TORMENTORS AND VANILLA MENTOR; GOOD MENTORS AND GREAT MENTORS - WHAT IS IT ABOUT MENTORING THAT WORKS BEST?

I’ve written quite a bit recently here about mentoring. I’m both old and old-fashioned enough to remember how helpful it was to me professionally as a young educator to have someone to watch over me. There is just so much about beginning teaching that is new. You are on your own. It is just you and the kids. And somehow you have to magic your relationship with those kids so that they actually start thinking about what you’re saying; engaging in the process of their own learning; and discovering that after forty minutes they actually know and understand something they did not know before.

Accessing that magic is learning the craft of teaching. For our profession is a craft, as well as an art and a science, but working at the chalk-face, the projection screen or whatever you use in your classroom, requires you to demonstrate your craft, day after day, hour after hour, lesson after lesson.

I became the teacher I became because I had people who taught me my craft. And none of them was a university staff member. They were master craftspeople in the teaching profession who bothered to share their craft with me as I took my first steps as a classroom teacher.

I dId not know it then – the word was not much in vogue – but these people became my mentors. And I was blessed to have mentors at every level of my progression through the schools I worked in, led in and eventually led – and each taught me my craft and honed it to the sharpest edge. And I am eternally grateful to them all.

But mentors are as idiosyncratic as each teacher in a school Is – and what is critical is that you have a mentor who is a good fit with you – not the same as you, not necessarily even like you or teaching the same subject or level as you, but someone who gets you and wants to work with you to make you the best you can be – regardless of your actual profession.

The truth is, mentoring is an important component of professional success – not only in teaching, but in every profession.

Indeed, Executive Coach and Leadership Development expert Rebecca Zucker attests that just about every successful person you can think of didn’t get to that level of success alone. They had the help of experienced individuals who took them under their wing, imparted hard-won knowledge, and fostered that person’s growth, (in The 4 types of mentors and the best kind of mentoring relationships, in Forbes, 8 July 2024).

And yet, she continues, despite the ubiquity of the mentor-mentee relationship, only 76% of people understand the real benefits of engaging with a mentor, and less than half of those people—37%—actually go through the process to become a mentee. But it’s so easy to look past the crucial impact mentoring has had on shaping the world around us.

Zucker explains that the statistics she cites come from Ruth Gotian, mentoring expert and co-author, along with Andy Lopata, of The Financial Times Guide to Mentoring, which was published earlier this year. Dr Gotian is well-credentialled, having personally coached and mentored thousands of people ranging from undergraduates to faculty members. She is the Chief Learning Officer, Associate Professor of Education in Anaesthesiology, and former Assistant Dean of Mentoring and Executive Director of the Mentoring Academy at Weill Cornell Medicine, Zucker enthuses, adding that she has been hailed by the journal?Nature?and Columbia University as an expert in mentoring and leadership development.

Zucker asked Gotian about mentoring; what makes a good mentor; what prospective mentees should look for in a mutually beneficial relationship; and the advantages of working with a team of mentors rather than a single one. Those who are mentored outperform and get promoted more often than those who don’t,” Gotian says, noting that mentees are “five times more likely to get promoted.” That’s what makes finding the right mentor so important.

Types of mentors

The Financial Times Guide to Mentoring identifies four types of mentors — great mentors, good ones, vanilla ones, and just plain bad ones, which she calls “tormentors.” The bad mentors might not necessarily know they’re bad, and that their “tormenting” is likely not intentional, but in some cases, the relationship can actually do more harm to the mentee’s growth than good.

Here’s Zucker's breakdown of the various types of mentors:

·?????? Tormentors -?These mentors usually give their mentees busy work, not working with them directly or letting them collaborate with others. They may be too wrapped up in their own work to help their mentee, and those frequent delays can hold mentees back. In extreme cases, these can also be the “mentors” who yell at and harass their mentees. In many cases, this is due to a lack of confidence in themselves; good mentors measure their own success by the success of their mentees.

·?????? Vanilla mentors -?These mentors are neither very good nor very bad; they do the work and they seem to go through a fair number of mentees, but they’re not really propelling those folks forward. There’s a stagnation at play here, and unfortunately, those who have a bad mentor are less likely to look for a new mentor; the process hasn’t been all too beneficial for them, so why would they seek it out again?

·?????? Good mentors -?Mentors deserving of such a title utilise what the book calls the “ice cream approach.” In addition to being empathetic and responsive to their mentees' needs, good mentors should:?

Introduce,?Connect,?Engage,?Create opportunities,?Reply,?Encourage,?Amplify, and?Motivate.

