Mentoring

Meaning of mentoring:-

"Mentoring is to support and encourage people to manage their own learning in order
that they may maximise their potential, develop their skills, improve their performance
and become the person they want to be." Eric Parsloe, The Oxford School of Coaching
& Mentoring

Mentoring is a powerful personal development and empowerment tool. It is an effective

way of helping people to progress in their careers and is becoming increasing popular as
its potential is realised. It is a partnership between two people (mentor and mentee)
normally working in a similar field or sharing similar experiences. It is a helpful
relationship based upon mutual trust and respect.

A mentor is a guide who can help the mentee to find the right direction and who can help
them to develop solutions to career issues. Mentors rely upon having had similar
experiences to gain an empathy with the mentee and an understanding of their issues.
Mentoring provides the mentee with an opportunity to think about career options and
progress.

A mentor should help the mentee to believe in herself and boost her confidence. A
mentor should ask questions and challenge, while providing guidance and
encouragement. Mentoring allows the mentee to explore new ideas in confidence. It is a
chance to look more closely at yourself, your issues, opportunities and what you want in
life. Mentoring is about becoming more self aware, taking responsibility for your life and
directing your life in the direction you decide, rather than leaving it to chance.

Mentoring has been defined in many different ways but it's basically a system of semi-
structured guidance whereby one person shares their knowledge, skills and experience to
assist others to progress in their own lives and careers. Mentors need to be readily
accessible and prepared to offer help as the need arises — within agreed bounds.

Mentors very often have their own mentors, and in turn their mentees might wish to ‘put
something back’ and become mentors themselves—it's a chain for ‘passing on’ good
practice so that the benefits can be widely spread.

Mentoring is rather more than ‘giving advice’, or passing on what your experience was in
a particular area or situation. It's about motivating and empowering the other person to
identify their own issues and goals, and helping them to find ways of resolving or
reaching them — not by doing it for them, or expecting them to ‘do it the way I did it’,
but by understanding and respecting different ways of working.

Mentoring is not counselling or therapy — though the mentor may help the mentee to
access more specialised avenues of help if it becomes apparent that this would be the best
way forward.

What's in it for you?

As mentee
Being able to change/achieve your goals more quickly and effectively than
working alone.
Building a network of expertise to draw on can benefit both yourself and others.
As mentor
Mentoring is voluntary but extremely rewarding, and can benefit your own skills
development and career progression
You need to be the sort of person who wants others to succeed, and have or can
develop the skills needed to support them (see What makes a good mentor?).

The term ‘ mentoring’ is interpreted in different ways, and is often used interchangeably
with ‘coaching’. Both can be about sharing particular areas of expertise and knowledge
that the mentee needs; as well as about developing the individual whether or not they
work in the same field. The two ‘processes’ can take place in the same session. For
simplicity's sake, we use here the term ‘ mentoring’ to cover all the processes involved in
supporting the individual.
Within the context of Cambridge University, we identify these types of mentoring:

 Mentoring for newly appointed staff

 Peer mentoring
 Developmental mentoring
 External coaching partnerships

Types of mentoring
One-to-one mentoring

This consists of usually one but sometimes more than one mentee to each mentor, with
each mentoring relationship existing independently.

Group mentoring (or mentoring circles)

This typically consists of a group of several mentees and mentors, with the ratio of one
mentor for every two to three mentees, but no individual mentor being allocated to a
mentee.

The advantages of group mentoring are:

 efficient use of mentors, with a higher ratio of mentees to mentors

 the mentees in the group can build a rapport and integrate with colleagues
 the mentees can receive multiple sources of feedback

However, group mentoring has several disadvantages:

 some people do not work well in a group environment

 there may be concerns about confidentiality
 the mentee has less or possibly no one-on-one contact with a mentor

Group mentoring has to be more structured than one-to-one mentoring as scheduling is

necessary in order to accommodate everyone.