Mentoring 101
Ambitious professionals who are new to their career or field—including emerging museum professionals—can almost always benefit from some form of mentoring relationship. The most productive mentoring relationships are often based on a covenant, or agreement, between the mentor and mentee that both will be purposeful and engaged in their ongoing relationship.
Based on comments from renowned personnel and management consultant Wendy Luke, we’ve unpacked the tenants of productive and meaningful mentoring below.
The Mentee
A successful mentee is one who wants to learn, grow and take charge of his/her career. Mentees must bring to the table:
• Receptivity – A willingness to self-disclose, ask for help, solicit new ideas, try new ways of doing things and go beyond their comfort zones.
• Self-management – A sense of responsibility for career decisions and for driving the mentoring relationship.
• Self-awareness – An understanding of their own strengths and weaknesses, and a willingness to engage in self-assessment.
• Growth orientation – A deep-set investment in personal improvement.
• Resilience – The strength to make mistakes, pick themselves up, brush themselves off and forge ahead.
• Learning focus – An interest in identifying and learning from the root causes of problems, rather than just addressing symptoms.
The mentor-mentee partnership is a collaborative, reciprocal relationship that must be mutually satisfying. Mentees must be proactive to receive the greatest benefit from a mentoring relationship. It is the mentee who determines the type and amount of guidance he/she needs and who should take the initiative to ask for it.
Selecting a Mentor
Selecting a mentor is a thoughtful exercise that should take into consideration both the mentee’s needs and what the mentor may stand to gain from the relationship.
When seeking a mentor, choose someone who:
• You respect (and know why you respect them)
• You can learn from
• Has strengths that you would like to develop
Mentors don't necessarily need to be in your institution—or even in your field—as long as they possess these key qualities. Also remember that, in today’s busy world, a great deal of mentoring occurs by e-mail and phone, so you may also want to seek a mentor who is comfortable with such methods of exchange.
Goals for the Relationship
Mentoring may take several forms over time. In addition, the type of help a mentee needs will likely change as his or her work and life experience expands.
At the outset, a mentee may be looking for:
• Help achieving a development plan
• Opportunities to strengthen skills and gain technical knowledge
• Insights into institutional culture
• Options for future career steps
• Understanding of behaviors that are rewarded or discouraged
• Increased self-awareness
Over time a mentee may be looking for introduction to higher-level contacts and networks, advice about specific career choices and situations or general support.
What Mentors Can Offer
Mentors are personal and professional resources that can offer guidance and support based on their own career and life experiences, such as:
• Job or career-related coaching and counseling
• Lessons learned from personal experiences
• Access to a network of leaders and professionals
• Assistance developing and implementing personal-development plans
• Perspectives or contacts that provide cross-functional exposure
• Coaching behaviors consistent with organizational needs and values
• Knowledge of emerging trends and developments within the organization or industry
A Final Note About Approaching a Potential Mentor
Approaching a prospective mentor should be done thoughtfully and with respect for the mentor’s time and expertise. Mentees should seriously consider the type of help they need, as well as their current and larger career goals. They also should be prepared to share those thoughts with prospective mentors.
In general, people asked to be mentors are interested in serving this role. Keep in mind, however, that a prospective mentor may have personal or professional reasons to decline the offer. Either decision should be treated with respect. Remember, the most productive mentoring relationships develop when the mentor and mentee are equally interested in working with one other.
Mentoring Trivia
The concept of mentoring has ancient roots. In Homer's Odyssey, Mentor is the person entrusted to care for Odysseus’s son, Telemachus, during his famous travels. Since these early days, mentoring has taken on various forms, ranging from informal one-on-one relationships to more formal, organized systems of pairing mentees with mentors in nearly all fields, from science and engineering to teaching, finance and the arts.
Additional Mentoring Resources
About.com - management.about.com/cs/people/a/mentoring.htm
This website provides access to articles and discussion on mentoring from About.com’s management section author, including discussions of what a mentor is, how to find one and how to be a mentor, as well as others' personal mentoring stories and experiences.
Free Management Library Mentoring Section - www.managementhelp.org/guiding/mentrng/mentrng.htm
The Free Management Library is a collection of free online resources on various topics to support nonprofits and for-profits of all sizes. The mentoring section provides a multitude of articles on what mentoring is, how to be a good mentor or mentee and how to find a mentor.
Making the Most of Being Mentored
In this book, author Gordon Shea examines the reciprocal nature of the mentoring relationship, including what mentors can offer and how mentees should approach these relationships.
MENTOR - www.mentoring.org
For more than a decade, MENTOR/National Mentoring Partnership has been working to expand the world of quality mentoring, working with a network of state and local mentoring partnerships to leverage resources and support mentoring organizations across the country. Here you’ll find general resources on mentoring, mentoring public policy news and information on local mentoring programs.
MentorNet - www.mentornet.net
MentorNet is the award-winning, nonprofit, e-mentoring network of those in engineering, science and mathematics—particularly (but not exclusively) women and others underrepresented in these fields. The network's website provides resources and serves as an example of how the science, engineering and mathematics fields incorporate mentoring programs in their work.
The preceding text is based on Wendy Luke’s presentation on "Mentoring Matters" at the 2007 AAM Annual Meeting in Chicago. Adapted for the Web by Ember Farber.
