Mentors can profile their characteristics to be relevant to mentoring
Understanding taken-for-granted aspects of work is key to good mentoring
Progressive focusing can help with working out how to mentor
Learning outcomes
At the end of this part of the course you should be able to:
identify some of the strengths and weaknesses of your own mentoring
identify some taken-for-granted aspects of work practice at your place of work
use progressive focusing to help you to develop your mentoring skills.
Now complete the following activity.
Activity: Talking about performance (spend 10 minutes on this activity)
Think back over the past few days or weeks and make a list of opinions expressed by experienced colleagues about the performance of less experienced colleagues (including trainees/students on placements, if you have them).
These opinions could be just passing remarks or perhaps accounts of practice incidents. For ideas on this click on the pictures below to view how a variety of professionals responded.
How does this compare with your own experience as a mentor? The views on screen cover a broad range of ideas as being relevant to mentoring:
the relationship between theory and practice
distance from real situations
professional conduct
differential capacities to learn from experience
how work conditions affect what mentoring is possible
responses to poor performance.
There seem to be unspoken rules about what a good mentee is. For one person it is someone who doesn't ask too many questions. For someone else it is willingness to ask questions.
This course uses such comments as data. It is very hands-on and experiential. You are the main resource and you build up data through a good many learning activities focused on mentoring. Through the use of a wiki your experience and that of others become data for comparison and reflection.
