Clear and Specific Feedback
One of the biggest issues in professional and workplace settings is the lack of quality and timely feedback. In the absence of feedback, people are unable to establish a shared reference point. In mentoring this common reference point is essential for shared learning to occur. Further, one of the main reasons mentees seek a mentor is that they expect mentors to give them clear and specific feedback. Most
seek advice and suggestions on what to do or say, depending on how they perceive the experience and wisdom of the mentor. The mentor should assist mentees gain a deeper insights into the situations that they raise to gain a more nuanced under- standing of them and also anything they can read in relation to the topic. Mentors need to be prepared for this and well-read in the areas they are going to advise or offer suggestions on.
Whether at work or in mentoring, a lack of feedback contributes to a negative experience as it heightens a sense of uncertainty and ambiguity. It also makes it impossible for people to work out what is going or to solve problems. Without feedback whether that be in the form of an answer to a question, unsolicited information, opinion or advice, people will speculate, act on misperception and distrust may set in. Most people have high demand for information and commu- nication. Even when this is forthcoming, it may not be readily understood or acted upon. To assure trust in the mentoring relationship, a mentor needs to provide prompt feedback even when there is nothing substantive to impart.
Linking Theory with Practice
Providing a superficial or definitive analysis of a situation needs to be supplemented by more contextualised and pragmatic thinking about it. Mentoring helps in the process of grounding information into the mentee’s own situation. Mentees expect mentors will be affirmative, supportive and confirmative, characteristics vital for the acquisition of new learnings particularly in emotionally challenging situations.
Full Engagement and Respect
The mentor’s support and encouragement are needed to maintain an appropriate level of motivation for mentees. Mentors need to appreciate that mentees are highly qualified and experienced and treat them accordingly regardless of any status or age differential between them.
Normalising
Mentees expect a lot from themselves too, and consequently, they appreciate mentor intervention to assist them in minimising the associated stresses and strains through, for example, normalising a reaction or phenomenon. Mentors can achieve this easily by through reflection and feedback to analyse what is happening, referring to their own experience or one they know about and assuring the mentee that this is a familiar, expected reaction in these situations.
Being given credit for positive actions, taking risks is also welcomed and experienced as affirming by mentees.
Critical Feedback
Giving critical feedback is tricky and mentees’ appetites for this will vary: some welcoming it, others being defensive and everything in between. This can be mediated by the nature of the relationship with the mentor: how much trust, support and interest in their success they feel. It can also be mediated by how the critique is
given, if mentors rarely give feedback at all (neither positive nor negative) and suddenly provide negative feedback or only focus on the positive aspects, it is unlikely to be viewed as credible and will be dismissed. A mentor may be perceived as superficial, disinterested and unconvincing to mentees.
Sustaining the Mentee
Mentees look forward to their“me-time”and want the experience to be a satisfying, learning one. This does not mean that mentors should shy away from challenging mentees, giving critical feedback, asking the unaskable questions nor agreeing with everything. A satisfying, learning relationship is one where there is value for the participants and their appetite for discovery is being satiated. Often during a mentoring conversation, mentees will no doubt experience frustration, annoyance or dislike what they are hearing. Mentors should not abandon their stance because if they do, it will undermine the relationship as well as the mentor’s credibility. It is important to sustain the mentee through any experience of discomfort not only to build their resilience but to use it as a window for their handling of negative feedback outside of mentoring. What both willfind is that this experience will be transformative and turn out be helpful and instructive sometime in the future.
Once mentoring is drawing to a close or completed, the next step for the mentee is to develop a picture of their career over the next few years, especially their next step. Once they have developed a mental picture, thefinal step is developing a plan for achieving their goals. Mentees should come away from mentoring with several outcomes including a better understanding of their
a. strengths and weaknesses as well as opportunities and threats
b. changes they wish to make in their future professional life and the reasons for this
c. new activities they will take on, and d. things they will avoid.
3.14.1 Expectations of the Mentor
It is important to understand from the mentor’s perspective that they do not have to be faultless—impossible to achieve in any case. Sometimes when a mentor falls short of the mentee’s expectations, this forces them to draw from their own personal resources tofind their own way through it. This experience can also be transfor- mative and turn out be helpful and instructive sometime in the future and ultimately be rewarding, building their confidence in so doing.
It is important that the mentor lets the mentee have some experience of dis- comfort in discovering new learnings and approaches—otherwise they will not. An example of this would be to guide a mentee through reflection withoutfilling in all the answers, even giving them “homework” to do and come back and report on
their progress. This approach builds resilience and confidence and permits them to experiment withfinding and scoping their own approach to resolving issues.
According to Schön (1987) this requires, among other things, becoming a reflected practitioner: “… a setting relatively low in risk, with access to coaches who initiate students into the…tradition of the calling and help them, by the right kind of telling”, to see on their own behalf and in their own way what they need most to see”(p. 17).
Ensure Active Engagement of the Mentee
What mentees expect and what they require is sometimes not identical (Jacobsen 2001). Another way of phrasing this is through Vygotsky’s term, the “zone of proximal development” (see Moore et al. (1997) for a discussion of the use of Vygotsky’s theories in supervision). Sometimes it is important for gaining confi- dence and learning for the mentee to be afforded the opportunity for initiating and structuring the mentoring conversations, in fact, it should rarely be otherwise unless the mentee is avoiding certain issues that have surfaced through reflection and feedback.
To have a positive mentoring experience, mentees need to be actively engaged in the process and“not dragging their feet”to the sessions by frequently cancelling them or not responding well in conversations. This does not mean that they need to be on top of it all but showing that they are doing their best.
Active engagement means taking responsibility for their own mentoring even if they have been conscripted through their organisation. Mentees need to decide the topic of focus, the issues they wish to work on, new learnings, appropriate preparation, focusing on the important aspects, instead of just turning up unpre- pared or letting the mentor comment on whatever they think is relevant.
It is important that the mentor checks for the mentee’s understanding of what is important or why certain questions are being asked or comments made. Where mentees feel the time with the mentor is too short, this is a good thing mostly.
Conversations by and large should not exceed about one hour so that the mentee uses the time judiciously and realises that no matter how much time they are allocated and how good their mentor is, they will always be left with questions hanging and unfinished business. This process mimics real situations, and assists the mentee prepare and organise themselves more effectively for meetings and similar.
Mentees at times expect to give feedback to mentors. If this is the case, it needs to be accepted and acknowledged in the manner in which it is provided. A mentor should never react defensively under any circumstance. Mentees need to be aware that mentors are only human and how to approach them so as to make the most of the relationship.
Role Modelling and the Parallel Process
The manner in which the mentor approached the mentee needs to be aligned to how they would want the mentee to approach others in their professional situations. Any advice or suggestions given must be modelled by the mentor during the mentoring
relationship otherwise their credibility will be undermined. For example, providing criticism to the mentee should be done in a way that the mentee could replicate it to another in a fairly equivalent situation e.g. their subordinate, peer or even super- visor. In so doing, the mentee will see how criticism can, in fact, be constructive.
The learning here can be demonstrated through reflection either during a mentoring conversation or setting it as“homework”for personal reflection for the mentee.