Mentoring Minutes. Robin Cox
in a safe and secure environment.
7. Rhodes, Stand by Me.
Week 2
Different mentoring roles
Do not train a child to learn by force or harshness; but direct them to it by what amuses their minds, so that you may be better able to discover with accuracy the peculiar bent of the genius in each.
—Plato
Day 1: Mentoring journey
Here are a few thoughts about what mentors can do in non-threatening ways to make sure that their mentee always feels safe and secure in their presence.
•Find out if your mentee has a pet. Share thoughts about which animals fascinate you. Take a walk around the local zoo if this is a practical option.
•If appropriate, go and pick strawberries (or another seasonal fruit) together. Encourage your mentee to bring a friend along.
•Show your mentee the website of your current, or former workplace (where applicable).
•Attend a local sports game or cultural event together.
•Make a genuine effort to understand your mentee’s social structures if your mentoring relationship is cross-cultural.
•Broaden your mentee’s knowledge and provide opportunities to explore new situations, places, and cultures.
Finally, a valuable tip, and one that is often overlooked by mentors, is to make brief notes when you arrive home after a meeting with your mentee. This is a way to prepare for your next meeting, and improves the early challenge of making a positive connection. Consider questions like these: What have you talked about? What concerns has your mentee expressed? What special achievements has your mentee shared with you? What progress can you see in your mentee’s personal development journey? What strengths does your mentee display? How are your mentee’s friends or parents influencing them? Which are the most important (or influential) relationships in your mentee’s life?
Mentoring tip: Celebrate your mentors and share your mentoring experiences with your mentee at every opportunity—powerful coaching.
Day 2: Mentoring research
Significant youth mentoring research has been carried out over the past thirty to forty years. The jury is still out on the effectiveness of different youth mentoring programs—community programs, school-based programs, programs for youth from high-risk environments, or with significant mental health issues.
Most of the credible research has been undertaken in America and Canada where youth mentoring is decades ahead of other countries. However, what I discovered when I visited twenty-two youth mentoring programs in these two countries on a Churchill Fellowship a few years ago, was that many programs offered fairly average mentor training to prepare their volunteer mentors for the mentoring journey.
Training is significant for mentors of adolescents to understand the world of youth—the different environments in which they live, how vulnerable they are, what makes them tick, how the brain develops, as well as explore effective strategies which lead to positive outcomes at the conclusion of a mentoring journey.
Research highlights how important it is for young people to experience a variety of challenges, and to have access to safe places with a network of caring and supportive people around them.
Well-known youth mentoring expert and researcher Professor Jean Rhodes8 has pointed out that once mentors and mentees have established an emotional bond—a key step in the mentoring journey—the mentors influence their mentees in three important ways.
1.Mentors enhance a mentee’s social skills and emotional wellbeing.
2.Mentors improve the cognitive skills of mentees through listening and effective communication.
3.Mentors serve as a role model, and an advocate for their mentee.
Mentoring tip: Never forget that you have something important to offer your mentee, which includes when and how to share life experiences.
Day 3: The variety of mentoring roles
A grave mistake many mentors make is to believe that they can rescue or save their mentees. This thinking negatively impacts the mentoring relationship from the first day of meeting.
A mentor is not a cool peer, a parole officer, a foster parent, a bank or ATM machine, a mentee’s scheming sidekick or private secretary, a taxi, parent, babysitter, disciplinarian, therapist, social worker, counsellor, or nag.
The positive, yet challenging and deeply satisfying mentor’s role, involves wearing a variety of hats at different times: a friend, a motivator, a guide, a coach, a tutor, a companion, a resource, a confidant, a listener, a non-judgmental cheerleader, a role model, a supporter, an advocate, a sounding board, a networker, or a negotiator. The role depends on what occurs in the mentee’s life at a particular time.
Former American Secretary of Education Richard Riley9 stated: “A mentor may be the person who makes the difference—by providing a role model for positive behaviors, like studying hard and staying away from trouble, by helping with academic work, by encouraging the student to take the right college-preparatory courses, or by providing extra moral support and encouragement—in short, by saying, ‘Yes, you can do it—you can achieve your dreams . . .’”
Mentoring tip: You have connected when your mentee becomes a valued friend.
Day 4: What a mentor does
Every mentoring relationship is different. Here are some examples of what might be involved in a youth mentoring relationship.
•Become a wise, trusted, and dependable friend.
•Have fun as you do something worthwhile.
•Focus on the needs of your mentees.
•Encourage a caring, supportive, non-judgmental relationship. The mentor is the consistent cheerleader, or the wise guide on the side.
•Encourage mentees to reach their potential.
•Recognize the difference between accepting mentees and approving of their behavior. For example, love and care for mentees, and disapprove of inappropriate behavior.
•Empower your mentees with key life skills.
•Express your thoughts and feelings positively and assertively.
•Learn to respond with kindness, compassion, and forgiveness where appropriate.
•Choose an appropriate time to talk about an issue and select your words carefully.
•Help to create a clear action plan with realistic, specific, and achievable goals that mentees own.
•Spend time with mentees and interact regularly in order to enhance their self-worth, pride, and confidence.
•Encourage mentees to be proactive and coach them how to carefully weigh up consequences before they take action.
Mentoring tip: Consistently accountable mentors build trust with their mentees and are positive role models.
Mentoring moments
When my wife and I became engaged, I received a note from Ken, a student I had coached sport, and mentored for a couple of years. It highlights the importance for mentors to enjoy the interactions with youth, and never to take oneself too seriously. Ken wrote:
Sincere congratulations. Fantastic news. Wow! This is just a short note to say well played, it must have been all the fitness training! . . . best wishes to the lucky lady.
When the moment comes
and you know it’s yours
take it
and