The Protégé's Experience in Mentoring:
A "Gold Mine" of Ways to Help Improve Your Own Mentoring Experience
2003, Barry Sweeny
PLEASE READ CAREFULLY - THIS MAY NOT BE WHAT YOU EXPECT!
The traditional, sometimes unquestioned, view of mentoring is a one-way flow of advice, assistance, and challenging, moving from the mentor to the protege. This author thinks this is not now, and perhaps never was, a viable model for ANY mentoring relationship. No matter who the mentor and protégé are, and no matter how much the mentor knows and the protégé does not, the diversity of their experience alone creates a vast opportunity for mentor AND protégé discoveries, learning, and growth. Whether we plan it to be or not, mentoring functions as a MUTUAL system for development of BOTH partners.
That principle just stated, is only one of many best practices which have tremendous implications for the protégé's experience in mentoring. At every step of the process of mentoring, the protégé finds opportunities for growth right along side challenges. Some of the protégé's needs will be met and great growth achieved, while other needs may be unknown to the mentoring program, the mentor, and maybe even the protégé and will remain unaddressed because they have not been consciously articulated by anyone. Only when some ONE person in the partnership can describe the need is there an opportunity to begin to address it.
The final realization that flows from this idea is that, if neither a mentoring program nor a mentor are aware of a protégé's needs, BUT the protégé IS, then the protégé needs to become more proactive by describing and advocating for the program and the mentor to address his/her own needs. Doing this effectively takes considerable maturity, finesse, and skill.
This idea is the foundation of this web page. It is designed to give protégés insights into their own experience, to clarify best practices relative to that experience, and to ensure that protégés have the strategies and language to challenge programs and mentoring practices which are less than they need to be, so they may grow to achieve their full potential as systems of support. THAT is a mutual process of learning and growth, the way it SHOULD BE.
The advanced organizer for the conversation is the "Map of the Protégé's Mentoring Experience" which follows, and which is best viewed by opening your browser window as wide as possible. Every element of this "map" is a link to greater information, discussion of issues, and strategies for advocacy on that step of the process, all designed to help YOU succeed.
(If there are ways in which this web site or IMA could be even more helpful, use the links in the panel on the left side of your browser to let us know.)
The Protégé's Experience in Mentoring
| In the sections in this web page, when the ideas or advice that are offered are considered worthy of special notice, they will be placed within a colored box such as this. |
The title "protégé" applies to a wide range of persons, with a vast range of roles, in very diverse settings. You might be:
The one common factor is that you all have been identified as deserving the support, guidance, and challenge of working with a mentor as a mentor's "protégé". Apparently, you are entering into a phase of your life in which someone or some program has decided to invest in your support now for the sake of your future success. Such support is a "gift". Congratulations!
It is mind boggling when we consider the diversity of situations in which providing mentoring is a logical step to take! What ever the reasons, you ARE a protégé now or soon will be. You have come to this web page for information, ideas, guidance, perhaps a series of many reasons.
| A caution before you proceed - Take careful notes for yourself of the things that are told you when you are informed you will be a protégé and working in a mentoring program with a mentor. If you are given literature, a flyer, or handout which describes what you can expect, keep it. If the mentoring experience is less than what you believed it should be, these notes and written documents will help you gain improvements or at least provide you with the language to use when seeking solutions to any possible problems. Hopefully, your experience will be ALL positive! |
It may be that, during recruitment, some commitments were made to you regarding what the mentoring program or the organization expect to provide you. Every organization and program is ALWAYS striving to live out in its daily practice what it's stated good intentions are. You should always assume the best, because most often, that is what people are trying to do. However, "striving to live out it's good intentions" suggests that there may be aspects of your experience as a protégé which are excellent and exciting, and other aspects which are less than what you expected.
| If the latter occurs, do not take it personally, as it more
about the organization, the program, or even your mentor than it is about you. If your experience as a protégé is not all you expected or not all you want it to be, YOU should assume a more proactive role to help make it what it needs to be. Use the notes and literature you saved (see "Recruitment" section above.) |
Here are a few things you might do:
Others could also become involved as well.
Therefore...
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There is one other issue contained within these kinds of concerns, and it must be surfaced and effectively dealt with here as well.
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YOU may be part of the problem. |
Typically, during recruitment as a protégé, you have been asked for information that would help the organization, and specifically the mentoring program leaders, to identify:
These and other areas should be or have been considered in matching you to your mentor. However, it is also very likely that your mentor does not possess all the qualities you sought or that the program sought.
