by LIS MERRICK
In the latest in a series of columns dedicated to mentoring, we examine what is involved in role model mentoring. This issue: Kick starting mentor/mentee rapport.
Matching a mentor role model and a mentee gains in power when the mentee gets creative
Formal mentoring is a powerful way of facilitating a developmental dialogue with a role model for individuals who normally wouldn’t have that access. Working with an inspirational, experienced mentor can develop the aspirations, confidence and wisdom of a mentee and
help them believe in their own abilities.
Role model mentors are used in many contexts, from working with school children and young offenders to the talent pipeline, and maternity and diversity programmes, particularly for gender.
When matching, it can prove impossible to find all the relevant characteristics in one role model. In some mentoring programmes, I recommend mentees have a learning network of individuals they can develop relationships with. It can be far more powerful to gather a network of people around the mentee, each possessing one or a few characteristics that they admire or aim to develop further.
Being creative around who you identify as a role model can also be necessary when you have a shortage of relevant ones. For instance, in programmes to support women, a ‘gender intelligent’ approach of using male role models with an empathetic mindset can sometimes be more effective that using a scarce female role model, who has ‘pulled the ladder up behind her’ or is affected by ‘Queen Bee Syndrome’. My experience demonstrates that male role models can be just as effective as female role models in this type of programme.
Where the mentee is using their mentor as a role model, they generally work through the following stages:
Acceptive Awareness A role model mentor is recognised as a source of learning, based on reputation or observation and is liked by the mentee, warts and all!
Admiration The mentee recognises values and behaviours their mentor appears to have mastered that they, too, would like to achieve.
Adaptation The conscious and unconscious process of change begins in order to adopt the role model mentor’s behaviours, ways of thinking and values.
Advancement The mentee starts to integrate the mentor’s behaviour/values with their own. They practise these new behaviours and observe the results. The mentee may step back and look at the mentor more critically.
Astute Awareness The mentee evaluates their mentor and develops their own values and models by selecting only behaviours/values that suit them the most. The mentee is then ready to move on.
Ensure mentors have reflected in advance where they can be effective role models and where not (useful to the mentee!) and that the mentees have thought about how a role model can support their development. This will really help ‘kick start’ the rapport-building stage of a more formally organised relationship.
Remember, these relationships happen in life all the time; formal mentoring can just make it easier for individuals to connect to effective role models without misunderstanding, awkwardness or accusations of nepotism.
Next issue: How to supervise and support
your mentors through the different phases
of a mentoring relationship
Lis Merrick is a consultant and visiting fellow of the Coaching and Mentoring Research Unit at Sheffield Business School.
She welcomes correspondence on anything to do with mentoring. Contact: Lismerrick@coach mentoring.co.uk
Coaching at Work, Volume 9, Issue 4