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Presenter

Steve Evans MTS, TMCCNavy Personnel Command

Workforce Development and Training Branch

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The Elements of Mentoring

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Our Source…

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Adapted from the book “The Elements of

Mentoring”By W. Brad Johnson

and Charles R. RidleyUsed by Permission

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Introduction

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Topic Pg

Where We Are…The Mentoring Process 03

What Excellent Mentors Do - Matters of Skill 04

Traits of Excellent Mentors - Matters of Skill and Personality 27

Arranging the Mentor/Protégé Relationship - Matters of Beginning 39

Know Thyself as a Mentor - Matters of Integrity 51

When Things Go Wrong…Matters of Restoration 63

Welcoming Change and Saying Goodbye – Matters of Closure 70

4

One Day of Training Combined

Future

Individual Development

Plan

Care and Feeding

Mentor Certification

Mentoring Instruction

Mentoring 101 Training

AM

Protégé Training

PM

• In Place• 4 hr Class Offered• 1-0n-1 Assistance

• In Place• Signed 16 APR 09

• In Place• Overview of Instruction• Communication Skills

• In Place• MBTI Validation and

Matching• Protégé Responsibilities

• Course Complete and Active• Generational Differences• Mentor Responsibilities• On-Line Tools• Open book test on Instruction

(20 Questions)

• Monthly Brown Bags – In Place 4th WED Quarterly (FEB-MAY-AUG-OCT)

• Continuing Training – @ Mentoring Brown Bag

• Command-Wide E-Mail Recognizing Certified Mentors

Where We Are – The Mentoring Process

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What Excellent

Mentors DoMatters of Skill

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Select Your Protégé Carefully…

Identify the personnel qualities, interests, and aspirations of protégés that make them a good “match” before committing to a mentorship.

Commit to mentor only after some period of informal work and interaction with a prospective protégé.

Remain vigilant to symptoms of mentor burnout. Honestly consider your motivation for mentoring

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Be There… Be accessible to protégés. Make time and interaction with protégés a

priority. Refuse to allow other commitments to intrude on

designated mentoring time.

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Know Your Protégés… Deliberately study and learn about your protégés. Identify and label protégés’ talents and strengths and

then communicate these insights to them. Acknowledge protégé fears and comparative

weaknesses without allowing them to distract or overwhelm.

Look for patterns in protégés that occur across various settings, relationships, and type of assignment.

Above all, spend time with protégés and understand mentoring as a relationship.

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Expect Excellence (and Nothing Less)

Set high expectations and communicate them clearly

Model the same excellence you expect from protégés

Demonstrate confidence in the protégé’s capacity to meet your expectations

Never endorse perfection as a legitimate goal

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Affirm, Affirm, Affirm…Then Affirm Some More Always and unconditionally affirm your protégé as a

person of great value. Regularly affirm your protégés professional

performance. Instill confidence in your protégés to help them

overcome self-doubt and the “imposter syndrome.” Seek to discern and then endorse your protégé’s life and

career “dream.” Then work diligently to help him or her achieve it.

Gently shed light on unrealistic aspirations and find ways to affirm protégés even in the face of short-term failure.

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Provide Sponsorship… Discern your protégé’s unique career dream. Consider which opportunities (e.g., committees,

organizations, projects, and professional experiences) would best prepare the protégé to achieve this dream.

Use your status and influence to help the protégé gain entry to groups and experiences that could be career enhancing.

Allow the protégé to serve as your emissary at times-shielded by your reflective power and functioning on your behalf.

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Be a Teacher and a Coach… Give direct and explicit instruction on the various

roles and functions required in your vocation. Intentionally demonstrate and describe complex

professional skills. Seize opportunities for training and instruction

through personal example and story-telling. Gradually decrease the amount of direct

teaching as a protégés develop and succeed.

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Encourage and Support Expect even the most talented and confident

protégé to benefit from encouragement and support.

Understand that while foundational to mentoring, encouragement and support are not easy to practice.

Seek opportunities to offer support praise, and encouragement.

Supportive mentors are genuine, consistent, warm, and accepting.

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Shape Behavior Using Reinforcement

Deliberately reinforce evidence of growth and improvement.

Remember: No two protégés begin at the same starting point.

Intentionally shape closer and closer approximations to the end goal.

Take time to discern what is most reinforcing for your protégé.

Beware the unintended consequences of punishment

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Offer Counsel in Difficult Times…

Be open to discussing and exploring protégé concerns and difficulties.

Actively listen, reflect feelings and clarify alternatives.

Offer unconditional acceptance and validate the protégé’s experience.