Theoretically, your mentor would have professional and personal strengths in the areas in which you want or will need to grow.
In practice however, the people who should be mentors, are also some of the busiest and most involved people around. Also, for a wide variety of reasons, it may be a physical impossibility for one person to possess all that is needed to support you. That is not a comment on the scale of your needs so much as it may be about the current availability of people whose professional and personal lives are very complicated. It may also be a function of the size of an organization, numbers of persons at a location or in a department, or other factors, many of which may be unknown to you.
A mentoring team should be assigned when one person cannot be found with all the qualities that you will need. When this is done, usually one team member will know the specifics of the job assignment you have, while another may know more about local or departmental procedures, culture and traditions, etc. A manager may be viewed as a part of the mentoring team as well.
Of course when one mentor can be found, that is simpler and requires less coordination, than does mentoring by a team of people. However, when there is a team approach to mentoring, there still should be one "mentor of record" to ensure that your needs are appropriately met by the team.
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If some of these practices are not done in your case, you might be the very person to help your mentoring program realize what they need to do to better address protégé needs.
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Ideally, as soon as it is known that you will need a mentor, a mentor should be assigned and you should be alerted to that mentor's name and contact information, such as phone number, e-mail, etc. This needs to be done right away as you will have questions, doubts, concerns, and needs right away from the start of your new assignment. You deserve support from the start as well.
As soon as your mentor is assigned, he/she should be prompted by the program (letter? e-mail? phone call?) to try to contact you, introduce him/herself, and make an acquaintance with you. At that time you should have an opportunity to get answers to any questions you may have, so prepare a list in advance of that contact if you can.
Also, you should ask the mentor if he/she has any questions of you. The point is to briefly get to know a few things about each other.
Next, you should set a time and place where you will meet to begin your work as a mentoring pair.
Finally, you should ask if there is anything you can do now to be better prepared when it all begins. Not only will this help you to BE better prepared when you start work, but it demonstrates to the mentor that you want to learn, want to be prepared, and are anxious to get started. All of these create a good first impression.
| But what if no mentor calls? 1. Ask your mentoring program contact person (who sent you information that you were assigned a mentor?) how much time to expect it may take for the mentor to contact you. 2. Wait a reasonable time for a contact. The person may be out of town or unavailable for any number of reasons. 1-2 weeks is reasonable. 3. Check your e-mail, voice mail, and other message possibilities. Even if the mentor is out of town, he/she may try to reach you some way other than a phone call. 4. If still no message or call, ask your mentoring program contact person for contact information for the mentor, and take the initiative by contacting the mentor yourself. |
The definition that I offer for "orientation" is the advance preparation, training, and support needed to succeed the FIRST TIME in some process that is yet to occur.
There are two ways to think about orientation that this definition should help us understand:
Typically, orientation is a short-to-long series of a few days to as much as several weeks in which an organization prepares new employees for working successfully in the organization. The list of the potential content addressed in such "up front" orientation is very, very long.
No doubt, you WANT to learn everything that others feel is important for you to know. The problem is that YOU are ALSO anxious to get started with DOING the work. However, sometimes so much information ABOUT the work is "front-loaded" as to be overwhelming and wasteful. There IS a limit to what we can absorb when it is before we have actually begun to work.
This is why mentoring programs also need to provide the second form of on-going orientation.
However, such an approach to orientation needs to be reconsidered if it is all that an organization provides. Although orienting new hires at that point is very important, it is NOT something that should only occur when an employee is new to the organization.
If the organization has any expectations for high levels of employee performance and success, then EVERY employee deserves both INITIAL and ON-GOING orientation and support for ANY new experience they are about to enter.
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If the program is NOT providing you either initial or on-going orientation, it is probably not productive to point it out to them. However, they CAN be "hooked" to rethink their approach because they DO care about you and your success.
Whatever you do, do not just accept what IS when it ought to be better. |
As a protégé working in a mentoring relationship, it will frequently be your mentor who would need to provide the on-going orientation YOU deserve. This would typically happen when you are approaching a new responsibility assignment, or some other significant change in your work or career, or even just a new step in a process in which you are engaged.
