Closure
(In addition, please refer to the
booklet you have been provided: “The Mentor’s Guide”; Consider reading pages
57-62).
“Closure” is the fourth and last step of the mentor/mentee relationship.
(The readings and exercises are informed by: Zachary, L. (2000).
The mentor’s guide: Facilitating
effective learning relationships. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass).
Please review the following material:
Closure: Reading 1
Reaping the Harvest: Coming to Closure
Coming to closure presents the greatest challenge for mentoring partners, for
many reasons. Ending a relationship is often beset with anxiety, resentment, or
surprise. It is difficult to plan for closure because relationships can end
earlier or last longer than anticipated.
Sometimes partners hang on indefinitely, neither of them wanting to let
go because of the emotions and personal ties inherent in the relationship.
Sometimes inertia or a sense of comfort sustains a mentoring relationship long
after it should otherwise end. In a planned mentoring program, a specific end
date of the program cycle usually dictates when the relationship should end. The
result is that partners sometimes stay in mentoring relationship even though the
learning goals have been achieved, or they conclude on time but without having
achieved learning goals.
Coming to closure is an evolving process. The seeds for closure are
planted in the negotiating phase, when the mentoring partners establish closure
protocols and develop a mentoring partnership agreement. The process itself
begins the moment that mentoring partners start working toward accomplishment of
learning goals.
This seemingly short phase offers opportunity for growth and reflection
regardless of whether the relationship has been positive. Coming to closure
presents a developmental opportunity for mentors and mentees to harvest their
learning and move on. If closure is to be a mutually satisfying learning
experience, mentoring partners must be prepared for it.
This chapter advocates intentional inclusion of closure protocols and
processes as a requisite part of mentoring. Emphasis is placed on the need to
plan for closure in ways that both acknowledge and recognize the time for
closure and ensure that closure is a satisfying and meaningful learning
experience for mentoring partners.
The Case for Closure
Closure always has an emotional component: discomfort, anxiety, fear,
disappointment, relief, grief, fear of separation, joy, or excitement.
Acknowledging these emotions and moving on is an expected part of the separation
process. Dealing with them takes more than most people anticipate.
In general, individuals who have difficulty dealing ending a relationship
will experience the most difficulty dealing with closure in a mentoring
relationship. For them, the hardest part is letting go. It is particularly
problematic when neither partner knows how to or lacks positive experience in
ending relationships. Similarly, when mentoring partners become friends and
drift into a more informal relationship based on the growing familiarity, it is
particularly difficult to let go of the mentoring component to the relationship.
In such a situation, it is important to mark the transition out of the mentoring
relationship and into friendship and use it as an opportunity for learning.
Avoiding Closure
Sometimes mentoring partners prefer to avoid closure because of a fear of hurt
feelings or anxiety.
Helen felt obligated to Betsy (her mentor for three years) and was afraid
to rock the boat. Although she was not satisfied with their mentoring
relationship, Helen did not want to hurt Betsy’s feelings, so closure was not an
option for her. Helen preferred to let her mentoring relationship run its course
and live with the discomfort of obligatory niceness. As a result, she was stuck
and unable to move on.
Greg never really felt connected to his mentee, Art. He agreed to be part
of the staff mentoring program because it made him look good to have a mentee.
As time went on, maintaining the relationship became a chore. Greg too waited
and waded through the pretense.
Things were not going well in Helen or Greg’s mentoring relationships. In
both relationships, no one wanted to take action. No one was comfortable
discussing closure, although each knew that the relationship had already ended.
If they had held a negotiating conversation early in their relationship, they
would have had a pre-established process in place to bring the relationship to
closure comfortably.
Unanticipated Ending Without Closure
In many personal mentoring relationships, the priority level of the mentoring
relationships shifts for one of the partners and changes that balance of the
relationship.
One day Gretchen, a low-level executive in a Fortune 500 company,
received a telephone call from her mentor, Sam, telling her that he was being
promoted to another division of the company – a promotion that meant immediate
relocation to another city. Sam assured Gretchen that he would be in touch “when
everything settled down.” Gretchen waited two months for Sam to call and then
finally called Sam herself and left a message. He never called back.
