Mentoring: Three Essential Themes

Mentoring is a beautiful thing.

It is a process between people that spans cultures, faiths, genders and industries. It bridges generations. Think of someone who has played a positive part in your life, take twenty seconds and you’ll have a name. And probably a smile and a story too. Mentoring pervades the fabric of our lives.

Mentoring, at its best, offers a safe place in life’s storms, a signpost at life’s junctions, and a stretching process at life’s edges. Just think of it: Where would we be without the mechanism of mentoring to help us not just survive - but really thrive?

In 15 years of mentoring being my day-to-day work, I am convinced there is no neat and tidy formula to it. Mentoring is not like wrestling with trigonometry, thank goodness, but there are what I would call ‘themes’.

I was in the kitchen at the weekend thinking about this and here is what crossed my mind…here are three “essential themes” to assist in nudging the mentoring process along, useful for any and every mentoring encounter:

Actions Speak Loudest

The request from a mentor: “Tell me about what you’re doing...” can unlock many insights that will not be gleaned from asking someone how they are feeling. Sure, emotions matter, they are ‘our energy to act’, but feelings are like clouds that linger and drift and pass away. (Pause for effect). Actions, however, provide an X-ray of our beliefs. Find a habitual action, and ask someone “What matters to you about doing that?” and it will take you somewhere. The first theme of mentoring is that ACTIONS matter, revealing patterns and the structure of problems.

Thought-Addict

The second theme of mentoring is that of ADDICTIONS. They will be probably in the background somewhere, but these issues have to be, as it were, “in the mentoring script, not left as scenery”. There are addictions that we must be really explicit about, usually because people find certain things hard to say. A kind of ‘awkward moment’ descends at the point of speaking.  For example, life’s voids, disappointments and setbacks are often filled with certain behaviours that are usually not positive, healthy, nor admirable. Issues such as self-harm (biting, hair-pulling, cutting etc.), pornography, cannabis use and eating disorders are all, in my experience and research, more widespread than we’d like to think. (NB. Professional help and contact with a GP may be necessary in dealing with some of these issues).

A mentor has to show some courage. “Can I ask you some direct questions?” is a good opener. Yes there has to be trust, and sometimes launching out directly is exactly the way that trust can be established. Trust has to be born, and all birthing provides some discomfort.

But it’s not just the obvious and lesser-talked about addictions. There are also those of ‘What do you think about yourself when you look in the mirror?’ The way we define ourselves defines our lives. “What do you normally think about ‘you’? What effect does that have?” the mentor might say…

Attitudes of the Heart

Have you ever worked with someone with “an attitude-problem”? It’s one of those terms that we’re all supposed to know what it means but we’re not sure we do. Attitudes are a cluster of beliefs. Sorting out an attitude-problem is like straightening out spaghetti, tangled together in multiple places.

If Billy has an attitude problem about a teacher then asking Billy what he believes about the teacher, teaching, and his learning will be handy. The responses may uncover the roots of the attitude. Take one of Billy’s beliefs for starters, give it a shake. Throw in some doubt. “Do you really believe that? When did you decide that? How will that belief help you in the future, or not?”  Remember, any question can be asked in the presence of good rapport. The third theme of mentoring is that ATTITUDES, not simply aptitudes, influence the outcomes in our lives.

Actions. Addictions. Attitudes. I can’t give you the precise recipe but these three ingredients will give your mentoring conversations structure, focus and momentum. It will stretch the requirement of trust. It will connect you with reality. And reality, after all, is a theme that we can’t get away from, for it runs through all our stories.

Trigonometry on the other hand, well that's a different matter. Thank goodness.