The problem is that mentors know a great deal about such situations and processes, do NOT need to be oriented themselves, and may not consciously realize that YOU DON'T know something that you need to know, and that you DO need orientation to be successful. Specifically, such orientation may need to be several weeks in advance of the actual event to allow you to use the knowledge gained in orientation in your work and to adequately prepare for the event.
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If you are concerned about an upcoming step in a process or event, and the mentor has not done what you hoped he/she would to adequately prepare you for that event, become proactive. ASK the mentor a few questions about what is coming. ASK to be oriented to the anticipated event, especially ask how to prepare to go through it successfully the first time. By doing so in that exact way, you are:
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The complexity and nature of your previous experience and of any training you have received should determine how long your orientation needs to be. In other words, if you already know some information, the orientation leaders need to know that and NOT try to teach it to you again! That means that the program should conduct a formal written needs assessment to learn greater detail about you as a person, your background and experience.
If you receive some form of needs assessment from the program, be sure to complete it carefully, write additional notes as needed to explain your responses, and return it in a timely manner.
| If you realize that you have needs and wishes relative to the
mentoring program, or relative to your success in your position or the position for
which you are being prepared, but that their needs assessment does not provide
a way to tell them these things, ADD a page of notes that does tell them what
your needs are. Then ask that they contact you regarding ways in which these needs will be addressed, either by the mentoring program, the mentor, or by accessing other resources yourself. |
Then, they SHOULD use that data to try to build on your prior knowledge, experience, and skills as a strength and as a resource.
However, there are times when the appropriate needs assessment of new employees is NOT done. Then program planners do not know the prior experience and strengths of those they intend to prepare, and protégé needs are ignored.
Sometimes organizations use the research literature to decide what employee needs might be and as a basis for program planning. That's always a good start but they also need LOCAL assessment of needs of the actual people who are supposed to benefit from the orientation. If that is the case for your program, you should...
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1. Write a nice letter to the program indicating what you understand good practice to be and your surprise that your needs were not assessed as a basis for program planning to address your needs. 2. Also SEND them a page of notes that tells them what you believe your needs are. 3. Then ask that they contact you regarding ways in which these needs will be addressed, either by the mentoring program, the mentor, or by accessing other resources yourself. Your goals are two:
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Each person has a "style" which they have developed. Your style is a mix of natural tendencies toward certain approaches to life and of approaches which you have learned and adopted to make human relationships both more productive and more comfortable. Life experiences "teach" us that we need to strike a balance between being "task-oriented" and "relationship oriented". Exactly HOW YOU have individually settled this issue and struck a balance is your personal style.
Your mentor has a personal style as well, and it significantly effects how (s)he will behave as a mentor. Part of the mentor's style is his/her ability to adapt their natural responses when the situation requires something other than their natural "style". In that sense, an important part of our style is our "style flexibility" and our ability to recognize WHEN we need to be more flexible and adjust our style. When a person is not very flexible and may not even realize that they need to change their approach, we describe them as "rigid". Mentors and protégés need to be flexible.
I say that because, as the protégé learns, incorporates new practices, and applies that learning to work, (s)he becomes more professionally aware, mature, and sophisticated. The mentoring process is developmental because protégés are developing persons and ever changing and evolving. Interestingly, when mentors are inflexible, their natural mentoring style may be just what is needed at some steps in the process, because their natural style is appropriate to the protégé's current level of need and development. But as the protégé develops, the mentor's style will need to shift if the mentor's assistance is to remain appropriate to the new needs and level of maturity of the protégé. Therein lies the mentor's opportunities to facilitate greatly accelerated professional growth, AND sadly, therein lies the potential for problems.
As the reader can see, the issue of the mentor's style and style flexibility are very important to the success of the mentoring process and pair. That is why this author has made discovery and mastery of mentoring styles so crucial an element in the mentor training he leads. The focus is to increase the mentor's style awareness and flexibility.
I use a customized Mentoring Styles Self-Assessment to help mentors see their natural strengths and tendencies as mentors and to gain insights into their ability to flexibly adjust how they approach mentoring to remain appropriate and helpful. The result of doing that assessment is a set of 1-2 mentoring growth goals. The assessment shows mentors exactly what they need to do more often or to stay sensitive to when they need to do something. It also helps mentors to know when they may do something too often or too strongly and may need to be cautious not to take to an extreme, what may be a very good quality.
There are four mentor styles and ALL 4 are fine if the mentor's timing is right.