It was life circumstances that caused Mark to pull back from everything
but the basics at work. His spouse developed a life-threatening illness, and it
was all he could do to take care o her and do his job. Ken, his mentee, was
disappointed in Mark, but chose not to push and let Mark off the hook by finding
another mentor.
In these examples, both Gretchen and Ken had previously articulated their
learning goals with their mentors, but the unanticipated closure caught them off
guard. The lack of formal closure for Gretchen and Mark foreclosed an
opportunity to process what had been accomplished and learned and to celebrate
their mentoring relationship.
Caren and Juanita accomplished their learning objectives. They had not
discussed closure and drifted from mentoring partnership to friendship without
celebrating their own good work together. The common occurrence of change in the
nature of the relationship, from mentor to friend, is seductive because it
happened imperceptibly. With the new relationship, attention to accountability
may wane, and closure with respect to learning goals may appear to be
superfluous since the relationship is continuing through friendship.
In all these examples, these partners lacked a pre-established agreement
to discuss how to address coming to closure. If each of these mentoring partners
had planned this phase, they could have preempted some of the emotional
after-effect of not coming to closure and instead would have maximized the
positive outcomes of the relationship.
Missed Opportunity
The transition to the next stage of the relationship (post-relationship or
reengagement) is often attenuated and awkward without closure. Because there is
a particular point when the relationship is ready for closure, time is a
critical element. Drawing out the separation process served neither the mentor
nor mentee well and can turn a positive mentoring experience into a negative
one.
Closure is also a demarcation between what (the mentoring relationship)
is and what will be (perhaps friend, manager, or colleague).
Closure helps prevents situations where a mentee might continue to expect
access and advice when it is not longer appropriate.
As long as one of the mentoring partners continues to view the
relationship as a learning opportunity, ending that relationship can be a
valuable source of learning. If there is no other choice but to terminate the
relationship, it may be better to make a clean break and discuss what went right
and what went wrong. In both scenarios, the mentor and mentee can learn
something from the experience.
Even when mentoring partners discuss the inevitability of closure or
establish a no-fault learning conclusion agreement early on in the negotiating
phase of the relationship, most rarely revisit that agreement when closure if at
hand.
Unanticipated Ending with Closure
Most healthy mentoring relationships do not go on indefinitely. At some point,
they end. Closure that is planned for is often easier to deal with, but still
presents its own set of challenges.
Unanticipated endings occur even in the healthiest mentoring
relationships. Whether it is an external event that forces a change in the
mentoring relationship or an internal one (due to personal circumstances),
planning how to deal with unanticipated obstacles helps mentoring partners know
what to do when changing circumstance occur.
Tricia, Marie, and Tom (all mentees) had been mentoring partners with
Liam (their mentor) for nearly eight months. Liam had just been pulled into a
new project what was going to require increasing amounts of his time over the
next six months. Rather than putting off telling his mentoring partners about
the change in his work responsibilities, Liam confronted the issue head on. He
scheduled a meeting at which he told his mentees that he did not know how his
new circumstances were going to affect their relationship, but he knew that it
would. Together Tricia, Marie, Tom and Liam agreed that during this change, they
would need to be in touch with Liam more sporadically and for shorter periods of
time. They also agreed to set up regular on-line get-togethers in the interim.
They planned to review the situation in a month’s time and if it was not
satisfactory to bring the relationship to a formal close.
By squarely facing foreseeable obstacles, then mentoring partners were
able to anticipate closure and develop a contingency plan for dealing with
closure.
Recognizing the Need for Closure
There are a number of telltale signs and signals that might suggest that it is
time to consider coming to closure. Mentors who recognize these signals when
they first appear should try to validate their perceptions and assumptions. When
signals are ignored or overlooked, they can eat away at even a good
relationship.
Sometimes there are no overt signals that indicate mentoring partners
should come to closure, yet a mentee or mentor may decide to end the
relationship. When this happens, it is important for the other person to respect
that decision.
Or it may be that a mentee wants to end a mentoring relationship and the
mentor does not feel that that decision is a logical or well-reasoned choice.
Nevertheless, a wise mentor respects that choice and knows when, and how, to
leave the door open in case the mentee’s circumstances change. Here are two
approaches from mentors who have kept the door open:
“Even though we need to end the formal mentoring relationship now, I want you to
know that I am very interested in continuing to know how you are doing and how
you are progressing in applying your learning.
