Page 385 - Learning to Learn

LEARNING TO LEARN: BECOMING A SELF -GROWER 385
EXPERIENCE 13: CHOOSING AND USING MENTORS EFFECTIVELY READING
Main Issues Related to Mentoring
For the mentoring process to be maximally effective, certain issues and barriers must be predicted and
handled with forethought.
First, both parties must be willing to enter the relationship with an agreement that coercion will never be
used. To avoid coercion, it is essential to consider the differences between assessment and evaluation.
Mentors and mentees vary widely in personality styles, purposes, and assumptions about how to achieve
improvements in performance and growth. The relationship between the individuals must have clear
boundaries that are identified through careful discussion between the parties.
In many cases, mentees have significant life barriers that influence the success of the mentoring process
and relationship.
Because it is not possible to predict how a mentor-mentee relationship will evolve, mentors must facilitate
an appropriate level of challenge, and mentees must accept the challenge with honesty and openness,
especially when things are not going as well as hoped.
Because mentors have already experienced the type of growth that their mentees need to attain, it is
important to consider how mentors benefit from the relationship. The results for the mentor must be
motivating both intrinsically, e.g., be experienced as “servant leadership,” and extrinsically, e.g., be
recognized as an effective mentor. Similarly, mentees must experience intrinsically motivating results
such as enhanced self-esteem and extrinsically motivating results such as improved performance.
Key Skills of Mentors
The following list describes essential skills that mentors must have in order to be effective with mentees
and with the process itself. Additional skills that may be important for certain circumstances can be
identified in the Classification of Learning Skills, especially in the Social and Affective Domains. This
set of performance skills, in combination with other tools such as those found in Performance Levels for
Learners and Self-Growers, will be valuable for mentors’ self-assessments.
Listening
Being positive
Identifying assumptions
Taking the other’s perspective
Appreciating the other’s values
Reasoning ethically
Identifying and accessing resources
Setting criteria
Challenging
Assessing against criteria
Respecting diverse talents and interests
Being emotionally available
Possessing servant leadership values
Mentoring Contexts
The purpose of mentoring is to facilitate growth in individuals who already function well. Many authors
address the various forms of mentoring (e.g., Holliday 2001; Fritts, 1998) and discriminate between
mentoring and other forms of learning or growth facilitation. The phrases “life coaching” and “learning
leader” appear to have a meaning more similar to mentoring than to learning assessment, peer coaching,
or training. In higher education contexts, the major opportunities for mentoring students occur in advising
and in assisting students with independent projects.