There are four mentoring styles which align to the four stages of the mentoring process. ALL FOUR mentoring styles are needed at some point in that process. This means that styles are not right or wrong in themselves, but only right if the mentor does them when they are needed by the protégé, and only wrong if the mentor asserts a particular style at an inappropriate time. This occurs when a mentor's style or tendency is one approach, which may work well at some points in the process, but which may be inappropriate to the portage's needs at other times as the protégé grows.
Here is how mentoring styles SHOULD work.
Initially, the mentor & protégé work together, at the same time as they explore each others' experiences and view points. From these initial activities, mentors can begin to place a protégé somewhere on a developmental continuum. The location on that continuum suggests potential strengths, prior knowledge, and areas remaining for learning and growth. Given that assessment, a mentor can accurately predict a protégé's needs and then choose appropriate activities & an appropriate mentoring style to use to address those needs.
The four mentoring styles form the fundamental elements of the mentoring process. (See the section further below on the Mentoring Process for more details related to mentoring styles in use.) This Mentoring Process framework is a "generic" agenda on which the mentor can rely when there is no specific need that YOU can specifically identify as a focus for mentoring assistance. This framework helps mentors check the appropriateness of their actions, monitor protégé development, encourage increased protégé responsibility and ownership, and to plan later shifts in their mentoring style.
THAT'S the THEORY. Whether YOUR mentor understands and has mastered these ideas is a very good question. However, the biggest question is what YOU might do if your mentor has NO understanding of mentoring styles.
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1. You can print out and share the above information on mentoring styles with your mentor. The best way to do so is to highlight, copy, and then paste the info into a word processing document. Cut the text off just BEFORE the above statement, "THAT'S the THEORY." 2. You could use the same approach, but instead of, or in addition to sharing it with your mentor, you can also share it with the mentoring program leader. 3. A less forceful way would be to share the IDEAS without presenting a "hard copy", but this approach makes YOU look more "smart" and so, it is also riskier. The focus should NOT be on you. If you do any of these, be careful HOW you do it, as the goals are to educate them and to help them use the information to your advantage. Do NOT make them feel criticized and defensive. You don't want to be perceived as a "know-it-all". In fact, you want to be seen as an avid learner, always seeking to be better, to grow, and become more effective. Therefore, you could say something like...
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One of the first tasks you will need to do as a mentoring pair is to "negotiate" some formal or informal agreement regarding the commitments you make to each other for your work together as mentor and protégé.
Since there are a number of items to cover, this author tends toward the more formal process. Such a process also tends to ensure less conflicts later on, and more clarity about the shared nature of your work as a mentoring pair.
Expect that there will be a check list or two that you and your mentor need to work through together After all, you have lots to learn and very little time in which to learn it.
Also expect that there may be some form of a mentoring program needs assessment for you to complete. If there is, this is a good sign as it indicates the program's desire to address your specific needs in its planning for orientation, training, and other program support activities. Complete the needs assessment candidly and honestly, and return it right away.
Consider discussion on some logistical details like how late it is still OK to call your mentor for help or guidance, or how late can your mentor call you?
To what extent do either of you prefer to use e-mail, and then, reach the necessary agreement of how often, even about what time will each of your check your e-mail for messages.
As you begin your work assignment, allow the mentor (or ask if it is not offered) to spend some time with you and consider giving you:
Ask the mentor to walk you through some of the initial work processes you will need to learn. Try to get some experience with the work as soon as possible, even if it is a simulated experience or role play you do with the mentor.
| The KEY word in the above section is "ASK". Print out the above information, check it off as the mentor or the mentoring program do these things, and ASK for the information for any items they do not do. |
If your mentor is an experienced and well trained mentor, your first month of working together will be packed with learning and help for you.
If your mentor is a new mentor or experienced but not well trained or prepared for the role by the mentoring program, then you will still learn a lot, but probably the process will be more spotty or inconsistent. Some days you may end up feeling great and some parts of the process you might feel are not as useful.
Either way, the best advice I can offer for this first month or so is as follows:
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This is why it is often so important during the first few weeks for you to be a very good listener to your mentor, and to defer to the mentor's advice on most of what you discuss. The mentor knows this tricky "one right answer" stuff and you don't. You need to learn it fast. Learning it from someone else is faster and it helps you avoid trial and error learning, the slowest and most painful way to learn.
