Preparing: Reading 5
Preparing the Relationship
Relationship is the glue of the mentoring partnership. Without it, there is no
partnership. Co-preparation of the mentoring partners fosters understanding and
clarifies expectations of how the work is going to be done. Some mentees are
better prepared to take an active role than others. Mentors need to apply their
know-how to engage their mentoring partner in the preparation of the
relationship. They will need to lay the groundwork to establish, build, and
sustain an effective and mutually satisfying relationship by
·
Engaging the mentee
·
Making the connection
·
Checking assumptions
Engaging the Mentee
Mentors who involve mentees in the very first conversation set a positive tone
and expectation for active engagement for the entire relationship. The
approaches that follow are helpful ways to engage the mentee in initial
conversations and throughout the rest of the mentoring relationship.
Satisfying Information Needs
A mentee may have information needs about the subtleties of a particular
situation, organization, or office. He or she may want to know the ins and outs
of how to scale the corporate walls, publish an article, establish academic
credibility, or land that much-sought-after promotion.
Helpful Approaches
·
Start with your mentee’s questions.
·
Identify the mentee’s goals.
·
Determine what the mentee wants to know.
·
Present alternative approaches for reaching the goals.
Not Helpful
·
Telling everything there is to know about a subject
·
Pontificating
·
Talking about “how it was in my day”
Providing Vision
Sometimes all it takes is another perspective to help a mentee reframe learning
goals and objectives and create a vision of one’s own. Sharing perspectives can
broaden the mentee’s vision and understanding.
Helpful Approaches
·
Ask the obvious and the not so obvious
·
Provide potential alternatives – for example, “Have you thought about…?”
·
Provide information about similar other situations – for example, “In my
experience…”
·
Push the mentee’s thinking and acting forward by helping in the problem-solving
process, not by providing solutions.
·
Encourage the exploration of options before pushing to action.
Not Helpful
·
Answers
·
Demanding that the mentee do things your way
Lending an Ear
Hearing is easy. Really listening to what is being said is not. Yet both are
necessary in a meaningful mentoring relationship. Sometimes we fixate on one
particular aspect of what we listen to. It could be the words or what someone
has said (thinking), the meaning assigned to it (their emotion), or how the
person is behaving (tone of voice, facial expressions) as they interact. These
affect not only what we listen for but also what it is we actually hear and
learn. Hearing means listening for understanding and taking the time to check
out what it is you think you heard.
Helpful Approaches
·
Suspend judgment.
·
Acknowledge emotion.
·
Be empathetic.
·
Provide feedback appropriately.
·
Acknowledge what you hear as well as what is missing from the conversation.
Not Helpful
·
Playing therapist
·
Concentrating primarily on the mentee’s emotions
·
Solving the problem for the mentee
Setting Realistic Expectation
When difficulties arise, mentees find someone whose experience and
expertise they trust and respect to learn from. But sometimes they learn too
hard and expect too much support. An open discussion of realistic expectation
and roles can release tension and pressure in the relationship.
Helpful Approaches
·
Discourage moaning, groaning, and bemoaning
·
Balance compassion with challenge
·
Ask questions
Not Helpful
·
Becoming a permanent learning post
·
Thinking you are the only one who can help
·
Interfering
Establishing the Big Picture
There are layers of complexity to solving business problems. Helping a mentee
reach out from the immediate situation to embrace a larger context establishes a
broader understanding of a problem, issue, or challenge. Establishing the big
picture is often the first step to real understanding.
Helpful Approaches
·
Encourage the exploration of option before pushing to action.
·
Remember that the complex is often simple
Not Helpful
·
Making seemingly impossible tasks too achievable
·
Making it happen
Furnishing a Helping Hand
Sometimes a helping hand provided at just the right time becomes the catalyst to
promote a fuller discussion.
Helpful Approached
·
Provide encouragement in multiple and timely ways.
·
Know when to ask the right question and how to convey the message, “You can do
it”.
·
Tell your mentee what you are doing and why
·
Talk through possible strategies.
·
Co-create opportunities.
Not Helpful
·
Scripting for the mentee
·
Talking for the mentee or about the mentee in the mentee’s presence
Engaging the mentee starts before the relationship is formalized and continues
for the duration of the relationship. Each of the strategies set out here for
engaging the mentee is useful throughout the mentoring relationship. They are
also useful in preliminary discussions with prospective mentees.