Accept your limitations; refer protégés to a professional when serious emotional disturbance emerges.

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Protect When Necessary… Accept the fact that protégés will occasionally

suffer career-inhibiting personal or political attacks. Respond expeditiously but calmly to unfair threats

or attacks against a protégé; avoid the appearance of rage or indignation.

Use protection sparingly; frequent intervention reduces mentor credibility.

Honestly consider protégé contributions to professional conflicts.

Never bully.

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Stimulate Growth…With Challenging Assignments Deliberately challenge protégés with demanding

assignments tailored to their abilities and performance thresholds.

Shape performance through successive approximations to the desired goal.

Avoid making demands that exceed protégé performance capacities.

Help protégés accept, tolerate, and effectively manage anxiety in the face of new challenges.

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Give Protégés Exposure…Promote Their Availibility Draw attention to protégés by highlighting their

achievements to both your colleagues and superiors.

Create opportunities for protégé collaboration on high-visibility projects.

Promote positive protégé interface with influential stakeholders.

Ensure that protégé successes and achievements are made visible within the organization.

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Nurture Creativity… Encourage innovative thought and creative

problem solving in protégées. Provide a safe haven for creative protégés to

develop and experiment with novel approaches. Reinforce creativity while tempering over-

expansiveness with reality and pragmatics. Model innovation and creative excitement for

protégés.

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Provide Correction…Even When Its Painful Confront self-defeating, unprofessional, or career-

inhibiting protégé behavior. Temper confrontation with realistic affirmation-

especially early on. Quickly address unethical, unprofessional, and illegal

protégé behavior. Kindly confront personal distress and sabotaging

work habits without assuming a mental health practitioner role.

Recognize that appropriate confrontation builds trust.

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Give the Inside Scoop… Socialize protégés by teaching the what, how,

and whom of the organization. Use storytelling as a means of imparting

wisdom. Help develop the protégé’s insider

understanding of the organization and the profession.

Refuse to undermine colleagues by gossiping under the guise of socializing.

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Nurture Growth and Development…

Attend carefully to your protégé’s small gains and important milestones.

Narrate your observations of development and achievement.

Use these gains to highlight how far your protégé has traveled on the professional journey.

Understand that your affirmative narration will be quite meaningful to your protégé and that it will strengthen the mentorship bond.

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Self Disclose When Necessary…

Disclose salient personal experiences as a means of teaching, reassuring, and connecting with protégés.

Model humility and self-exploration through appropriate self-disclosure.

Offer protégés a model of coping, not a model of mastery.

Appreciate the power of self-disclosure to heighten intimacy.

Self-disclose only for the benefit of your protégé.

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Accept Increasing Friendship…and Mutuality Accept and encourage gradually increasing

friendship and collegiality with protégés. Recognize that protégés experience increasing

mutuality as professionally validating. Communicate enjoyment of your increasing

friendship with protégés. Respect protégé preferences for traditional

hierarchical relationships; never force mutuality or familiarity.

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Teach Faceting… Model a multifaceted lifestyle and refuse to make work

your only life commitment. Inquire as to your protégé’s family, leisure, and

community connections and reinforce these important life involvements.

Remind protégés that they are more than the sum off their job titles and do not reinforce exclusive devotion to work.

Encourage protégés to frequently experiment with new specialties and innovations-increasing their career faceting and marketability.

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Be an Intentional Model… Invite protégés to participate in various aspects of your

professional life. Understand that some professional tasks only can be

learned through direct observation. Accept the idealized influence you hold in relation to

your protégés and use it to model excellence and ethical conduct.

Allow protégés to observe at first, but require increasing participation and engagement.

Model humility, health, and integration of personal and professional roles.

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Display Dependability… Make following through with commitments to

your protégé a top priority. Provide your protégé with expeditious turn-

around and feedback when reviewing his or her work.

Work at emotional stability and consistency. Don’t overreact.

Refuse to cut-corners when it comes to allocating time to your protégé.

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Traits of Excellent Mentors

Matters of Skill and Personality

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Exude Warmth… Recognize warmth as a necessary condition for

maximal protégé growth and development. Radiate warmth with an attitude of friendliness,

approachability, and kindness. Radiate warmth with an attitude of friendliness,

approachability, and kindness. Consistently offer verbal and nonverbal

expressions of sincere interest, thorough acceptance, and genuine positive regard.

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Listen Actively Drop other activities when protégés want to talk;

give them your undivided attention. Listen to identify both overt and covert meanings

in your protégé’s communication. Ensure congruence between your verbal and

nonverbal demeanor; communicate genuine interest and consistent attention.