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An important resource for you to read is located on this web site and is titled "Dealing with a Mentor-Protege MISmatch". It is written to an audience of mentor program leaders, not for protégés, but you can see, on reading it, what is of value for you. That page represents best practices for this problem, but it may be that your mentor and your mentoring program do not know any or all of these best practices. In that case, here's what I recommend you could do if you and your mentor are having problems getting along.
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1. First, YOU and your MENTOR should both read and then discuss the page titled "Find a Fit or Make It Work? Critical Attributes of the Mentor-Protege Relationship". It explains the OPPORTUNITIES provided to you BECAUSE of differences you may have between yourself and your mentor. 2. Talk with your mentor (subtly) about:
3. See if you both can work together to define the areas in which you are a good "fit". 4. Discuss areas of diversity in which you must both come to value each other's differences and figure out how those differences could make you stronger as a pair. 5. If that discussion fails to resolve mismatch problems, talk with your mentor and see if you can both agree on what needs to happen next. 6. Then, talk with your mentoring program coordinator and seek that person's intervention and advice, then follow it as well as you can. 7. Only ask for the match to be dissolved and a different mentor assigned as a last resort. However, that last step IS ALWAYS an option. |
Often the difference in whether we learn from an experience or not is whether a climate of trust exists. If we work in a supportive, low-risk environment where we can experiment, where we have access to feedback that is positive, and where we have trustworthy people who care about us and our learning, that is a climate in which learning will flourish. YOU and your mentor need to discuss these elements and work together to BUILD such a mentoring relationship over time.
Here is why this relationship is so crucial.
The most essential element in a strong mentor-protege relationship is the element of TRUST. Trust is something that must be earned over an extended time. It cannot just be given to another person. When a mentoring relationship is just getting started, there may be little or no trust established yet, and so there may be little or no risk taking and trying of new strategies or learning of new skills. That's because few of us are willing to take risks in front of others UNTIL we feel we can PREDICT how they will respond, and we know we will LIKE how they respond.
That is primarily why, at the start of a mentoring process we make a commitment to each other to maintain 100% confidentiality for the discussions we have as mentor and protégé. We also extend each other forgiveness and recognize the need for ourselves to be forgiven when we each make mistakes. These strategies help us work together and accomplish important tasks WHILE we are building trust into our relationship.
So, how do we build a trusting mentor-protege relationship?
Developing effective relationships is like creating and building an emotional bank account. In the beginning, when there is a zero "balance" we must:
1. consciously "invest" in each other's success and well being
2. be very careful how we "spend our emotional money".
Therefore, we do at least three things, like...
By an "honest mistake", I mean one that does not make me feel used or
manipulated. In other words, a mistake makes a "bank account withdrawal"
at a time when we haven't yet built up the account balance (i.e. the relationship)
and might "empty out the account", endangering or even ending the relationship.
Later on, when our account "balance" is built up, due to "investing"
in each other over time, the bigger "balance" in the account means that
when a mistake is made, it does not place the whole relationship at risk,
because the "withdrawal" does not empty the account down to zero.
At that time, we can feel free to negotiate and agree to take greater risks together
for the sake of growth, such as:
We can do these things then because we have built trust in our relationship.
| A CAUTION - When you and your mentor feel that your relationship has become sufficiently trusting to take some bigger risks and vary from the general mentoring guidelines for confidentiality, etc. BE CAREFUL to consciously decide if the variation is a one time event (so the old rules remain after that one time) or if the rules you have agreed to change are changed for all time. Don't assume or ignore doing this. Explicitly clarify what any change in expectations means for the future of your conversations and the relationship. |
Want More Info on Trust Building?
Strategy - Signal Your Partner When You Are Taking a Risk
When we take the risk of being vulnerable, we should not just hope that good things will result. We should also send a signal to the other person to:
The real point of sending the signal is to explicitly clarify that the other person has choices they need to consciously make. By doing so, we hope to reinforce their making a conscious choice which creates potential for change.
Without such a signal, the other person may just be reacting without carefully
thinking. The problem is that allows more unconscious decisions and leads
to routine rather than the desired reactions. That can sometimes cause or
set up negative reactions, even when the other person wants to be only positive.
Here are some examples of this phenomena.
1. A protégé tries something new or asks a risky question, but does
not signal the mentor about the risk taking. Two reactions can occur.
