, and their readiness to share control.[2] In a further study, mentees reported that there were attributes and behaviours on the part of their mentors that helped in building trust and respect. In interviews they spoke about “being listened to” and “knowing the conversation was confidential” which helped them be honest and open. They also mentioned “not feeling judged”. [3]
Training Mentors to Build Trust
In mentor training at Art of Mentoring, we focus on three key mentor behaviours to build trust. Sometimes, we get resistance, because they are not easy to do.
- First, listen. Novice mentors need to speak less and listen more. When a mentee knows their mentor is there to just listen, and they feel fully “heard’, then something magical opens up in the relationship. Many experienced managers find it hard to stop talking long enough to listen very intently, because they believe their role as mentor is to give advice and talk about themselves.
- Keep your promises. The most important promise is to do with confidentiality. When a mentee trusts that what they share will never become dinner table conversation for the mentor, they can open themselves up and become vulnerable – which is a window to their learning.
- Don’t just be open, be vulnerable. Mentors that are open about their mistakes, their weaknesses, their failures and foibles, immediately knock themselves off the pedestal and make themselves more approachable.
As a leader and mentor, it can be hard to be vulnerable. I had a recent experience of this in my own company, when I felt compelled to apologise to team members that we had not managed them well and allowed their high stakes project to be derailed. I did not want them to feel responsible for an outcome that was only partially of their making.
The result was somewhat surprising.
It turned what could have been a major breach of trust, into the very opposite. We all walked away, I believe, with a stronger connection and loyalty to one another. I learned a powerful lesson that day – that the risk of vulnerability and admitting flaws, poor decisions and faulty judgement – was worth the relationship outcome. Our people want us to be human, to have failings and to be real at work (see my recent blog, How to be human at work). I believe it is the same with mentoring relationships.
So, my challenge to you as mentors, is to listen much more, be vulnerable and keep your promises.
Build trust. I promise you won’t regret it.
Find out more about improving your mentoring skills. We can expertly guide you in developing skill sets as both a mentor and mentee, without having to leave your desk.
© 2019 Melissa Richardson, Co-founder and Managing Director of Art of Mentoring
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[1] https://www.linkageanz.com.au/uploads/pdf/Stephen_Covey_How_the_Best_Leaders_Build_Trust.pdf; downloaded 30 April 2019
[2] Erdem, F.and Aytemur, J.O. (2008) Mentoring:A Relationship Based on Trust: Qualitative Research; Public Personnel Management Volume 37 No. 1
[3] Evans, C. Trust and connection in formal, virtual mentoring; International Journal of Evidence Based Coaching and Mentoring 2018, Special Issue 12
I’m a Mentor, Now What?
I’m a Mentor, Now What?
In our work with thousands of mentors, we typically see three different reactions to taking on the role of mentor inside an organisation or membership body (gender irrelevant; names are used just to describe the personae):
1. Over-Confident Orlando
Orlando has been a manager for over a decade, so he thinks that automatically makes him a good mentor. He knows how to lead and manage people, so this mentoring thing should be easy, right? Wrong.
Mentoring is quite different from managing. For a start, the person being mentored is probably not a direct report, so there are very different relationship responsibilities and issues, plus, the mentee is quite free to ignore what the mentor says (it’s a career-limiting move for a direct report to ignore their boss).
Second, Orlando may not be a very good listener. He may get away with this as a manager (only just) but poor listening will almost certainly lead to poor mentoring.
Finally, if Orlando thinks he has nothing to learn about mentoring, then almost certainly he has a Fixed Mindset rather than a Growth Mindset, and believes that his and his mentee’s abilities are unchanging. Orlando would be a better role model for his mentee if he believed that people can learn and grow, otherwise as a mentor he may unwittingly help his mentee stunt their own development.
2. Uncertain Ursula
Ursula is the polar opposite of Orlando. She may be afflicted with imposter syndrome and wonder when the mentoring program organisers are going to discover she really has nothing to contribute. She may play it very safe and need a great deal of support in the form of training, tools and guides until she feels more comfortable. She may find herself paired with a mentee very different from herself and will find this extremely challenging.
She does, however, recognise she has a lot to learn and will relish educational opportunities. If she can build confidence, she may make a very good mentor.
3. Comfortable Caitlyn
Caitlyn may not have mentored before, but she takes to it like a duck to water. She laps up the resources provided to her and supplements these with her own bag of tricks she has built up over the years. She knows and is not frightened when she is out of her depth, so she will seek help when needed. She has natural warmth and empathy and quickly puts her mentee at ease with her accomplished listening and questioning skills. She is not threatened by revealing her weaknesses, in fact she talks about her foibles with some humour and doesn’t take herself too seriously. She has a Growth Mindset and encourages this in her mentees.
I am not sure of the incidence of these three mentor types (that could be the subject of a future study) but, in my experience we have far too many Orlandos in our organisations and even the best mentor trainer would have trouble turning them into Comfortable Colins, assuming they would attend the training.
