Self-mentoring can help us navigate in any waters as an invisible leader, explains Dr Marsha L Carr
“I want to thank my parents for giving me confidence disproportionate to my looks and abilities, which is what all parents should do”
Tina Fey on receiving an Emmy for Best Actress, 2008
The Story
After serving for 30 years in public and private education, with the last decade as a public school superintendent in the US, I was ready for a change.
I worked a minimum of 80 hours per week to ensure my success, which included many public engagements that absorbed my weekends. I lived for my job. There was literally no time for anything outside of this routine.
As my employment contract ended, I was ready for a new job that included a decrease in working hours, less politics and included rewards and incentives.
After reading a Forbes magazine 2014 internet poll rating college professor as the least stressful employment position in the US, I decided on higher education. I packed up and moved.
Happy to find a sanctuary from the public eye as an administrator, I wanted obscurity in my new environment. I wanted to be inconspicuous – an invisible leader. I was so ready for this new adventure that I cast aside all my years of leadership experience and saw my future only in a positive light, neglecting to recognise the imposing dark clouds that loomed in the distance.
Upon my arrival, I was greeted with smiles and warm welcomes and quickly assigned a mentor. My mentor, by all standards, was exceptional as a decorated sage with an expert track record in publishing, speaking, teaching and research. He was funny and personable.
Despite my mentor’s exceptional qualifications and my past leadership experience, there was a chasm that could not be bridged. As talented as my mentor was, he had been in higher education his entire career and I came from a different world, one that essentially spoke a different language. The challenge, at times, felt insurmountable.
To compound the situation, I recognised shortly after my arrival that two existing factions within our small department were in silent war. One faction hired me. This angered the other faction, who then, before my arrival, attempted to thwart my final employment. As each barrier was exposed, I wanted to become less and less confident in reaction to the turmoil in my surroundings. I was suddenly alone in a foreign land.
I was reminded of the scene in the movie, Titantic, when Leonardo DiCaprio was holding on to the floating headboard that kept Kate Winslet adrift and safe from the freezing waters, but would inevitably contribute to his death. I was his character, Jack Dawson, and my demise was imminent. To have any chance of survival, I would have to find my own headboard if I were to persevere.
Self-mentoring, like a phoenix from the ashes, was born of despair and soon was a lifeline for others enduring similar situations.
Self-Mentoring Levels
Self-mentoring is a journey of discovery that you progress through in four levels: Self-awareness; self-development; self-reflection and self-monitoring. Completing each level is an individualised process akin to Judo level advancement based on belt colours. The factors that determine your progress depend on your personal motivation, time devotion, practice, dedication and development of a viable plan. A more detailed overview of the process through each of the levels is apparent in the flow chart in Figure 1. This chart depicts all four levels as a continuous process.
Figure 1: The four levels of self-mentoring as a continuous process
During the Self-awareness level, I assessed the skills I needed to be successful and called on my strengths. What skills would benefit me the most and what were the impediments? How would I compensate for any deficits? This was critical to my success. While writing came easy, research was new to me and was going to be my challenge.
I looked beyond my oppressing walls, established an expectation for my first year’s growth and called on my prior experiences to formalise a plan. I would write a minimum of two papers to be accepted for publication during my first year.
I collected and analysed data about my efforts for refinement of goal. I discovered university services and attended training during the year. I read books and searched for publications that modelled papers akin to my needs. Thus, the Self-development level emerged.
During the Self-reflection level, to battle my inadequacies in research, I spent the year establishing an external network and resource chain to help me navigate within the new environment that was foreign to my leadership training. Not only did I receive feedback on my papers, but also learned the expectations for publication.
I spent as many hours reflecting on my research and direction as I did in the company of others who provided different perspectives and shared their wisdom. I soon realised I had the skills to manoeuvre within my environment and manage my personal growth as a member of faculty.
At the end of the first year, I asked myself one question representational of the Self-monitoring level: Have I embedded this skill or do I need continual work?
Self-mentoring grew from a seed of necessity – my passion to succeed. My first presentation on self-mentoring was so well-received that I began presenting and sharing my journey with others who were piqued with curiosity. I realised I was not alone.
There were countless individuals with similar stories who felt that self-mentoring could be the headboard that Jack Dawson had needed for survival. Could I transfer this process to others?
Studies from the Field
I conducted a pilot in a local, interested school district. This first study focused on a small group of volunteer teachers. The group spent a year learning about self-mentoring and implementing it under my tutelage. In turn, I was permitted to collect data, analyse the results and determine if self-mentoring was an efficacious practice. The results of the study were startling, even to me, suggesting that self-mentoring increased confidence and augmented self-efficacy among teachers in and out of the classroom.
Additional studies immediately followed. Each study over the next three years revealed the same results. Self-mentors demonstrated increased confidence and an increased self-efficacy in leadership ability.
From the studies, I found a voice for self-mentoring. A self-mentor is an individual of any age, profession, gender, race, or ability – YOU – willing to initiate and accept responsibility for self-development by devoting time to navigate within the culture of the environment in order to make the most of the opportunity to strengthen competencies needed to enhance job performance and career progression.
Often those involved in self-mentoring are able to employ techniques or strategies to improve their performance merely by devoting less time to work and eliminating burnout. When faculty at a university explored self-mentoring, the practice shifted the focus from others’ needs to their own – often neglected in institutes of higher learning. She explains:
“I think it was the coming together of the feeling of being overwhelmed in a new role, some of the reading that I did that [was] recommended … we are so focused on mentoring other people and I feel I’m decent at it … I have a history of advising students and advising patients, but I really never thought of advising myself.
I … looked for mentoring from other people until I realised you know. I think it also came in my personal life at a time when because of certain things that were going on I was focusing more on my own needs and setting boundaries and setting limits and focusing on what makes me happy. So it happened to come at a time when I think I really needed it.”
All the self-mentors were able to reflect on the experience and see the value in their efforts, as they share:
“For some people it’s going to be difficult at first. Because they don’t like to necessarily reflect on possible weaknesses. But by really looking at your weaknesses they become your strengths. So I just encourage people to go ahead and try and jump into it head first, and not be too difficult on yourself because everyone has things they can improve upon.”
Self-mentoring is not always isolated to the one behaviour you want to observe. Often, as many of the self-mentors learned, observing one behaviour caused them to notice another that also needed to be addressed. It was a chain reaction, as a teacher shares:
“I noticed one of the things I wanted was when I started [to] do more facilitating and less lecturing. So I think initially that helped with that. As it went on week after week, I would find some other facet I needed to work on – like I was reading too fast or I was moving too much. Or I wasn’t calling on enough students. So it was good to work on what I had in mind, but it was also good to pinpoint areas that weren’t cognisant of what I was doing.”
After Level 2 training, a district teacher in a second-year session shared how she began measuring a strategy for
her classroom:
“I started charting with my class that had the most behavioural issues and staying on task. I would chart every time someone got off task and what we and they were doing to get off task to see if I could find a pattern for what was happening.”
I often see self-mentoring sharing a greater similarity with coaching and mentoring – a little more coaching than mentoring. A student once explained to me quite persuasively: “You must be proficient at both mentoring and coaching to self-mentor.”
I cannot say I ever considered mentoring and coaching as precursors to self-mentoring, but I did find the discovery interesting. While I continue to embrace mentoring and coaching throughout my career, I now also rely equally on self-mentoring. After all, you are your own best mentor as I believe it is “your life and you lead”.