Masterful Mentoring
sharing your wisdom for their success
Most of us can vividly recall someone who left a positive imprint on us, on our dreams, our directions or our work-lives – a teacher, coach, colleague, manager or friend, who acted as a mentor for us. Whatever your workplace or occupation, mentoring is meant to support peoples’ personal and professional development – their aspiration to be the best they can be at whatever they do. It’s also about being the best ‘self’ we can be too.
What is mentoring?...
There’s so much discrepancy among various commentators on what it is or isn’t. Even more on how mentoring differs (if it does) from coaching. It seems like a pretty pointless pursuit, especially as the literature’s so at odds over what distinguishes one from the other. There’s so many contradictions, overlaps. Who cares? Does it really matter?
DETE's definition in their Performance Mentoring Handbook (p2) pretty much clears up any confusion for me, even if it does leave one definitionally disadvantaged: "Mentors play many roles and at times, they can be coach, counsellor and trainer.”
The defining feature of a mentoring relationship is that a more senior and experienced person like you, decides to devote time to conversations that help someone maybe more junior, and probably less experienced, achieve their personal, professional and pedagogical goals, at the same time as developing as a person.
Like their coaching counterparts, masterful mentors use specific skills, processes and tools to shape their approach and contribute to successful mentoring outcomes.
We’re here to mentor. So, let’s get on with it. And if you happen to find yourself slipping into a bit of coaching along the way (which you may because they overlap) who cares, as long we’re getting good outcomes that will lead to even better performance and success in the future.
Purpose and Profile:
The purpose of the Masterful Mentoring program and it’s accompanying guide, is to provide you with models, frameworks, tools and actions you can use to map-out and manage your mentorships in a way that makes the most of this mutual learning opportunity.
As well as a few tips, along the way, you may pick up a bit of background on roles, capabilities, attributes and conditions for good mentoring. General aims are to make mentoring a mutually enriching learning experience and help harvest the potential and encourage the growth of colleagues around you by:
- Clarifying your mentoring role in the context of your experience, culture, and ethical operating principles
- Using the 7Cs-Mentoring Model to work out what steps to take and tools to use
- Providing supporting tools and tips to extend your current mentor capabilities
- Reviewing mentoring skill areas like conversation, relationships, guiding, feedback
- Discussing ways to keep people engaged and sustain the mentoring process
- Putting mentoring into action – guiding others from aspirations to goals and plans
- Sharing your experiences of mentoring and coaching with others in the group
- Planning personal approaches to move into your mentoring role at Meridan
Mentoring Benefits
Mentoring makes moments where both of you can take some reflective time-out space from a hectic schedule and pause to reflect, think together and share insights, ideas, experiences and sentiments. The satisfaction of knowing that they have made a difference to someone else.
Evidence shows that mentoring and coaching both significantly improve productivity, relationships and the way people ‘warm-up’ to their jobs, whether it’s a classroom or a construction site.
- Performance improvement and role achievement
- Focus on authenticity and frank feedback most of us crave
- More proficient pedagogy skills and classroom competence
- Builds trust and a channel for appreciation and recognition
- A way to recognise aspirations, strengths, development needs and staff potential
- Empowers by helping people handle their own personal and teaching challenges
- Accountability, self-growth, self-responsibility – treats others as self-governing adults
- Better interpersonal skills – increased personal mastery and self-awareness
- Opportunities to challenge and be challenged – improves mental habits of agility
- Correcting excessive or dysfunctional behaviours and lessening impact on others
- Cultivates a culture of open and constructive conversation and frank feedback
- Opens communication channels and connects people across the school
- Creates a collegial school culture and new possibilities for action and collective thinking
Masterful Mentoring - what we cover
Over 2 very full days (or 3 by in-house arrangement) we delve into the capabilities and context of leadership mentor and explore ways you can use our 7 C’s Mentoring Model as a guide to help you take on, adapt and/or become more comfortable with this special support role.
A preview of what we cover in Masterful Mentoring...
DAY 1: Scaffolding and Stages
Mentor’s role, 7Cs Model, mentoring capabilities, getting started, making relationships and conversations
- How mentoring fits in our coaching context
- Mental models of mentoring – what it means
- Shared anxieties we hold about mentoring
- 7Cs Mentoring Model – stages and steps
- Mentoring attribute and capabilities
- Getting Started – Purpose, Relations, Goals
- Constructive conditions: safety and respect
- Personal connection: rapport, trust, respect
- Mentoring as an extended conversation
- Listening, Questioning and Reflecting
- Mentoring prac sessions and feedback
- Mentoring success and failure factors
- Pedagogical principles & mentoring values
DAY 2: Mentoring Micro-Skills
More practice with a range of mentoring tools for different contexts and stages in the
mentoring cycle…
- Focusing, steering, guiding and advice-giving
- Thinking coaching: Mental modelling
- Mentoring in the context of the 5 Disciplines
- Challenging Thinking: art of mental modelling
- Self-analysis, inquiry and mindfulness
- Giving feedback: practices and touchy topics
- Problem-solving and solution-finding
- Mentoring with Emotional Intelligence
- Managing emotions and self-awareness
- Overcoming learning barriers and blocks
- Commitment, accountability & application
- Developing Mentoring Action Plans (MAPs)
- Mentoring Scorecard: self-assess & goal set
About the Guide
The structure of the workshop and it’s accompany guide is based loosely on the 7Cs Mentoring Model. This model provides the scaffolding to plan your approach. It’s a road-map of stages and milestones you’ll work through with the person you’re mentoring.
The Guide has 6 parts that correspond to the Sessions we cover in our workshop...
Mentoring Roles, Models & Attributes
What’s involved in start-up (Stage 1 in the 7Cs Model) It also covers central roles Mentors play; capabilities and attributes and different personal styles of mentoring
Mentoring Relationships
Is about relationship- building – creating a safe, connective climate and right conditions to support mentoring (Stage 2 in the 7Cs Model). It includes getting-acquainted, personal profiling, resonance, respect, and getting relations off on a steady foot
Mentoring Conversations
Covers “Clarifying” from our 7Cs Model. It highlights the crucial, ongoing role constructive conversations play in the mentoring process and has an array of tools on dialogue, listening, questioning, reflecting and feedback
Purpose & Personal Mastery
Covers “Clarifying” from our 7Cs Model. It highlights the crucial, ongoing role constructive conversations play in the mentoring process and has an array of tools on dialogue, listening, questioning, reflecting and feedback
Mentoring with Emotional Intelligence
Builds on Part 4, exploring the crucial role Emotional Self-Awareness and Self-Management play in achieving mentoring results that matter to us and how Mentors help people succeed by overcoming emotional blocks
Challenging Mental Models
Is about “Challenging” unhelpful thinking or behaviour – tackling hard topics like hold-backs, barriers, learning blocks (including difficult mentoring moments). It ends with “Completing” the last stage in our Model with action learning try-outs
More Themes for Learning
- Coaching & Mentoring
- Conversational Mastery
- Facilitation Skills
- Culture & Change
- Learning to Lead
- Building Better Teams
Reading about Mentoring...
For more on Mentoring and Leadership see our range of Articles, FactFiles and seasonal e-zine Newsletters and recommended Sites & Readings — all available for free download to read and share with colleagues and friends.
Upcoming Courses & Events
Find out what public programs are currently on offer for 2019. If you’d like to arrange an In-House event tailored to suit your needs, get in touch below.