2. A protégé tries something new or asks a risky question, and does signal the mentor about the risk taking.
| The more explicitly a protégé signals and states an expectation for
support, the more likely you are of receiving the needed support and positive mentor
response. Further, the more consistent you are in doing this, the more the
mentor can learn to respond appropriately, eventually (perhaps) without your needing
to signal for it. If consistent signaling DOES NOT WORK, explain to your mentor exactly what you are doing when you signal, WHY you are doing it, and what you hope the mentor's response will be. Give the mentor a copy of this section IF your relationship is strong and the mentor is confident. If not the case, just talk through what you are doing and ask the mentor to watch for your signals more carefully. |
Most protégés enter into a mentoring relationship expecting to learn a great deal from the mentor, and understanding that doing so means deferring, at least early in the process, to the considerable experience of the mentor. Bringing that mind set into mentoring is SO helpful because it means the protégé will not have to learn everything by trial and error, which really is the "hard" way.
However, there are frequently mentors whom I talk with, whose protégés seem to learn everything the hard way, and who don't benefit from their mentor's experience. This often happens for more than one reason.
1. Protégés who are younger and new to a situation may not realize all that they need to learn.
In mentoring, we often describe this as "They don't know what they don't know." If you'd like to read more about this amazing but common phenomena, click here. To read a protégé's poem about this topic, click here.
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If YOU are struggling more than your think you should:
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2. There are forces which shape a protégé's decisions (and a mentor's too!) but you may not be aware of these forces:
Do any of these factors "ring a bell" and seem to describe YOU? If that describes YOUR personal reality, what should you do?
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The best advice is to: 1. Lay out those exact same factors for your mentor.
2. Then, invite the mentor to describe the same things for their mentoring
3. Finally, discuss how you both will need to behave in the mentoring relationship to AVOID the worst case scenario and CREATE the best case scenario. Look for common ground as well as individual steps you can take as mentor or protégé. 4. Set a goal for your work together and plan exactly how you will work toward attaining that goal. 5. Give yourselves a specific date for a few of the things you will do to achieve your joint goal and then work to implement those steps. |
Rather than repeat a lot of information here, I am just going to provide links to help you locate all the resources available on the IMA web site that are appropriate for protégés to consider.
The mentoring process is closely integrated with the concept of mentoring styles. Therefore, if you have not read the section on "Your Mentor's Style", I would strongly recommend that you do so first, then come back here to review this section.
Let's use the language of the four mentoring styles to describe the process of mentoring over time, including what the mentor must do, and how the protégé develops greater experience and gradually assumes independence, and self-confidence.
Simply put, the mentor is the more proactive and the protégé the more reactive, deferring to the mentor's experience and knowledge. (See the chart below.)
Essentially, the mentor is still somewhat proactive regarding some tasks, but feeling much less ownership in those areas where the protégé has learned what to do and is demonstrating skill and wisdom in doing it well. In those areas, the protégé is becoming much more proactive and defers less to the mentor's experience and guidance. In newer areas and tasks, the protégé still relies on the mentor's knowledge base and experience as a guide and so, is less proactive and more reactive.
Using the above mentoring styles and process information, we can demonstrate graphically what the overall mentoring process, ideally, and generally is like.
TRANSITIONS IN MENTORING RESPONSIBILITY
|
MENTORING TASK FOCUS >> |
PROACTIVE |
RESPONSIVE |
| MENTORING STYLES \/ | ||
| 1. TELL | MENTOR > |
< PROTÉGÉ |
| 2. SELL - EXPLAIN |
> MENTOR > |
< PROTÉGÉ < |
| 3. COLLABORATE |
> MENTOR |
& PROTÉGÉ < |
| 4. DELEGATE |
PROTÉGÉ < |
> MENTOR |
The Specific and General Mentoring Process Agendas
The Mentoring Process is governed by the transitions through which you, the protégé evolve as you learn and grow. That means that YOUR NEEDS and your READINESS FOR LEARNING and new challenges are what should be the focus of the mentoring agenda. I call that the "specific mentoring agenda", meaning it is dictated by the level of development of one specific protégé.
In contrast, there is a "general mentoring agenda" which is a generic, all-purpose process which describes what the most common protégé developmental sequence is like across time.
Mentors need to be fully prepared by a quality mentor training so they can facilitate BOTH the specific and general mentoring processes. Therefore, a mentor must:
But, humans don't always follow the ideal models we use to try to describe what "most people experience". That's why mentor must also...