Even more extreme examples are ‘celebrity mentors’ who frequent start-up mentoring programs for entrepreneurs. Whilst some of these people may make very good mentors, a dose of celebrity from having earned millions from the sale of a business may lull even the best into believing in their own infallibility and forgetting their own circumstances may have been very different from their mentee’s.
So, what can we do as potential mentors?
- Be honest with yourself. If you haven’t mentored before, ask yourself if you really understand what it takes to be a great mentor. If you’re not sure what a great mentor looks like, try to educate yourself. You can start by reading the tips below.
- Calibrate your confidence level. Are you feeling timid about starting? If so, skilling up will lift your confidence. Ask your program organiser to provide resources if they haven’t already. Are you feeling super-confident? It might be time to get some feedback from people you trust about whether you really are a good listener and ask great questions; or do you automatically hand out advice and pearls of wisdom before you fully understand the issue?
- Seek out role models. Find some people who are acknowledged to be masterful mentors and interview them, to see what you can learn.
- Mind your mindset. Try to bring a ‘mentoring mindset’ to each conversation with your mentee. Attitude trumps skill every time.
Professor David Clutterbuck offers these insights into mentoring mastery:
Characteristics of great mentors
- Listen deeply and attentively. Great mentors listen much more than they talk.
- Ask really powerful questions. They listen deeply to the mentee and so have time to draw on their experience to ask questions that will stimulate deep thinking.
- Understand what is useful feedback. Recognise the difference between giving advice (which is generally far less helpful than the giver thinks) and guiding by giving context (which provides just enough information for the mentee to find new perspectives and solutions on their own).
- Self-awareness. Great mentors have strong emotional intelligence and a deep humility that comes from self-knowledge.
- Compassion. They care about and believe in the potential of their mentees and their ability to continue growth. They are brave enough to give tough advice or feedback and confident that this will not harm the relationship.
- Knowing when to let go. They’re delighted when the mentee outgrows the need for their support and see this as a sign of the success of the learning relationship. They may even enjoy some reverse mentoring from their mentee.
Tips for Program Managers
- Discourage over-confident people from volunteering as mentors, unless they have enough of a Growth Mindset to be willing to attend or complete online training. Preparing mentors for the engagement is a critical success factor in mentoring programs and mentors who are unprepared to complete at least 1-2 hours of orientation are either too busy to take the responsibility seriously or will never make great mentors.
- Try to identify and support the Ursulas – they will need your help and guidance as well as reassurance that they are doing a good job. A mid-program check-in is useful but may be too late to identify mentors who lack confidence so try to identify who needs more support, early in your program.
- Encourage mentees to give their mentors honest feedback to help them more realistically assess their own capability.
- Provide higher level mentor training to Caitlyns so that they continue to hone their mentoring mastery.
Like to learn more about mentoring? Join our webinars here.
© Melissa Richardson 2019
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Mind your Mentoring Mindset
Coming from a Mentoring Mindset
Recently, I had the pleasure of hosting Cathy Burke in our webinar “Mentoring Women Under the Spotlight”. As CEO of The Hunger Project, Cathy spent much of her career working with women and men in villages in Africa and the east, supporting them to break the poverty cycle for themselves.
Much of her talk was about shifting “mindsets” – of the women in these villages and the men around them – in order to make sustainable change. She talked of the importance of bringing a “beginner’s mindset” to these problems.
When we train and support mentors to become masterful mentors, we focus very much on “who you are being” as opposed to just “what you are doing”. When mentors think about the kind of mentor they want to be (usually this equates to the kind of mentor they wish they’d had!), it helps them to bring compassion, empathy and a good dose of listening to the relationship.
But what we haven’t really talked about, is, what is the mentoring mindset that masterful mentors bring?
What is a Mindset?
A mindset is a set of beliefs that guide and help us orient how to behave and make decisions. Mindsets frame how we see situations and suggest how we might react; they focus our attention on certain aspects of the environment, and they can become habitual.
In her book “Mindset”, Carol Dweck popularised a particular type of mindset with respect to intelligence, one that has gained widespread adoption in schools and workplaces. People who have a Growth Mindset believe that intelligence can be developed, and this leads to a desire to learn. People with a Fixed Mindset believe intelligence is static and have less passion for learning.
The best mentors we have observed have a mentoring mindset characterised by:
Curiosity – they believe that the mentee is the expert on their own lives and they are curious to learn about what makes them tick. They don’t make assumptions – they ask questions.
Humility – they believe they still have much to learn themselves and don’t put themselves on a pedestal.
Respect for difference – they believe that they can have a perfectly functional relationship with someone who is quite different in many ways, and that their difference does not in any way make them wrong or deficient.
Question yourself
Even the most experienced mentors can be blind to the mindsets that guide their way of behaving with a mentee. Perhaps they have never identified for themselves, who do I want to be as a mentor?
Next time you go into a mentoring session, prepare yourself by asking:
What kind of mentor do I challenge myself to be?
and
What mindset(s) am I bringing to the conversation today?
Like to learn more about mentoring? Join our webinars here.
© 2019 Melissa Richardson
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