Making the Connection
A mentoring relationship without connection is superficial at best. The old
notion of mentoring was not concerned with connections as much as it was with
the transfer of knowledge and know-how. The distinction between connection and
transfer of knowledge and know-how illustrates the difference between separate
and connected knowing (Belenky, Clinchy, Goldberger, and Tarule, 1986).
Connected knowing emerges out of a relationship between self and other.
Transfer of knowledge represents a more impersonal and autonomous way of
knowing. We now know that for learning to be effectively sustained, two
conditions need to occur: the learner needs to be engaged in the learning
process, and the learning need to be connected to the learner and to his or her
life experience.
Managing expectations in a relationship is difficult when mentoring
partner operate under differing assumption. Examining assumptions prepares the
relationship by establishing a connection and managing expectations.
Checking out assumptions establishes the basis for candid communication,
builds trust, and enables the partners to reach shared understanding, all
necessary and vital components of a mentoring relationship. Without shared
understanding, trust can quickly erode. Authentic communication is difficult
without trust; facilitating learning without it is impossible.
Assumption Awareness
Mentors must be aware of the assumptions they have about mentoring and check
regularly to make sure they are valid and accurate (Brookfield, 1995).
Brookfield coined the term assumption
hunting to describe the ethical stance for facilitating learning.
Challenging assumptions is part of the learning process. It is also one of the
most formidable ethical and caring tasks that mentors carry out. “In many ways,”
Brookfield writes, “we are our assumption. Assumptions give meaning and purpose
to who we are and what we do. Becoming aware of the implicit assumptions that
frame how we think and act is one of the most challenging intellectual puzzles
we face in our lives” (p.2).
Assumption hunting is vital to improving mentoring relationships and yet
can be a daunting task because our assumptions determine how and what we
perceive. This means that we ought to engage ourselves in thoughtful reflection
about why we do what we do and ask ourselves, “What is it we say to ourselves or
to others to justify our actions?”
When Meg took on the role of mentor to Clause, a nurse practitioner, she
made the following assumption.
·
That her role was to identify career and educational options that would move him
out of his current job and into one with more interesting challenges
·
That she would need to coach, cheerlead, and help Claude evaluate options
·
That her responsibility would include meeting with Clause once a month, staying
connected through e-mail, and making introduction for him
·
That Claude would come to the relationship with some ideas about his career
options, would follow up on the contacts she provided for him, and would do
research between mentoring sessions.
·
That the mentoring relationship would take about an hour a month face-to-face
contact time and that Claude could reach his goals within six months
The Assumption-Hunting Process
The example of Meg and Claude illustrates the first step in the three-step
approach to assumption hunting.
Step One: Identify the assumptions you hold about mentoring.
Step Two: Check your assumptions for validity by asking for feedback from
others. If you are participating in a formal or organizational program, you
might check with the coordinator and your mentee. If you are engaged in an
informal relationship, you might invite your mentee to complete a parallel
exercise and share your own responses and discuss the implications for your
relationship. This is a helpful exercise for new
and seasoned mentors. The assumptions
you made in previous relationships may not be consistent across relationships.
Meg was surprised to find when she checked in with Clause that he held a
different set of assumptions about his role. He had anticipated that Meg would
play a more active role in the relationship: setting up interview for him,
coaching him through the interview process, and advocating for him. He was also
surprised that Meg had assumed that they would meet so infrequently. Holding a
discussion about the difference in their assumption helped them both manage
their expectation before they rose to the problem level.
Step Three: Make a habit of checking out your assumptions regularly. You can do
this in conversation or by using the guidelines that follow.
Let us assume that Meg and Claude agreed on expectations, but later in the
relationship, Claude become increasingly dependent on her for direction. Meg
could facilitate a discussion about his assumptions using a similar but more
structured approach than the one described in Step Two. She would begin by
suggesting that they both list their assumptions about how the relationship was
going, share their responses without judgment or analyzing them, and then
discuss these points.
·
What can we conclude based on these assumptions?
·
Are our assumptions congruent? If so, on what items? If there is not agreement,
why not?
·
What are the implications for our learning relationship?
·
Where are we likely to encounter choppy water? Smooth sailing?
