Lis Merrick explores the mentor’s confidence and how to develop it
Mentors should feel self-assurance and confidence in their role. However, there is also a balance between healthy confidence as a mentor and those mentors who spend most of the mentoring session talking about themselves.
How does low confidence arise?
Some mentors feels ill-prepared when they begin formal mentoring. Generally this is because they thought their training was too brief and are new to it or they have had insufficient practice in a safe environment before commencing.
Sometimes individuals are chosen for their value set or leadership ability and can feel a bit of a role model fraud to their mentee. This occurred in a programme I worked on in a City bank, where some mentors were unsure about representing the organisation’s values. Many felt they didn’t live up to this. Certainly Imposter Syndrome is on the rise in organisational mentors, with less time being invested in mentor training.
Building a mentor’s confidence
The simplest way to build confidence is to supply adequate training for all new mentors and ensure their knowledge continues to develop over the programme life. Supervision is key – to reinforce the educative aspect, develop quality control and offer an ethical safety net. However, there are quick interventions that can help a mentor feel good about their ability and skills:
- Help the mentor create a robust mentoring agreement with the mentee This should be discussed in the first meeting and needs to cover openness and honesty in the relationship and giving each other regular feedback.
- Ensure the mentor knows how to structure a mentoring conversation so they don’t feel there are awkward moments:
– A check in at the beginning to re-establish rapport and help the mentee set the agenda
– Knowledge of process models to facilitate the main part of the conversation
– A check-out at the end where they can review how the meeting went and the main learning and action points. The mentor can ask for feedback on their process and discuss where they are in the mentoring life cycle.
- The mentor should have knowledge of tools and techniques that can help them in different situations to support the mentee Often there isn’t time in initial training to cover this. However, most programmes offer supplementary reading materials or videos, or signpost groups to materials as part of supervision.
- If in doubt, help your mentors feel comfortable simply by listening!
A word of caution
Remember, mentors tend to have an underlying ‘expert’ power dimension with respect to their mentee, plus knowledge, wisdom and experience that their mentees don’t have. Generally, the mentee is in a state of transition/change and the mentor may have a more secure base. This can cause inequalities in the relationship. You might also get a bit of transference creeping in.
A few mentors can become overconfident in their approach and get involved for some ‘ego stroking’ or because they want to share wisdom and knowledge for the wrong reasons. Good supervision should weed out these individuals.
So, to conclude, preparation and ongoing supervision will maintain that delicate confidence balance and ensure mentors are working from a healthy place of confidence.
- Next issue: How to design an emergency response mentoring programme
- Lis Merrick is a consultant specialising in mentoring programme design and development. She welcomes correspondence on anything to do with mentoring. Contact: Lismerrick@coachmentoring.co.uk