Title: An Introduction to Mentoring
Author:
Section/SPIG: Health Administration
Issue Date:
Much of this article is excepted from Guides for Mentors and Proteges developed by the Center for Health Leadership and Practice, Public Health Institute
What is Mentoring?
In The Odyssey (written by Homer, a Greek poet), Odysseus (known as Ulysses in the Latin translation) was preparing to fight the Trojan War when he realized he would be leaving behind his only son and heir, Telemachus. Since the child was young and wars typically dragged on for years (the Trojan War lasted 10 years), Ulysses entrusted Telemachus’ care and education to Mentor, his wise, trusted friend.
Today, mentoring is a process in which an experienced individual helps another person develop his or her goals and skills through a series of time-limited, confidential, one-on-one conversations and other learning activities. Mentors also draw benefits from the mentoring relationship. As a mentor, you will have the opportunity to share your wisdom and experiences, evolve your own thinking, develop a new relationship, and deepen your skills as a mentor.
How Do I Become a Skilled Mentor?
There are many kinds of mentoring relationships, ranging from informal to formal. An informal mentoring relationship usually occurs in a spontaneous format. (Think of times you have been helped by someone more experienced than you without explicitly asking to be mentored.) Informal mentoring may also occur within the context of other relationships such as a supervisory relationship or even peer relationships. A formal mentoring relationship is characterized by its intentionality – the partners in the relationship ask for or offer the mentoring, establish goals for the relationship and make agreements about its nature. There are also mentoring programs that facilitate formal mentoring relationships. A “facilitated” mentoring relationship has been defined as “…a structure and series of processes designed to create effective mentoring relationships; guide the desired behavior change for those involved; and evaluate the results for the protégés, the mentors and the organization.” These mentoring relationships occur within a structured and defined framework and involve a third party. Often these programs have a specific goal such as helping participants develop their careers.
Mentoring relationships can occur at all professional levels. The key feature of a mentoring relationship is that a more experienced individual helps another achieve his or her goals and develop as a person. The mentor may help the protégé (the person being mentored) develop specific job skills or leadership capacities. The mentor may work in the same organization, have experience in the protégé’s organizational context, or have experience in the same field.
If you have been approached to be a mentor, or would like to offer to be someone’s mentor, reflect on these questions prior to committing to the relationship:
- What experiences and learning can I bring to the mentoring relationship?
- What are my own expectations for the relationship?
- Are there any obstacles that could impede the relationship’s development?
The mentoring literature shows that mentors and protégés tend to employ certain mentoring skills. Research also indicates that these skills can be developed, and that particular skills or competencies seem to result in the most successful mentoring relationships. Linda Phillips-Jones, Ph.D., mentoring expert and author of The New Mentors & Protégés: How to Succeed with the New Mentoring Partnerships, and numerous guides and tools for mentors and protégés studied hundreds of mentor-protégé relationships and developed a set of critical mentoring skills and competencies. The key mentoring skills presented here are adapted from her work.
KEY MENTORING SKILLS
- Listening Actively
- Building Trust
- Determining Goals and Building Capacity
- Encouraging & Inspiring
You will likely recognize these skills and may have experience employing them successfully in other relationships. As you progress through the mentoring relationship, employ these skills whenever possible.
Mentoring Best Practices
- Think of yourself as a “learning facilitator” rather than the person with all the answers. Help your protégé find people and other resources that go beyond your experience and wisdom on a topic.
- Emphasize questions over advice giving. Use probes that help your protégé think more broadly and deeply. If he or she talks only about facts, ask about feelings. If he or she focuses on feelings, ask him or her to review the facts. If he or she seems stuck in an immediate crisis, help him or her see the big picture.
- When requested, share your own experiences, lessons learned, and advice. Emphasize how your experiences could be different from his or her experiences and are merely examples. Limit your urge to solve the problem for him or her.
- Resist the temptation to control the relationship and steer its outcomes; your protégé is responsible for his or her own growth.
- Help your protégé see alternative interpretations and approaches.
- Build your protégé’s confidence through supportive feedback.
- Encourage, inspire, and challenge your protégé to achieve his or her goals.
- Help your protégé reflect on successful strategies he or she has used in the past that could apply to new challenges.
- Be spontaneous now and then. Beyond your planned conversations, call or e-mail “out of the blue” just to leave an encouraging word or piece of new information.
- Reflect on your mentoring practice. Request feedback.
- Enjoy the privilege of mentoring. Know that your efforts will likely have a significant impact on your protégé’s development as well as your own.
There is so much to learn about mentoring. At the beginning you need clear goals and agreements about the desired impact of the relationship and the frequency and ways in which both parties would like to communicate. Confidentiality is an important issue to discuss up front. Relationships have stages and there are many suggestions in the guides below for operating with skill in each of them.
Establishing a formal mentoring program is a entire subject of its own. Deciding what the overarching goals are of a program up front is critical. There are many practical suggestions that can be found in the readings below.
For more information about mentoring, coaching, succession planning, and developing formal mentoring initiatives please contact Carol Woltring at cwoltring@cfhl.org (email) or by phone: 510 285-5586.
Suggested Readings and Guides
Center for Health Leadership & Practice (2002) Mentoring Guides: A Guide for Protégés A Guide for Mentors. Oakland, CA: Center for Health Leadership & Practice, Public Health Institute. These guides can be ordered at www.cfhl.org.
Phillips-Jones, L. (2000) The Mentor's Guide. Grass Valley, CA: Coalition of Counseling Centers (CCC)/The Mentoring Group. Practical workbook for mentors. Includes Mentor's View of Mentoring Process, Frequently Asked Questions, Critical Mentoring Skills, Mentoring Etiquette, detailed Mentor's Checklist of Tasks, Sample Activities, blank and sample Mentor Plans, etc. Appropriate for new and experienced mentors.
Murray, M. (2001) Beyond the Myths and Magic of Mentoring: How to Facilitate an Effective Mentoring Process. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass. Provides models and guidelines for designing, implementing and evaluating a facilitated mentoring process within organizations. Includes useful tools and case examples.
[Chair's Request: If you are interested in being mentored or in mentoring an up-and-coming HAS member, we will be requesting your name and contact information so that we can bring people together. We will also be asking you to share your experience, expertise and knowledge with us so that we can pair you up with a mentoree. Please look for that request.]
Who Mentored You?
In keeping with the mentoring article above, you might find it interesting to visit this linked site. http://www.hsph.harvard.edu/chc/wmy2004/ . The site provides interviews with celebrities on the topic of people who affected their early lives and encouraged them to become who they are today. Interviewees include James Earl Jones, Ray Charles, Cal Ripkin, Jr. Gwen Ifill, Oprah Winfrey, Larry King, John McCain, Walter Cronkite, Gloria Estefan, Quincy Jones, Martin Sheen, Colin Powell, Tom Brokaw, and others. It also features details about National Mentoring Month and Thank Your Mentor Day (January). Includes audio and video clips.
The Harvard Mentoring Project uses "mass communication strategies to recruit mentors for at-risk adolescents. The Center's latest initiative, National Mentoring Month, was launched in January 2002. This annual month-long campaign includes a combination of national media, local media, and extensive community outreach." From the Harvard School of Public Health, Center for Health Communication.