Please stay in touch, and let me know how you are doing. In fact, how
about if we put a date on the calendar now?”
“I know that you are going through a hard time personally right now, and I
understand why continuing to meet is no longer feasible. Please let me know when
you are ready to pursue your learning goals again. I’ve enjoyed our
relationship, and I’d be glad to work with you again.”
Planning for Closure
Participation in a mentoring program helps facilitate the process of coming to
closure. Mentors in informal mentoring relationship have to be more
conscientious about bringing a mentoring relationship to closure because there
is no external structure of accountability.
The time to agree on the process for coming to closure is when the
mentoring partnership agreement is first negotiated. It is essential to plan the
process of coming to closure and consider how it will play out when closure is
anticipated as well as when it is not. Using the learning goals of the mentoring
relationship as a focal point provides a basis for discussing best-case and
worst-case closure scenarios. By identifying potential stumbling blocks, it is
easier to plan hot to overcome them. To help ensure that the mentoring
relationship concludes on a positive note and a learning conclusion results from
the mentoring experience, it is helpful to establish a process to acknowledge
the need for closure and identify a framework for organizing the learning
conclusion conversation.
Frank and Bob’s mentoring relationship came to closure when their
company’s mentoring program cycle ended. They attended the company’s formal
mentoring luncheon and received certificate acknowledging their participation in
the program. Without that formal event, they might not have brought the
relationship to closure or acknowledge their accomplishment and mutual
appreciation. Knowing that closure was expected triggered a conversation about
this phase and provided a rallying point for the transition that was to follow.
Because their relationship was part of a formal program, Frank and Bob were able
to tailor Bob’s learning goals according to the time frame that his company had
set. By the time of the final luncheon, Frank and Bob had met these articulated
goals and held their closure conversation.
Yvonne and Carlos’s informal mentoring relationship resulted in meeting
only three of the five learning objectives they had set out to accomplish for
the year. When they met to process the learning at the end of the year, they
realized that it would be advantageous to continue their mentoring relationship.
They talked about what went well for them and what might improve the
relationship and then renegotiated a time line for accomplishing the remaining
learning goals. Despite the initial time frame they had set, they realized they
were not ready to end the relationship.
In this case, reaching closure meant renegotiating rather than ending the
relationship. It still required engaging in a meaningful closure conversation.
Reaching Closure
An indispensable part of the experience of coming to closure is bringing the
relationship to a learning conclusion: a highly focused conversation about
specific learning that has taken place during and as a result of the mentoring
relationship. It is a blameless, no-fault (Murray, 1991), reflective
conversation about both the process and content of the learning.
Jim and his mentee, Carol, had not had a productive mentoring experience.
In fact, in just a few short months, they had placed so many demands on one
another that they wore themselves out trying to maintain the relationship. By
mutual consent (at Jim’s instigation), they decided it was time to end the
mentoring relationship. They agreed in advance to hold a learning conclusion
conversation.
The conversation began with a review of the learning goals. Using that as
a personal benchmark, they focused on the specifics of what Carol had learned
and what else was needed to reach the remaining learning outcomes. They talked
about what went well for them in the relationship and what did not and why.
Consequently, Jim realized that he needed to be more focused on mentee needs and
that a mentoring relationship required more patience than he had. Carol learned
that she needed to take more responsibility for her own learning, to be more
focused, and to take risks. The negative aspects of their relationship were
softened by focusing the conversation on what each had learned and how they
might apply and leverage that knowledge in the future. (Mistakes, failures, and
missteps offer rich experience for learning.) Another positive outcome was that
Jim identified other mentors with the appropriate expertise and background who
Carol could contact to further her leaning. The result was a blameless
conversation focused on the learning, with both partners able to take something
positive away from the mentoring experience.
Exercise 1 offers guidance for shaping a discussion about the learning
conclusion conversation. Ideally this conversation will take place as part of
the negotiating conversation and will be revisited again toward the end of the
enabling phase in preparation for the closure conversation. (Please complete
Exercise 1 located at the end of the reading for this section).
Focusing on Mentee Goals
When a mentoring relationship disintegrates or fizzles out, the mentor and
mentee have missed an opportunity to reap the harvest of the relationship.
