Comparing Inclusive & Exclusive Mentor Selection Approaches

© 2003, by Barry Sweeny

CHOICES OF SELECTION APPROACH:

1. THE FOLLOWING ITEMS ARE THOSE FOR WHICH THERE ARE NO CLEAR, "ALWAYS CORRECT" ANSWERS.

2. INITIALLY, ORGANIZATIONS WILL NEED TO CONSIDER THEIR SETTING, HISTORY, AND PURPOSES TO DETERMINE THE BEST WAY TO ADDRESS THESE ISSUES.

3. AFTER IMPLEMENTATION, USE PROGRAM EVALUATION TO COLLECT DATA CONCERNING THESE ISSUES AND MAKE REVISIONS AS NECESSARY.

• AN EXCLUSIVE PROCESS -"Mentors must be the best available models of good practice."
  • -Many other experienced staff are then rejected as "not good enough"
  • -The mentor's job is usually to ensure the protege reaches a minimal skill level
  • -Mentors may be called on to "evaluate" the protege. Even if informal, it's a conflict.
  • -The technical skills of the job are highly valued
  • -A higher degree of stress accompanies mentor status since they are "special"
  • -It's possible that mentors will be identified as an "elite" group. This mean that mentoring may become divisive & not promote collaboration across the staff as a whole.
• AN INCLUSIVE PROCESS - "The best mentors must be good teachers, but they must also be able to model continual, visible learning, openness to feedback & the daily, career-long struggle to be the best educators they can be."
  • -Most veterans can be mentors at some point.
  • -The mentor's job is to model professional growth and to support the protege's professional development
  • -Lower levels of stress result from expectations that all will learn together from each other
  • -Requires built-in, on-going training & support for mentor & proteges
  • -Requires planned opportunities for monitoring, checking for problems, and a process to support mentors.
  • -This means that the program needs a person (program coordinator) who will deal with any problems as they arise.
  • -People skills, the development of analytical & reflective practices are valued for mentors.

Without a doubt, I recommend the "inclusive" approach.

AVOID THE "EXCLUSIVE" APPROACH

You should also avoid use of criteria which are so exclusive and unusual that few can or choose to try to attain them. That would create the impression that mentorship is an exclusive "club" to which only the best can belong. Such an exclusive approach can create many problems, especially in a collaborative, or egalitarian culture and can actually be counter to the collaborative culture that mentoring tries to establish. Further, it can serious decrease the number of people who will volunteer to be mentors in your program and it can create pressures and discomforts for those who do become mentors. You definately want to avoid having criteria which will cause you to be perceived as saying to a mentor candidate, "Sorry, you're not good enough to be a mentor."

In fact, it is not necessary or even desirable to have mentors who are "the best" employees in order to build a highly effective mentor program.

USE THE "INCLUSIVE" APPROACH TO MENTOR SELECTION

A better solution is to use a more inclusive approach with "staged criteria".

• The concept of the inclusive approach is to place the focus on mentors who:
  • Meet certain minimal "threshold criteria", and...
  • Agree to model and work toward becoming the best mentors they can be, rather than mentors who are already great and who know everything.
• When the emphasis is on mentors as models of continual improvement, mentoring will be more consistent with a professional learning culture and the expectation that everyone is learning and growing.

You can be successful using an inclusive approach to mentor selection if you:

• Avoid creating the impression that "anyone can be a mentor" by the use of "staged criteria". See below for advice about how to do that.
• Create face-saving ways to opt out - Create ways in which people who are mentor candidates can decide, at any step in the selection process, that now is not the time to become a mentor and choose to remove themselves from the process.
  • That is accomplished by describing up front what becoming an effective mentor involves, then suggesting that those who would be uncomfortable doing those things should consider withdrawing their candidacy, at least for now.
• Design "safety checks" at points during the selection process which allow the program to ensure the quality and/or appropriateness of the candidate to move to the next step of the selection process. See below for more information on how to do this.

• Don't create too rigid of a selection process. Allow for flexibility. Let those who are interested in learning more about the mentor program know they can come to and informational meeting to hear about mentoring and that they may opt out at any time they wish. This is critical because some of the less desirable candidate will self-select out of the selection process when the role of the mentor & the expectation of modeling visible learning for others is understood.
• Don't make too many promises about what attending mentor training means. People should understand that being trained as a mentor DOES NOT mean they will automatically be assigned to work with a protege. The point is to match the strengths of the mentor to the needs of the protege. This means that (unstated) poorer employees who become trained mentors may find that they are never matched because the program can not find a proteger whose needs are matched to the strengths of the (poor) mentor.

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