A mentor is a trusted and experienced adviser.

"Mentoring is to support and encourage people to manage their own learning in order that they may maximise their potential, develop their skills, improve their performance and become the person they want to be."
-Eric Parsloe, The Oxford School of Coaching & Mentoring

Mentoring is critical to leadership development- in any position you're in or whether you aspire to hold a senior leadership position.

"A true and complete mentoring process: promotes the enhancement of self-directedness in learners, fosters transformational change in the way they view the world in which they live and play, encourages autonomy, creativity and independence."
Michael Galbraith "Mentoring toward self-directedness" Adult Learning

Mentor as a word comes from Homer's Odyssey in which Odysseus is setting off to war (which will be long). He entrusts the raising and development of his son, Telemachus, to the wisest man he knows: Mentor.

Learning is at the heart of mentoring.

As Mary Ann Mavrinac and Kim Stymest write in the ACRL Active Guide "Pay it Forward: Mentoring New Information Professionals:

"Proactively and intentionally seeking out mentors when we have aspirations and challenges we wish to productively and mindfully embrace, places
mentoring as a central learning process in our professional lives."

Think about a time when you were getting something very powerful from a mentoring experience.

This question can apply to your informal and/or formal mentoring experiences.

What were the behaviors that made that possible?

Univ of Rochester River Campus Libraries Dean Mary Ann Mavrinac asked newer librarians to envision who they would like as their mentor if they were to ask someone.

Who would it be for you?

What goals would you want to work on with them?

What qualities do you admire and enjoy about this person?

Asking someone to be your mentor or to enter into a learning relationship with you- What is easy about this and what is difficult?

All mentoring involves learning and helping.

The concept of the "helping relationship," where someone serves as a guide to our own thinking, comes from the the work of psychologist Carl Rogers, a leader in the humanistic psychology movement.
In this construct help is distinguished from advice.

Within any type of mentoring relationship, the helping relationship can be very powerful since it keeps the focus on the owner of the question and her/his internal thinking and answers.

Open-ended questions and support are key behaviors on the part of the person helping.

People who learn how to think through their own questions and arrive at their own answers become more confident leaders.

For an interesting look at the helping relationship, read the book "Helping: How to Offer, Give, and Receive Help" by Edgar H. Schein

Next, we'll talk about types of mentoring- thinking of the person/people you imagined earlier as your mentor(s), what kind of relationship(s) would you prefer?

In traditional mentoring, a mentor is someone who takes an interest in someone else's growth and development, and who provides guidance and experience-based wisdom to that person.

Peer-mentoring - a model in which individuals begin a supportive relationship with no power differential in place.

For instance, some of you in this group might create a peer-mentoring group.

Co-mentoring exists when two individuals choose to establish an equal learning relationship that is integrative in nature, works against power differentials, and asserts the importance of conscious behaviors within the relationship.

All types of mentoring relationships rely on the development of mutual trust.

Trust is a fundamental requirement of any mentoring relationship.

Jone Rymer in her article "Only Connect: Transforming Ourselves and Our Discipline through Co-mentoring," writes:
"The private dyadic relationship of trust enables dialogue, an opportunity to achieve generative learning to benefit not only the individual partners but the organization, helping it to become a true "learning organization."- the ripple effect

Peter Block believes that we can create community through the most human of conversations - one on one and getting to the most important questions. These conversations draw upon the abundance each person brings to the other. Part of finding the abundance another person brings is letting go of judgment or "not enoughness." This really relates to the giving that occurs in any mentoring relationship but speaks to us particularly because it begins not at the point of deficit to be filled or resolved but at the point of "yes! abundances exist here!"

The Crumpet Shop in Seattle, WA was the site of our turning point conversation!

These tenets come from Peter Block's article "Strategy for Engagement," in which he describes an alternative approach to deficit-based types of conversations. We have adopted these as the guiding tenets of our co-mentoring conversations.

One of the practices and disciplines we have had to work hardest on is conscious intention: the awareness of our thinking and actions and making certain these are in keeping with our commitment to equality.

In their article "Feminist Co-mentoring: A Model for Academic Professional Development," Gail M. McGuire and Jo Reger write "Through co-mentoring, we created an egalatarian relationship that challenged the power differential of traditional mentoring, and we received the time and support needed to explore our identities as intellectuals, teachers, feminists, and women."
Clearly this ideal requires effort and self-awareness to establish and maintain.

Where differences in experience and PERCEIVED status exist, the challenges to remaining aware of power in the relationship are more acute.
We have tested inherited beliefs about power, experience, and achievement.

For Kathryn- a rejuvenation of purpose of librarianship and reason for becoming a librarian in the first place.

For Kristen- an increased sense of confidence and discoveries of her professional interests and inclinations. More focused work on projects.

For Kathryn and Kristen- support while sorting through the future- plans, ideas, current dilemmas or circumstances.

We give each other support for other parts of our lives- the whole person
(professional and personal)

Benefit of equality- it increases openness and fewer boundaries. No fear of judgment.

We plan on enhancing our relationship and practice by increasing our commitment to our tenets and by adding new ways of looking at the ideas and dreams we bring to our conversations.

We work to sustain and grow the trust we have established, the equality we consciously seek, the integration of all the parts of our lives, and the focus on gifts and abundances we each bring to the relationship.

These four things are simple yet difficult.
And we rejoice in them.

People have their own solutions and answers inside them.

Trust yourself
Decide what you want
Decide what type of mentoring relationship you want
Find a partner with whom to learn
Keep your passions alive!

We all make choices about how to conduct our professional lives and this is one choice.

Please keep in touch with us! We would love to continue our conversation with you and to learn from you!

Kristen Totleben - ktotleben@library.rochester.edu

Kathryn Deiss -
kdeiss@ala.org