Routinely reviewing goals and objectives throughout the relationship
keeps the relationship focused on mentees goals and enables mentoring partners
to take stock of their progress. This process builds momentum and helps to
identify the appropriate time for closure.
As soon as goals and objective have been met, it is time to reflect on
what has been learned, celebrate, and move on. When mentoring partners choose to
continue the mentoring relationship, it is necessary to articulate new goals,
renegotiate the terms of engagement, and review what has worked well in the past
and what has gotten in the way.
Integrating What Has Been Learned
Without closure, a mentee can lose the dimension of leveraging the learning that
has taken place. Good closure incorporates helping mentoring partners apply and
integrate what has been learned as a result of the relationship. A mentor’s
questions and thoughtful analysis can help a mentee evaluate learning outcomes
and identify how to maximize and build on that learning.
For over a year Neal and his mentee, Elliot, have been engaged in a
mentoring relationship that came about as a result of a corporate mentoring
initiative. In a recent memo from the company’s training and development
department, Neal was reminded that the year’s mentoring cycle was almost
through, signaling the need to bring closure to the mentoring relationship.
Neal began the process by sending an e-mail asking Elliott to come to the
next mentoring session prepared to review the learning plan they laid out when
they started meeting. When they met, Neal focused the conversation on each of
the original learning goals and then asked Elliot for his assessment in relation
to each of them. Elliott responded that his goal had been to learn how to
position himself for new opportunities within the department and that he felt he
had made considerable progress. In turn, Neal asked Elliott to describe the
progress he felt he had made and to identify how he had specifically applied
what he had learned. Once Elliott articulated his response, he and Neal explored
other questions: What were the implications of that learning? In what ways could
Elliott apply learning to other situations? What other learning would be helpful
for Elliott? Once these questions were answered, Elliott focused on the process
of learning, asking questions such as: What did we learn as a partnership? What
did we learn as individuals about ourselves? How can we integrate that learning?
If the mentoring relationship has been beset with a problem, reaching a
learning conclusion can be turned into a positive experience. In such a
situation, mentoring partners should use the following approach:
1.
Acknowledge the problem or difficulty encountered without casting blame or
passing judgment – for example, “It looks as if we’ve come to an impasse.”
2.
If the decision is to end the mentoring relationship, make a clean break of it
and end on an upbeat note. Consider what went wrong –for example, “Let’s look at
the pluses and minuses of our relationship so that we can each learn something
from the relationship.”
3.
Express mutual appreciation. Acknowledge the progress and accomplishments that
did result from the relationship – for example, “Although we haven’t been able
to accomplish all of your objectives, we were successful in one area. I
attribute our success to your persistence and determination; those are the very
characteristics you will need in your new job.
Celebrating Learning
We are more likely to celebrate success in our personal lives than in our
workday life, where celebration is viewed as appropriate only within limits. In
fact, celebration is a fundamental part of concluding a mentoring relationship
because it reinforces learning and signals the transition process.
If celebration is to have any value, it must be genuine. When celebration
is authentic, it engenders enthusiasm, builds a sense of community, and creates
venues for communication. Terrence Deal and M.M. Key, in
Corporate Celebration: Play, Purpose and
Profit at Work (1998), speak to the value of celebrating: “Celebrations
infuse life with passion and purpose. They summon the human purpose. They attach
us to our human roots and help us soar toward new visions. They touch our hearts
and fire our imaginations.” (For more on celebration, see Kouzes and Posner,
1999).
Mentoring relationship can be celebrated in a variety of settings, from
formal events to informal meetings. Here are some specific suggestions for
incorporating celebration into the closure of a mentoring relationship:
Collaborate on the planning.
Engaging the mentee in the planning process will heighten the sense of
individual contribution and foster the sense of partnership that permeates a
mentoring relationship.
Elevate and expand knowledge.
Use the celebration as a vehicle to continue to educate about the past, present,
and future of the organization and use that as a context for growth. Ask your
mentee to relate her or his perspectives, experiences, and challenges.
Leverage learning.
The opportunity to leverage and maximize learning is the very essence of a
mentoring relationship. By sharing your own development stories with your
mentee, you create a sense of momentum that extends beyond the celebration.
Expand your thinking.
When considering how to celebrate, look for permanent memento or meaningful ways
to remember the partnership.
