Mentoring & Coaching
When you are a mentor, your relationship with the individual you’re supporting is more complex than it is when you’re a coach; this last role is more task or skill-oriented.
The mentoring relationship can be for a short term, like when a mentee faces a challenge or a dilemma that can be efficiently discussed and sorted out. Or it can be a long term relationship where they can meet and cover a wide range of issues.
“We should all be learning from others (playing the mentee role) and teaching others (being the mentor) throughout our careers.” – Ryickman
I think that as we evolve as professionals, we can think that we are likely to interchange roles with our mentors, or have different mentors according to our different areas of work or professional challenges.
Why Mentor?
Benefits
Mentoring provides that wonderful feeling you get when you help someone and make a difference in his or her life.
“Helping someone else succeed can be immensely gratifying” – Ryckman
The mentor is not there to provide the answer but to help the mentee find the right or best answer for him/her. It’s said that if we really want to learn we should teach. I feel that the benefit is put on both the mentor and the mentee, specially if we are committed to develop as free thinkers and somehow find ways to deal with challenges.
Mentoring awakens your reflective mind and differ your judgemental mind
Mentoring can help mentees avoid tears, feelings of lack of self esteem, help us discover our strengths and weaknesses and avoid making mistakes by sharing previous experience. A good mentor will help you stay positive.
“Whether you think you can or you cannot you are usually right” – Ford.
Mentoring can bring freshness and learning(s) as we are involved with professionals from different circles and cultures.
Mentoring help us stay motivated. Mentors can help us learn complex processes, review work and share insights we didn’t even thought we needed.
Mentoring help us stay motivated. Mentors can help us learn complex processes, review work and share insights we didn’t even thought we needed.
Mentors can help us get better job opportunities, they might be able to speak for us when people are making decisions
Who mentors? Who should be mentored?
Empathy is the capacity to recognise emotions that are being experienced by another being.
Back in July 2013 I took a Design Thinking Action Lab MOOC by Stanford Online. We worked extensively on the subject of developing empathy to meet another person’s needs. I requested permission (if you are wondering why permission, I was not sure about sharing rights, as I could not see the license) to share this video clip, as I thought it would depict real “empathy”. Though it’s a role play and some might argue that empathy is very linked to business, I still think it can help us understand the meaning of empathy.
Back in July 2013 I took a Design Thinking Action Lab MOOC by Stanford Online. We worked extensively on the subject of developing empathy to meet another person’s needs. I requested permission (if you are wondering why permission, I was not sure about sharing rights, as I could not see the license) to share this video clip, as I thought it would depict real “empathy”. Though it’s a role play and some might argue that empathy is very linked to business, I still think it can help us understand the meaning of empathy.
Sometimes we are natural mentors who’ve never been mentored, and have not been trained in a formal context. I think Steve Jobs and Bill Gates have been extraordinary mentors, though never finished College.
More often than we would like, we hear that mentors are very critical of mentees work. Especially in schools and formal environments.
The mentor asks the teacher: “What did you do when he told you he had not done his homework?” “I gave him a minus”. I had this feeling the mentee did so because that was expected from her.
The mentor was not critical, the mentee was pleased she had done it right, at least she acted according to rules. What would have happened if the teacher had done something different? She might have been criticised?
If a student does not do as expected, would giving him/her a minus or a poor grade (setting up obstacles, making things difficult for him/her) result beneficial for the learning process? Is grading necessary just because we work in a formal system? Is grading used to enforce learning and/or as a punishment? Would it be possible to find other ways to foster learning?
How does empathy in the classroom get along with our mentors expectations?
What if we think that Mary Popping managed to develop empathy and learned how to cheat for the benefit of the kids?
We cannot change the fact that some mentors have negative attitudes but we can be responsible to become the mentors we want to be.
Kids know it best …
Kids know it best …