Mentoring In The Spectrum Of Learning

People learn from others in a variety of ways, and one sign of learning maturity is that a person has a wide network of different learning relationships. In many ways, the journey to adulthood is one of widening one's range of learning relationships.

Table 2: Key differences in style when helping others to learn

Role	Relationship	Dominant style	Affinity	Learning transfer	Power management
Teacher	Pupil	Tell	Aloof	Explicit data and information	High exerted power (parental)
Tutor	Student	Discuss		Knowledge
Coach	Learner	Demonstrate/give feedback		Skills
Mentor	Colleague	Encourage/stimulate	Close	Intuitive data and wisdom	Low exerted power (collegial)

First, really good teachers are able to operate across the spectrum, although the structure and organisation of modern school systems makes it increasingly difficult for them to do so. Second, each of these approaches is both valid and valuable, but they represent a spectrum from the highly impersonal to the highly customised and personal. Third, one can also plot an evolution in the quality of the learning, in two ways. One is that the closer one gets to mentoring, the more the learning is shaped and encapsulated by the individual's own experiences. The other is the cascade from data through information (a product of teaching), knowledge (tutoring), and skills (coaching) to wisdom (mentoring). At each stage of this cascade the level of usefulness increases: data becomes interesting (except to train-spotters) only when it is organised into information; information allows people to pass examinations, but it requires further structure and context to turn it into knowledge, at which point it can be applied more widely. Having the knowledge of what a good manager should do does not mean that you are any good at it, however. For that, knowledge has to be applied and re-applied until it becomes skill. Finally, wisdom is the ability to apply accumulated knowledge and skills more widely again, having the judgement to draw meaningfully on experience in one or more situations in completely new contexts.

The implications of this for mentors are considerable. Whose wisdom are we talking about? Effective mentors tend to treat their wisdom like a nuclear arsenal - they very rarely let it fly. Instead they use their experience to inform the questions they ask and to challenge assumptions the mentee may be making. They also recognise that the greatest value to the mentee is to develop his or her own wisdom, not to borrow that of the mentor. Inevitably, in a successful and enduring mentoring relationship there will be nuggets of observations by the mentor that the mentee will savour and perhaps pass on in turn, but the prevailing message of developmental mentoring is, ‘Look into your own experience. Learn your own lessons. Build your own wisdom. ' (This is heavily in contrast with the sponsorship mentoring view of ‘Listen to my experience. Learn from my triumphs and mistakes. Value my advice and judgement. ')