Brag about accomplishments.
Boast about your mentoring accomplishments with your mentee. Celebrate the
triumphs and big wins triumphantly and with big celebrations. And while you are
at it, make connections with the mentee’s personal mission (and if you are
mentoring in an organization context, with the organization’s mission).
Rekindle memory.
Revisit the journey. There is an old saying, “If you don’t have a sense of where
you come from, going backward looks like progress.” You may find that it will
reawaken your own sense of purpose and keep the focus on learning.
Appreciate.
Honor achievement. Let mentee know what it is that you appreciate about them.
Tell them they matter and why (and be honest when you do). Leave space and
opportunity for mentees to express their appreciation to you. This allows them
to feel that they are giving something of themselves to you.
Talk about transitions.
Talk about changes before they take place. Celebration is an opportunity to
create self-awareness, educate for change, and prepare for next steps.
Espouse the vision.
Articulating personal (and organizational) vision harnesses energy and engages
the spirit. Linkages to vision help leverage learning. Create consistent thought
and action by helping your mentee keep the vision out front.
Celebration is nurturing; it engages people through connection. It is the
quintessential relationship-building opportunity. Challenge yourself and your
mentee to create ways to celebrate. Celebrate the mini-miles, mile markers and
finish lines.
Dean and Key (1998) describe effective celebrations as “well-crafted
processes that embrace and honor participants” (p.207). And it was Kahlil Gibran
(1964) who spoke so eloquently about the value of personalism in gift giving:
“You give but little when you give of your possessions. It is when you give of
yourself that you truly give” (p.10). Personalism should be part of mentoring
celebration.
Coming to Closure About Closure
Good closure should elevate a mentee’s learning and catapult it forward, raising
the learning to another level. Unsatisfactory closure can block growth by
minimizing the desire to achieve learning goals. Although individual need for
closure varies, at least come closure is essential for growth. When mentoring
partners do not come to closure, they sacrifice the potential for future
learning.
The process of coming to closure is not just for benefit of the mentee or
the mentoring relationship. It presents a development opportunity for the mentor
as well. After closure of the relationship, mentors should take time to focus on
their own learning and consider how they can apply what they have learned to
their advantage in future mentoring relationships. Exercise 2 provides a
worksheet for mentor self-reflection. (Please find Exercise 2 following Exercise
1 at the end of the reading for this Section).
The Aftermath
Even after the mentor and mentee have come to closure, there may be times when
the mentee reappears in the mentor’s life. It could be by way of a personal
visit some years later, a letter, an e-mail, or a telephone call. At tense
mostly unpredictable time, the mentee will likely report on her accomplishment
and wait for the mentor’s approval. In this way, mentors become a bellwether in
mentees lives for measuring progress and receiving validation and kudos for
their accomplishments. The aftermath exchange is a satisfying but very different
exchange form the relationship that spawned the initial learning experience.
Less often, former mentee show up in a mentor’s life and stay. Witness
the experience that Mitch Albom describes in
Tuesdays with Morrie, where a bond is
rekindles and learning takes place at deeper and even more profound levels.
Moving On
Coming to closure in mentoring is an important part of learning, development,
satisfaction, and promise. Closure links the present to the future for mentee
and mentor. Effective mentoring comes from learning throughout the mentoring
relationship. A mentor’s ability to learn from his or her mentee’s own learning
is an important development opportunity. You may also find it helpful to revisit
the ROS matrix in Exercise 2 (Section 5A: Enabling) and complete the rows in the
fourth section.
Resources used to inform the readings and exercises in this section
Albom, M.
(1997). Tuesdays with Morrie. New York, NY: Doubleday.
Deal, T., &
Key, M. (1998). Corporate celebration: Play, purpose, and profit at work. San
Francisco, CA: Berrett-Koehler.
Gilbran, K.
(1964). The prophet. New York, NY: Knoph.
Kouzes, J., &
Posner, B. (1999). Encouraging the heart: A leader’s guide to rewarding and
recognizing others. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass.
Murray, J.
(1991). Beyond the myths and magic of mentoring: How to facilitate and effective
mentoring program. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass
This
concludes the AAMN Mentoring Program. Please continue to
Section 7A, Evaluation and completed the evaluation forms there.
Thank you for your participation!