Reflect (accurately paraphrase) your protégé’s primary concerns.

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Show Unconditional Regard… Regard your protégés as fundamentally and

unconditionally good and worthwhile. Demonstrate consistent acceptance, non-possessive

caring, and even prizing. Show unconditional positive regard even when

protégés fail. Demonstrate positive regard through commitment of

time and resources and efforts at genuine understanding.

Be nonjudgmental and understanding of protégé thoughts, feelings, and actions.

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Respect Privacy…Protect Confidentiality Avoid unnecessary intrusions into the personal

world of your protégés. Protect any information or disclosure shared by

a protégé in confidence. Discuss any limits on confidentiality early in the

mentorship. Exclude private information about a protégé from

any communication to others.

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Tolerate Idealization… Accept the fact that your protégé needs to

initially see you through idealized lenses. Tolerate idealization and adulation with grace

and humility. Remember that idealization turns to identification

and that identification is crucial for professional identity development.

As your protégé matures, he or she can see you in a more balanced realistic way.

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Embrace Humor… Laugh at yourself often as a means of modeling

humility and perspective. Use humor to help protégés take themselves

less seriously. Teach protégés to mix work and laughter. Avoid using humor to belittle protégés or

trivialize matters important to them.

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Do Not Expect Perfection… Expect excellence without perfection. Help protégés discern the dysfunctional

nature of perfectionistic attitudes and beliefs. Avoid subtle or nonverbal as well as overt

messages that perfection is required. Serve as an intentional and transparent

model of imperfect excellence. Value Progress OVER Perfection!

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Attend to Interpersonal Cues…

Pay attention to your own emotional life and demonstrate emotional self-awareness.

Model a range of appropriate human emotions without expressing emotion impulsively or destructively.

Work at accurate understandings of emotional states of protégés.

Use kindness, interpersonal savvy, and emotional awareness to build professional relationships. These will benefit your protégés.

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Be Trustworthy… Demonstrate trustworthiness with consistency,

reliability, and integrity. Keep promises to protégés. Adhere to professional and organizational codes. Honestly confront problems, mistakes, and

shortcomings. Ensure congruence in word and deed. Maintain confidence and protect protégé

disclosures.

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Respect Values… Understand that the “pressure” is on your protégé

to shift values in the direction of your own. Do not pretend to be value “neutral.”

Acknowledge your core beliefs and values. Respect your protégé’s values and work to avoid

direct values conversion through coercion or propagandizing.

Acknowledge and discuss value differences when appropriate.

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Do Not Stoop to Jealousy… Remember that jealousy undermines mentoring

and nearly always signals your own fear and insecurity.

Use jealous feelings to re-orient to the purpose of mentoring: the protégé’s development,

Encourage protégé autonomy and celebrate protégé success.

Encourage secondary mentorships to maximize protégé growth.

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Arranging the Mentor/Protégé

RelationshipMatters of Beginning

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Carefully Consider the “Match”… Choose protégés selectively from among those juniors

you come to know informally. Consider important matching variables when choosing

protégés. Remember that personality, communication style,

personal values, and career interests are especially salient matching variables.

Find protégés who share your level of ambition and drive. Balance matching concerns with efforts to ensure that

potential protégés from underrepresented groups have a reasonable probability of becoming your protégé.

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Clarify Expectations… Explicitly discuss and clarify your expectations of

protégés. Ask protégés to clarify their expectations for

mentoring and for you as a mentor. Revisit expectations periodically, both to update

them and to evaluate the extent to which they are being met.

Be particularly careful to clarify expectations about frequency of contact, mentor roles and protégé performance.

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Establish Measurable Goals… Guide your protégés through the process of personal and

career goal setting. Connect the protégé’s dream to specific short- and long-

term goals. Ensure that protégé goals are specific, time determined,

realistic, and, as much as possible, measurable. Be patient and Socratic in helping protégés to articulate

career goals. Collaborate with your protégé on goals for the mentorship

itself. Judge the value of a goal by its importance, not by whether

it is easily measurable.

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Define Relationship Boundaries…

Respect relationship boundaries between you and your protégé.

Clarify appropriate contexts for interaction, any limits on confidentiality, and rules regarding socializing outside of the work setting.

Avoid adding new roles (e.g., psychotherapy, business collaboration) to a mentorship.

Refuse to allow a mentorship to become romantic or sexual.

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Consider Protégé Relationship Styles... Remember that protégés bring their own

relationship style to the mentorship. Accept the fact that some protégés will be quite

receptive to a relationship while others will be avoidant or ambivalent.

