Mentoring is a support function which can be found in many environments, for example in a workplace, at a school or university, and in sports clubs and teams. It is however very important to distinguish between coaching and mentoring. According to the Management Mentors website (www.management-mentors.com) coaching is about specific functions whereas mentoring is a more personal relationship focussing on development as a whole. Another important distinction is that a mentor should not be someone's direct supervisor whereas a coach could well be. This is important as a mentor should be able to listen and give advice impartially and the mentee will also be more relaxed and open when not dealing with their direct supervisor. A mentor could therefore be a manager from a different department, someone outwith the direct chain of command. In actual fact, being mentored by an equal, in the form of peer mentoring, seems to have become a very popular trend. It was within this framework that I acted as a mentor for Nicky during her module Customised Study for Blended and Online Education.
Although I had no previous experience of mentoring I have had training in coaching in the past so I was therefore familiar with the basic concept. Kay and Hind's "A practical guide to mentoring" (2009) also provided a very clear overview of the subject which helped a great deal. As Nicky and I would never meet face-to-face during the trimester we had to carry out online or e-mentoring - mentoring which is conducted totally in a virtual environment. For our purposes we chose to experiement with a few virtual meeting products but ultimately decided that Skype was the simplest and most effective way to meet. Or initial plan was to meet online once a week on a Sunday evening and talk or chat for about 30 minutes. If more time was required and our schedules allowed the meetings could be extended. Sometimes the real mentoring was finished within the 30 minutes and the remaining time was filled with smalltalk or other non-mentoring related course activities.
In order to ensure some structure in the mentoring sessions, and at Keith's suggestion, I decided to mentor using Sir John Whitmore's GROW model. In this model GROW stands for Goal, Reality, Options and Will (or Wrap-up). This technique can be used either within one individual mentoring session or across several sessions. The first point, Goal, involves defining the objectives or topics the mentee wants to discuss. In the second stage, Reality, the present situation should be discussed. In the third stage, Options, the mentor and mentee should explore possible choices or options to address this situation and in the fourth stage, Will, the mentor and mentee should agree on the next steps to be taken. This is a very clear and straightforward model which is easy to follow. In reality however, my mentoring sessions sometimes were more unstructured and took more the form of a casual conversation over a virtual cup of tea. This however did not always seem to be a problem for Nicky and also added a missing social element to this trimester. I will leave it up to Nicky to confirm if the sessions did help but I certainly learnt from them and I hope they helped her too.
Sources:
Kay, D. & Hind, R. (2009). A Practical guide to mentoring: How to help others achieve their goals. (4th edition). Oxford: How To Books.
http://www.management-mentors.com/resources/corporate-mentoring-programs-faqs/ [accessed 28.04.2012]
http://www.msue.msu.edu/objects/content_revision/download.cfm/item_id.378012/workspace_id.298457/GROW_Model_?_Four-Step_Questioning_Approach_.pdf/ [accessed 28.04.2012]
http://www2.warwick.ac.uk/study/cll/othercourses/wmcett/resources/practitionerarea/mentoring/planning/grow/ [accessed 28.04.2012]