Assumption Hunting at Work
When assumption hunting is carried out consistently, it enriches the mentoring
process. It should be part of the beginning of a mentoring relationship, and
surface when evaluating progress in the relationship or when the relationship
falls into a rut. Assumption hunting helps raise awareness and action helps
build and maintain ethically strong mentoring relationship. Not mentoring
partner is well served by a mentoring relationship base on misunderstanding,
which only adds additional layers of vulnerability to the relationship.
Engaging the learner in meaningful conversation from the very beginning
starts building the connection, assists in determining the compatibility of
goals, and helps a mentee decide whether the mentoring relationship is worth
pursuing. Regardless what that decision is, the learning has been facilitated.
Prospecting: Initial Conversations
The natural tendency is to look for chemistry when meeting a prospective
mentoring partner. A word of caution is necessary here. Despite the fact that
chemistry is one of the first things that prospective mentees look for in a
mentoring relationship, chemistry is overrated. If the chemistry does not feel
right, the inclination is to shut down or foreclose the opportunity for further
engagement. But instead of giving up if the chemistry does not feel right at the
first meeting, mentors should ask themselves, “Can I work productively with this
individual? Do I honestly feel that I can further this person’s learning?”
The initial prospecting conversation includes more than a litmus test for
chemistry. It should be used to gauge interest, understand motivation, and check
for understanding. During that initial conversation you will want to use the
approaches discussed about for engaging the prospective mentee.
It may not be clear from the first conversation or even the second if this mentoring match will make a good partnership for you.
If you find that there are items that you have not checked, it may mean
that you have more work to do to prepare yourself adequately for the
partnership, that you may need to have further conversations with your
prospective mentee and delay your decision, or that you may decide that you are
not ready for this relationship.
A Final Note
It takes at least two to build a mentoring relationship. This chapter addresses
the preparation needs of the mentor and the mentoring relationship. It does not
discuss mentee readiness and preparation, which is equally important but
addressed abundantly in the mentoring literature.
Quality preparation directly affects the development and growth of the
relationship. By focusing attention on mentor motivation, determining readiness,
and assessing comfort with basic mentoring skills, mentor readiness is
heightened. Creating readiness helps mentors check out their assumptions,
delimit their role, identify and address the skills they want to develop to
increase their capacity to mentor well, and determine mentoring fit – all of
which ultimately contribute to the mentor’s adeptness in facilitating effective
learning relationships.
Summary
Thank you for completing the readings and exercises for the first section of the
Mentoring Program. This serves as a component of your orientation to the role of
being a AAMN Mentor. We will also be having bi-monthly conference calls with the
Mentors and the Mentorship Task Force. The will give you an opportunity to ask
questions, make comments, and dialogue with colleagues about the mentoring
process.
Please send you completed exercises to the AAMN Mentorship Task Force using one
of the following 3 methods. We not looking for right or wrong answers, rather,
we are wanting to keep a record of who has completed the orientation before they
move on to developing a Mentoring relationship with their mentee. Again, thank
you for your time and commitment.
The exercises can be submitted using one of the 3 following strategies:
Mail:
The American Assembly for Men in Nursing
Attention: Mentorship Task Force
PO Box 130220
Birmingham, AL 35213
Email:
AAMN@AAMN.org
Fax: 205-956-0146
Resources used to inform the readings and exercises in Section 3A
Albom, M. (1997). Tuesdays with Morrie.
New York, NY: Doubleday
Belenky, M., Clinchy, B. Goldberger, N., & Tarule, J. (1986).
Women’s ways of knowing: The development
of self, mind, and voice. New York, NY: Basic Books.
Brookfield, S. (1986). Understanding and
facilitating adult learning. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass.
Daloz, L. (1999). Mentor: Guiding the
journey of adult learners. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass.
DePree, M. (1989). Leadership is an art.
New York, NY: Doubleday.
Kram, K. (1988). Mentoring at work:
Developmental relationship in organizational life. Glenview, IL: Scott.
Missirian, A. (1982). The corporate
connection: Why executive women need mentors to reach the top. Upper Saddle
River, NJ: Prentice Hall.
Phillips-Jones, L. (1997). The new mentors
and protégés. Cypress Valley, CA: Coalition of Counseling Centers.
Piercy, M. (1982). Circles on the water.
New York, NY: Knopf