Let the protégé’s style guide your approach to mentoring.

Recognize that secure protégés will benefit from career and relational functions while avoidant protégés will only accept career functions.

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Discuss Potential Benefits…And Risks Be open and transparent about the benefits and

risks of being a mentor. Discuss the likely benefits of mentoring for the

protégé. Discuss the potential risks of mentoring for the

protégé. Use the ORM Model

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Be sensitive to Gender… Consider the effects of gender, particularly sex

differences, on the mentorship. Discuss gender differences openly and ask your

protégé how gender impacts his or her work experience.

Recognize the risk of romantic/sexual feelings in cross-sex mentorships, and take steps to avoid inappropriate behavior with protégés.

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Be sensitive to Race and Ethnicity…

Deliberately mentor junior minority professionals. Discuss racial differences openly throughout the

mentorship. Work to understand the experience and unique

mentoring needs of minority group protégés. Recognize that same-race minority mentorships

may invite greater organizational scrutiny for both parties.

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Foster Mentoring “Constellations”…

Encourage your protégés to develop networks of career helpers.

Refuse to become jealous or territorial of protégés other mentoring connections.

Appreciate the added value that composite mentoring brings to protégés.

Encourage protégés to seek mentors with diverse backgrounds and experience.

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Plan for Change at the Outset Understand that mentorships travel through

predictable phases including initiation, cultivation, separation, and redefinition.

Plan for and welcome growth in your protégé as well as transitions in the relationship.

Discuss relationship changes as they occur and find ways to recognize and honor them.

Accept the emotional side of mentorship separation and ending.

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Schedule Periodic Reviews…and Evaluations Develop a plan for periodic review and evaluation of

your mentorship. Work with your protégé to determine career goals and

mentorship expectations and ways to evaluate progress toward meeting each.

Review the mentorship more frequently at the outset and less frequently as the mentorship matures.

Use periodic evaluation to determine the direction mentoring should take.

Consider a strategy for evaluating your mentoring outcomes across protégés and over time.

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Know Thyself as a Mentor

Matters of Integrity

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Consider the Consequences… of Being a Mentor Recognize and accept the benefits of being a

mentor including extrinsic and intrinsic benefits. Recognize and accept the costs of being a

mentor including expenditures, potential for failure, and organizational scrutiny.

Remain vigilant to consequences on one’s relational life external to work.

Increase awareness of your motivations to mentor—including self-serving motivations.

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Practice Self Care… Care for protégés by first caring for yourself. Understand that protégés need a mentor who

models a responsible balance between personal and professional life.

Just say “no” to excessive demands at work. Follow through with commitments to family,

friends, and protégés. Model self-care overtly by taking time off and

limiting time devoted to work.

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Be Productive… Be active in your field and productive as a

professional. Remember that your protégé will benefit both

directly and vicariously when you model engagement and leadership in your profession.

Evaluate reasons for drops in your productivity and consider whether you are the best mentor for a potential protégé.

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Resist Cloning… Discover your protégé’s dreams and aspirations

and encourage these. Do not force protégés to conform to your ideal

career path. Recognize that efforts to “clone” protégés are

often subtle and insidious. Avoid exploiting protégés’ loyalty by coercing

them to conform to your values and beliefs.

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Make Sure YOU are Competent…

Work at developing your technical and relational mentoring skills.

Evaluate your own experience, expertise, and confidence level before serving as a mentor.

Understand that competent mentoring is more than the sum of its parts.

Accurately select and deliver specific mentoring skills at important junctures to benefit your protégé.

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Hold Yourself Accountable… Ensure that your behavior is characterized by

honesty, consistency, and integrity. Be accountable to protégés by honoring

commitments. Be accountable to protégés by routinely

conferring with at least one trusted colleague about your mentoring and your relationships with your protégés.

Avoid endangering protégé trust through dishonesty, incongruence, or exploitation.

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Respect the Power of Attraction… Accept attraction as a common and expected

phenomenon in well-matched mentorships. Maintain self-awareness regarding feelings of attraction

toward protégés. Seek out collegial consultation when attraction

threatens to undermine or negatively alter professional boundaries.

In most cases, do not disclose attraction to protégés. Remember that romantic involvement with a protégé

constitutes a breach of professional boundaries and will probably not help the protégé.

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Accept the Burden of Power… Accept the power you hold relative to your

protégé. Recognize that your protégé benefits from your

organizational power and credibility. Respect the power differential in the mentorship. Act solely for the benefit of your protégé. Use power to encourage, support, and bolster,

but never to exploit.

