My Philosophy on Mentoring

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 January is National Mentoring Month and I thought I would share my mentoring philosophy. This is something that I discuss with each mentee, but also I use it to remind myself why I believe so strongly in mentoring.

I encourage everyone who is a mentor to write their philosophy down. It can be on a napkin, in a digital notebook, or a physical document. Regardless, take some time to think about what mentoring has meant to you and why you are a mentor. You may want to revise it periodically and update it -- after looking at mine (which is below), I should take my own advice! 

Please share your mentoring philosophy or those nuggets that you've gained from mentoring experiences. It will help us all be the best mentors we can be.

My Mentoring Philosophy

I believe that mentoring is an essential ingredient to successful career growth and development, at any stage of our journey. I am the product of having wonderful mentors and sounding boards throughout my career.

I see mentoring as a partnership, much like teaching. As a professor of Forensic Studies, I often find myself learning more and digging deeper based on questions student ask me…because I have to admit that I do not know all the answers. But together, we can learn them together. Insights and perspectives are unique and reflect the background and experiences of each individual; collectively, that wisdom can be translated into meaningful action!

Over the past two years, I have developed a structure for mentoring that uses a variety of tools to help the mentor and mentee reflect, ponder, grow, and discern a variety of options and interests. Any journey must start with a destination, and a map. Knowing your values in a key component to that, because your values help guide your own decisions. The better you know yourself, the better you can navigate the uncertain terrain. But the mentoring relationship helps give you the compass to help orient yourself for the journey and reflection.

Goal setting is a critical outgrowth of the self-reflection, because enables the journey to actually begin. Preparation is fundamental to any good plan and goal setting help create that space for the next phase of the journey. Once this goal setting occurs, the mentee can begin the process of working toward building knowledge, skill, experience, additional relationships, and application of whatever parts of growth they’ve honed in on.

The mentor is there to provide support, encouragement, and keep the train moving. The mentor is the signalman, helping to move the train toward the station, while the mentee is the engineer, totally in control of their own thoughts and actions.

The mentor also can provide resources, ideas, questions, and their own experience as a baseline to help the mentee. They can provide feedback, guidance, and even ask hard questions. Occasionally, the mentor needs to give “tough love” and really push the mentee’s notion of an issue, all with the fundamental interests and betterment of their growth and development in mind.

Mentoring is a joyful, life-giving experience for both. I enjoy the satisfaction at the end of six months and beyond, to see what has been accomplished. It is often a long road, and the mentoring process is like a gardening exercise: preparing the soil and planting the seeds that will grow and blossom with time, patience, water, and sunlight.


Photo: Amy Hirschi on Unsplash

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