Mentors can be informal, where the less experienced person gains from the other’s greater experience, but the relationship is not articulated as a mentoring one. Or they can be formal, with mentor and mentee agreeing how they will work together, and perhaps having a written contract. Accountability, responsibility and engagement are keys to making the mentoring relationship work (Rivera, 2014). A recent perspective challenging “the myths of mentoring” and suggesting how you can best use mentoring can be found in Demystifying Mentoring (Gallo, 2011).
Mentors can be particularly helpful in advancing the careers of individuals from disadvantaged or minority groups. A recent CIPD and O2 report (2015) Breaking the Boardroom: a Guide for British Businesses, found that the overwhelming majority of women they interviewed expressed the importance of individualised and personalised support from a mentor or coach over and above their line manager. The research identified three obstacles holding women back in their careers:
The report claims that mentors can play a valuable role in helping women identify where they want to be in five or even ten years’ time, set goals, and design a development plan to get them there.
Hawkins (2006) has some interesting points to make about mentoring. His view is that mentoring is particularly appropriate for helping people manage transitions. All transitions demand that you make some sort of personal change. To help mentees make this personal change, Hawkins believes the mentor needs to offer more than just advice based on having a successful career and knowing the sector. Your mentor also needs to have developed the skills to help you change. Advice can be useful, but your situation will almost certainly be different from that of your mentor. And, as Hawkins (2006) adds: “Advice giving is nearly always less effective than skilfully facilitated exploration.”
A good mentor should understand how adults develop, the development stages individuals go through as a leader (Torbert, 2004), and their professional career stages (Hawkins, 2006).
Your mentor can help you explore what you are learning from the work you are doing, and how each new task or role enables you to acquire new skills and personal capacities. As well as helping you identify what jobs you need to do, your mentor can help you think about the broader context, and develop contacts which help you understand the bigger picture. So, your mentor might ask questions like:
You might recognise three stages as you work on managing your transition. The first is unlearning, when you reach the point where your past ways of operating no longer work in your new position. This can knock your confidence, especially if you start to get negative feedback. Some people in this situation wobble back to their old ways of doing things and continue to operate at their former level. Your mentor can support you in letting go of old habits and facing the new challenges.
The second stage occurs when you have stopped operating in the old ways, but have not yet fully taken on your new role. This is a period of experimenting with new ways of working, of needing to take time to think about things and learn. It can be a time of confusion, and your mentor can offer support and reassurance during it.
Hawkins calls the final stage incorporation. This is when the mentee starts to incorporate new ways of thinking and behaving and makes the role their own. At this stage the mentor can usefully help you review and recognise progress made.
Detailed advice about how to be a mentor can be found in Starr’s book (2014) The Mentoring Manual. She has also compiled downloadable, free to use content on her web-site.
You might choose a mentor if you are
Regarding the latter point, a research study (Fruchter and Lewis, 2003) conducted in the USA gives support for cross-disciplinary mentoring. Stanford University developed a sophisticated mentoring programme to enable student architects, engineers and construction managers to develop an understanding of what it meant to be a member of each other’s discipline. Mentors acted as critics, coaches, role models and friends. Students benefited from their mentors’ extensive cross-disciplinary experience and began to develop an identity related to all three professional practices, which facilitated inter-disciplinary design.
Foster-Turner (2006) describes some of the tools mentors might use in helping mentees develop their careers, including getting in touch with your value base, life lines and future mapping.
NHS Education for Scotland offers free access to mentoring via online platform for workers in health and care and the wider public service. Its aim is to help equip leaders with the knowledge and skills they need to realise the 20:20 vision.