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Practice Humility… Practice humility through nondefensiveness and

transparency with respect to faults and weaknesses. Understand that by authentically admitting limitations,

you give your protégé permission to be human as well

Acclimate yourself to the idea of admitting mistakes and saying “I don’t know.”

Appreciate your own strengths and accomplishments while using them to promote your protégé, not gratify yourself.

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NEVER Exploit Proteges… Avoid taking unfair advantage of protégés. Recognize that protégés usually are vulnerable

to some extent and easily can become the victims of exploitation.

Be aware of both overt (e.g., sexual) and subtle (e.g., emotional, professional) temptations to exploit.

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Balance Advocacy with Gate Keeping… Recognize the tendency to become a biased

advocate for protégés. Balance obligations to protégés, the public, and

profession. Tell the truth in letters of recommendation and

other promotional efforts. Make constructive appraisals a routine element of

each mentorship. Accept that not every protégé will be a good fit

within your profession.

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When Things Go Wrong…

Matters of Restoration

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Above All, Do No Harm… Avoid harming your protégé either overtly or

subtly. Take responsibility for ensuring that the

mentorship benefits the protégé. Place your protégé’s developmental needs before

your own. Treat protégés with dignity, respect, and

compassion—even when they are disappointing. Protect your protégé while honoring obligations to

the organization and profession.

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Slow Down the Process Take time to cool off and reflect before

responding to problems or conflict with a protégé. Avoid provoking your protégé through angry

outbursts or acts of revenge. Refuse to use passive strategies (paralysis,

distancing, and appeasement) in the face of conflict.

Examine the sources of dysfunction including your contribution(s).Seek solutions that serve your protégé’s best interests.

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Tell the Truth… Do not withhold honest and constructive feedback. Raise relationship or performance concerns

immediately so they can be contained and addressed.

Be direct and forthright when confronting problems, recognizing that passivity and innuendo are destructive.

Plan feedback sessions carefully and always begin with the positive aspects of the protégé’s personhood and performance.

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Seek Consultations… Seek consultations from a trusted colleague when a

mentorship has become complicated, concerning, or conflicted.

Select a seasoned colleague with good judgment, ethical commitment, and track record of discretion.

Protect your protégé’s privacy and identity by masking identifying information.

Use consultation to formulate a protégé—oriented response.

Explore your own contributions to difficulties with protégés.

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Document Carefully… Document your mentorships carefully as a way of

ensuring good practice and protecting yourself and your protégés from subsequent misrepresentation of the relationship.

Practice terse record-keeping of protégé goals, expectations, achievements, and concerns.

Record instances of conflict or negative interactions as well as clear rationale and description of your response.

Document consultation and efforts to provide corrective feedback and restore the relationship.

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Dispute YOUR Irrational Thinking…

Recognize your irrational demands of protégés and evaluations of events.

Be alert to signs that you are harshly evaluating, exaggerating, or failing to tolerate frustration.

Actively dispute dysfunctional beliefs about protégés, yourself as mentor, and the ideal mentorship.

Disclose irrational thinking to protégés, laugh at yourself, and show protégés how you correct your own self-defeating thinking.

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Welcoming Change

and Saying

GoodbyeMatters of Closure

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Welcoming Change and Growth…

Accept the fact that good mentoring will ensure growth in your protégé and change in your relationship.

Recognize that development and independence in protégés requires you to tolerate some sadness and make adjustments.

Understand the common phases of mentorship development and how your protégé might need different things from you at each phase.

Narrate, welcome, and even highlight evidence of protégé independence.

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Accept Endings… Work hard at recognizing and accepting

mentorship transitions and endings. Allow yourself to accept and experience sadness

and loss when a particularly close mentorship becomes less active and requires redefinition.

Model acceptance of ending for protégés and initiate explicit discussions about how each party experiences relationship changes.

Reframe endings as inevitable and indicative of mentorship success.

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Find Helpful Ways to Say Goodbye…

Say goodbye to your protégé, and explicitly acknowledge the end of a mentorship.

Arrange a specific meeting or interaction for the purpose of saying good-bye and formally recognizing change in the relationship.

Provide your protégé with a personal narrative of the mentorship, including your feelings and thoughts about the protégé.

Be sure to acknowledge intangible gifts received and lessons learned from the protégé.

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Mentor as a Way of Life… Make mentoring a common component of your

ongoing life and work. Remember that if you are drawn to mentoring,

you probably have gifts in this area that will be best served by frequent use.

Recognize the rich rewards associated with mentoring, but take care to protect yourself from becoming overextended.

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