Chapter 2: Models and Methods Of Mentoring

Overview

One of the biggest problems in trying to understand the mentoring phenomenon is pinning down exactly what is meant by the term. The confusion has arisen for several reasons. Firstly, the development of mentoring concepts and behaviours has been strongly influenced by culture - both organisational and national.

Secondly, other forms of one-to-one developmental help, such as coaching, have also had a rapid evolution in recent years. The range of styles open to coaches has expanded from a traditional ‘Go try this, and I'll give you feedback on how you performed' approach or a ‘Watch me, then you try it' approach to styles that place much more emphasis on questioning, stimulative techniques. It is not that coaching has invaded mentoring's territory, or vice versa. While the roles have remained separate, the behavioural repertoire available to each has increased over the past two decades.

A third reason for the confusion is that many of the academics who have studied mentoring have been - let's not mince words - pretty sloppy in their approach to defining what they are talking about. There seems to have been a general assumption that everyone knows what mentoring is, so there's no need to bother defining it. The reality is very different. The purpose of the relationship, the expectations of the mentoring pair, and the context in which they operate, all contribute to substantial differences in style and definition.

In some cases, mentoring is seen as an activity that can take place within the line of command; in others, this is seen as incompatible with the fundamental openness of the relationship. In some cultures, the exercise of authority and influence on the part of a protégé is seen as appropriate; in others, it is seen as primarily a developmental activity, with the emphasis on empowering and enabling people to do things for themselves. Some people view mentoring as synonymous with coaching; others see it as a form of counselling. Yet others view it as a kind of godfather relationship.

Dr Audrey Collin (1979), of the School of Management at Leicester Polytechnic, gathered a number of largely US definitions of mentoring for an article in Personnel Review magazine. Mentors were said, for example, to be ‘influential people who significantly help you reach your major life goals'. Mentoring is ‘a process in which one person [the mentor] is responsible for overseeing the career and development of another person [the mentee] outside the normal manager/subordinate relationship'. Alternatively, mentoring was ‘a protected relationship in which learning and experimentation can occur, potential skills can be developed, and in which results can be measured in terms of competencies gained rather than curricular territory covered'.

Subsequent definitions have included:

The basic model of mentoring is that one person passes their greater knowledge and wisdom to another.

(Hay, 1995)

A mentor is a professional person who is a wise, experienced, knowledgeable individual who ‘either demands or gently coaxes' the most out of the mentee.

(Caruso, 1992)

… a one-to-one relationship in which a senior manager oversees the development and progression of a more junior manager

(Equal Opportunities Review, 1995)

… an experienced, objective sounding-board with the power to influence events

(Conway, 1995)

… to help and support people to manage their own learning in order to maximise their potential, develop their skills, improve their performance, and become the person they want to be

(Parsloe, 1992)

And finally, a definition from our own work:

… off-line help from one person to another in making significant transitions in knowledge, work or thinking

(Megginson and Clutterbuck, 1995)

All of these definitions are valid in the specific context which they were intended to describe. None, however, can truly be said to be generic - equally applicable in all situations. As with most definitions of complex phenomena, the more generic they are, the vaguer they tend to be!

A fundamental warning for anyone attempting to make sense of mentoring by reading the academic journals is that if a piece does not explicitly identify the type of relationship and the objectives of the relationship, it is likely to be at best misguided and probably misleading.

Terms like ‘oversee' and ‘responsible for' project an image of a hands-on kind of relationship with a clear sense of senior and subordinate. The word ‘protégé' also carries distinct overtones of applied power. These concepts are carried on into most of the North American and some European academic literature on mentoring, and in particular, in how mentoring success is measured. It is worth at this point making the controversial but in my view accurate point that the vast majority of US literature on mentoring is of minimal value in planning and understanding mentoring in a European context because it begins from fundamentally different assumptions about the role and nature of mentoring. Mentoring schemes in the UK and Europe, and to a large extent in Australia/New Zealand, tend to conform to a model that emphasises mutuality of learning and the encouragement of the mentee to do things himself or herself; and to a much broader vision of both the role of the mentor and the interactivity between mentor and mentee.

The definition referred to above from our own work - ‘off-line help from one person to another in making significant transitions in knowledge, work or thinking' - has become the most commonly accepted for this developmentally oriented and empowering approach to mentoring. The rationale behind the component words and phrases is as follows:

• ‘Off-line' is appropriate because it is difficult to be fully open in a relationship where one person has authority over the other. In the few cases where mentoring relationships have been set up between individuals and their managers, the managers in particular have found a conflict of role: either the mentees hold back information or the managers find themselves in possession of confidences which they cannot use without damaging the relationship. There are rare occasions when an off-line mentoring relationship becomes an in-line relationship and, if it is sufficiently strong, may continue informally. However, most schemes would withdraw support for a formal mentoring relationship in these circumstances.

• ‘Help' is a weak term, but it covers a wide range of resources for which the mentee can turn to the mentor - from direct advice to simply listening. A key skill for the effective mentor is to be able to adapt the nature of the help given to the mentee's needs at the time.

• ‘One person to another': in developmental mentoring the hierarchy is not important - it is the experience gap that matters. Peer mentoring is increasingly common, as is upward mentoring, where the mentor is more junior in terms of the hierarchy. Top management at GE all have young e-literate mentors who keep them abreast of new technology. Two short cases at the end of this chapter illustrate upward mentoring in more detail.

• ‘Significant transitions': mentoring schemes and mentoring relationships need some sense of purpose if they are to achieve benefits for the participants. We explore some of this in Chapters 7 and 8. One of the most common problems with formal mentoring schemes is that mentor and mentee meet, each hoping the other will define what they should be talking about. This is not a recipe for success!

A relatively concise description of the essentials of a developmental mentoring relationship comes from an intranet site designed by my colleague Jenny Sweeney:

Mentoring is a partnership between two people built upon trust. It is a process in which the mentor offers ongoing support and development opportunities to the mentee. Addressing issues and blockages identified by the mentee, the mentor offers guidance, counselling and support in the form of pragmatic and objective assistance. Both share a common purpose of developing a strong two-way learning relationship.

Mentoring helps mentees and mentors progress their personal and professional growth. Its primary focus tends to be on the acquisition of people skills which enable individuals to operate effectively at high levels of management. The aim of mentoring is to build the capability of the mentees to the point of self-reliance while accelerating the communication of ideas across the organisation.

The mentoring relationship is confidential. The mentor offers a safe environment to the mentee within which they can discuss work-related issues and explore solutions to challenges. For this reason, in a formal mentoring scheme mentors are rarely in a line relationship; they are off-line. In this way, the mentors are not required to evaluate the current work performance of the mentees. They are there to help the learner manage his or her own learning.

Mentors can help individuals reach significant decisions about complex issues. Through skilful questioning they help clarify the mentee's perspective while bringing an additional view to bear on the issues. Mentors are not there to solve problems but rather to illuminate the issues and to help plan ways through them.

Mentoring is a positive developmental activity. Mentors can discuss current issues relating to the mentees' work, offering insights into the ways the organisation works, how the informal networks operate and how they think about the challenges and opportunities they encounter.

Mentors can advise on development and how to manage a career plan; they can challenge assumptions; and, where relevant, they can share their own experience. Mentoring has proved to be very effective in transferring tacit knowledge within an organisation, highlighting how effective people think, take decisions and approach complex issues.

Sharing views and ideas builds understanding and trust. The mentor and mentee relationship often evolves into a key friendship, invaluable when difficult decisions arise.