Previous sections of "The Protégé's Experience" have already addressed many of the more challenging areas that can occur in a mentoring relationship. Rather than requiring you so search throughout all this information to find this advice, here ere are links to those other ideas in one place, all stated as questions:
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But what can a protégé do if the specific problem YOU have is not mentioned above?
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Early in the mentoring process, lots of the protégé's questions and the areas in which they must learn, tend to be "one right answer" kinds of information. These "answers" are sometimes provided during orientation meetings, either to a whole group if there is one, or individually by your mentor. Examples of this kind of information include:
Later on in the mentoring process, the protégé's questions and what they need to learn are more sophisticated and focused on more complex issues. These are typically topics which require experience and the good judgment that comes from experience to develop effective answers. The problem with that is that the good judgment has to come from making bad judgments, discovering what does NOT work, and learning to do something more effective next time.
For you, as a protégé, your CHOICE is whether these mistakes, which are so necessary to learning...
The later in the mentoring process it is and the more subtle the problems and their solutions are, the truer the above statement becomes! That is so because the trickier issues require a solid knowledge of effective professional practice which has to be accumulated and mastered over considerable time. In mentoring we describe this kind of information as "TACIT knowledge", which is information we might label "know HOW" rather than "know ABOUT". Tacit knowledge is the harder knowledge to share.
However, this challenge is not solved as obviously as it may seem. This is true because, at this later mentoring stage, mentor's may not realize how much they know themselves and that all of that knowledge has to gradually be learned by you, and probably from them. It's as if the mentor knows it all and has to consciously recall that others may not know what mentors take for granted.
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If your mentor does not realize there are things you need to learn, but YOU know what those things are, or can at least ask questions about those things, then YOUR inquiries can prompt the mentor into discussions of these important but more complex topics. In other words, the mentoring pair can be effective and accomplish it's goals IF at least ONE of the partners understands what is needed and seeks to make happen what is needed, AND if the other partner defers to the issues to first person has raised.
That "switch" is what makes the later stages of mentoring so tricky. It requires the partners to evolve and switch from roles which worked earlier, but which may not be so effective later. And THAT is why an effective training for mentors in the generic mentoring process is so crucial. It's easier to make these tricky adjustments when we can anticipate what's ahead and consciously realize the challenges we must address. If your mentor does not have the preparation to anticipate these changes and is not responding to your needs as you feel is best, what can YOU do? 1. One rather subtle solution is to ask questions which will prompt the mentor to consciously talk through what they may know about the mentoring process and how things change as they progress. 2. If that doesn't help, it is more than likely a lack in the mentor's training, not a bad mentor. In that case, you need to be less subtle. You should just revert to the advice at the top of this box and ASK for what you feel you need. |
Managers and mentors must give protégés the time to do the vast amount of learning that is required.
Managers and protégés need to allow mentors the time they need to accomplish this gradual "teaching" the protégé of these more complex level skills and situational, more tacit, levels of professional knowledge. The more subtle, situational, and rich the knowledge that's needed, the more time it can take to learn it, and the harder it is to teach it to others.
In fact, one of the best ways to teach this high level information is allowing the protégé to "shadow" the mentor during work so the protégé can observe WHAT the mentor does, HOW it is done, and ask questions on the spot about WHY it is done that way.
Rest assured, mentoring is a powerful support for protégé learning and it WILL ACCELERATE the protégé's learning curve, even if the mentor is less experienced as a mentor. And if the mentor IS experienced in the mentoring process, the protégé's growth can be sped up so it takes about one third the normal time needed for equivalent growth by an unsupported employee. In other words, effective mentoring can help a protégé attain in one year what supervisors say normally takes unsupported employees three years. That's worth showing considerable patience and working to create!
Therefore, BE patient, BUT also work consistently, using the suggestions offered here, to help your mentor achieve it.
If the mentoring process described several other places is used by the mentor, and if the mentor is aware of and can adapt their personal mentoring style, then as the protégé grows, the mentoring will remain appropriate at each stage. A natural process of delegating and intentionally "backing out" of the mentoring relationship will occur and the gradual ending of the relationship will just happen.
However, some mentors are reluctant to "let go" and allow the protégé to assume full independence.
Some protégés are reluctant to allow mentors to step back from mentoring, and want to remain in the relationship they have come to value so much.
When that happens, a strategy or two may be required to help the natural ending of the process to occur. If that is your situation, click here for more detailed assistance from a page titled "Issues Involved in Ending a Mentoring Relationship".
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