Those aspects are the core of good mentorship.

·?????? Great mentors - Finally, exceptional mentors cover what the good ones do, and then take it a step further. These are the mentors preparing their mentees multiple steps in advance; teaching skills; providing perspectives; and introducing them to the people who will benefit them down the road. The best mentors have their eyes set on the horizon and know how to get their mentees from where they are now to a state of realised potential in the future.

Why use a mentoring team rather than one mentor

Every mentor, even the great ones, has weaknesses in addition to their strengths, which is why the book recommends mentees work with a team of mentors rather than relying on a single person to facilitate their growth, Zucker asserts. In sports, for example, Gotian points out, you have dedicated coaches, people who have something specific they’re very good at and can pass that knowledge on—in baseball, there are hitting coaches, pitching coaches, base coaches, and so on. No one person can give you everything you need. Most people are waiting to find the perfect mentor, but there’s no such thing as somebody who’s perfect and aligns with everything that you need. A team of mentors can offer you different perspectives, provide access to different networks, and help you develop different skills.

The book recommends you seek out mentors that complement each other. After all, Gotian observes, Nobel Prize winners and Olympic champions surround themselves with teams of mentors, so there’s no reason to limit yourself to just one person who can fill that role in your life.

And while a mentoring relationship with multiple individuals at once is beneficial, your own experience will affirm that in some cases people benefit from taking on mentors sequentially rather than simultaneously. Think about your own career. ?What you might have needed in a mentor near the beginning of your career is not the same as what you needed as you progressed from a rank-and-file teacher – or accountant or associate lawyer or junior engineer – to a mid-level leader of some kind, running your department or manager in an accounting firm or a senior Associate in a law firm.

In your present senior leadership role, too, you need people with experience at that or a higher level, who can open your eyes to what you do not yet know what you do not know. Mentors weave in and out of your life, Gotian says, and my career also confirms that. What is gratifying and also humbling is that often those who mentored you as a more junior colleague still maintain close interest in your career well beyond the end of their own, as Gotian acknowledges: somebody who is a critical mentor to you in your 20s can become a great friend in your 40s. You'll need somebody else who can take you to that next level.

Why your boss shouldn’t be your mentor

While bosses naturally fill a leadership role and ideally impart valuable lessons to their employees, Gotian cautions against people being mentored by their bosses—at least, not?solely?by them.

If the mentor does a really great job at mentoring you, Gotian counsels, your success will lead you to go somewhere else, whether that be to a higher rank within the organisation or outside that organisation entirely. If your boss is your mentor, your making progress and then leaving can lead to a less-than-ideal situation as Gotian outlines: your moving on means that your boss will have to replace you, or take on some of your work themselves once you leave. That prospect of losing you as a respected and highly competent mentee might lead to the boss frustrating your onward movement. Even worse, Gotian says this might also encourage a mentor-boss to keep you where they are for fear of losing them, turning what might have been a good mentorship situation into a “tormentor” dynamic where only low-level activities are passed on, keeping the employee where they are.

And the reverse can also be true. If your boss is your mentor, and if they leave, you’re stuck without a mentor, Gotian says. While mentoring within your own profession is probably best, Gotian advises you to seek mentors outside your organisation, who can benefit mentees by bringing in new perspectives. Having perspective both within and outside an organisation is an important aspect of growth, she affirms.

Formal mentoring or informal mentoring—what’s more beneficial?

According to the book, an astonishing 98% of Fortune 500 companies have established official mentoring programs, Zucker points out, noting that while formal mentoring programs have their place—particularly as a launching pad or when an individual isn’t comfortable approaching potential mentors — Gotian believes that informal mentorships are far more successful.

Some 61% of mentoring relationships happen organically, Gotian says, going on to say the challenge with mentoring programs is that the matches are often randomly made. The best mentoring relationships happen with people naturally gelling, and there has to be an exit ramp—that often doesn’t happen in formal programs.

For those looking to continue their professional growth, Zucker concludes, finding a mentor, or more ideally a group of mentors, can seem daunting, but it’s a long and evolving process, so the best way through it is to dive in and figure out what you need. And when these connections are made, and it’s a good mentor-mentee relationship, it’s mutually beneficial for both parties. Mentors want to find good mentees, too—no, not just good mentees, but great ones!

Good senior leaders are alert always to opportunities to link promising, emerging leaders to a mentor who is well-matched to the prospective mentee, and who has the skills and experience to draw from them the best they have, so they become even better leaders. And the uncelebrated but unquestionable additional benefit is that mentors grow too in their own leadership through mentoring others.