Human Touch !

Is the Mentor/protégé relationship a utopian one?
Capt. A.Nagaraj Subbarao.


Career planning, is not something that is rare in Indian Industry today. Attrition rates are climbing without a break, and one of the most common cited reason for an employee to leave his/her incumbent job is because they are at a dead end without a definite career plan in sight.
Another classic example of an employee quitting a job, is because he/she is suddenly overwhelmed, on being promoted. Leave alone enjoying the challenge, the promoted employee, is under tremendous pressure right away and by the time he/she should be hitting their straps, they are rife with disillusionment and ready to run for cover.
Mentoring is seen to be an important cog in the Career Planning process, but what little is seen of it in our Industry, is an exercise in futility, mainly because deep communication chasm’s develop between the Mentor & his/her protégé. A suitable match is vital for the partnership to develop, grow and sustain itself.
How does a mentor help a protégé? Some ways are
· Recommending the protégé for promotion.
· Creating situations where the protégé can display his special skills.
· Steering the protégé away from controversy.
· Help the protégé deal with difficult situations.
What’s the difference between a good and a not-so-good mentor? One of the problems both in selecting mentors for a pool and in matching individual mentors with protégés is that the answer varies according to the context and the specific needs of the protégé.
Is it possible to identify some generic skills for mentors, however? Equally, can we identify some generic skills for protégés?
Good mentors reinforced rapport at each meeting. They summarized during the discussion, but ensured the protégé summarized at the end. They challenged and encouraged as the need arose. They talked less than 20% of the time. They made use of very good, penetrating questions, but gave considered advice when it was called for. Good mentors allowed adequate space for the protégé, to pause, consider and reflect.
So what are those reciprocal behaviors? Some of them identified so far are:
Communication: The mentor needs to be able to explain good practice and illustrate it through story and anecdote. He/she also needs to enthuse, coax, empathize and stimulate reflection – all through adept use of language. At the same time, the effective mentor is able to help the mentee articulate their thoughts, feelings and ideas through appropriate questioning and the use of visual aids, such as diagrams.
The protégé needs many of the same skills, to ensure that the mentor both understands the issues they present and responds in the appropriate manner. Poor articulation doesn’t have to be a matter of putting logical thoughts together and expressing them clearly. Some people are emotionally inarticulate -- they struggle to access and describe their feelings. Both incapacities can be very difficult for a mentor to manage.
Listening: Effective mentors spend less than 20% of session time talking. They recognize the importance of helping the protégé work things through and establish his or her own insights. They use questions to make frequent shifts of perspective, so that the protégé can understand the issues more fully. They are also skilled in the use of silence, often suggesting that the protégé take a few minutes to reflect quietly on a particular insight.
Protégés also need to exhibit good listening skills. Much of what the mentor says may contain subtle differences.
Respect: Without respect on both sides, the relationship will never achieve the level of openness required. Respect is not the same as deference or ingratiation – it is based on recognition of the value of the other person’s intellect, values and experience. Along with respect for each other goes respect for oneself – an appropriate mix of self-regard and humility that allows each to question and be questioned and have confidence in their ability to bring about change.
Understanding: The mentoring dialogue can often seem rather shallow, if neither of them is prepared or able to dig deeply into the roots of issues. Finding the appropriate patterns, themes and connections between events is critical. Working on analysis together helps strengthen mutual understanding at several levels and builds the rapport between mentor and mentee.
Goal View: Mentors and protégés need to have a clear understanding of the protégés objectives. If these change, both need to be able to recognize that this has happened and adjust accordingly. In addition the more the proteges understand the mentor’s goals, the easier it is for them to ensure the relationship is reciprocal. Among the skills of establishing goal clarity are helping people decide what they don’t want, exploring commitment and breaking up big objectives into smaller, more readily achievable steps.
Interest: One of the most common complaints of mentors and protégés is that they do not feel the other person is challenging them sufficiently often or strongly. More than in almost any other environment, the mentoring relationship is one that allows constructive confrontation, where both parties find their assumptions questioned and can play a devil’s advocate with success. In many cases, protégé report that this is the most useful part of the relationship, while mentors report that this is the part that provides them with the greatest intellectual challenge and interest.
EQ: Both mentor and protégé require at least a degree of emotional intelligence to understand their own motivations and to build empathy with each other. Self-awareness is essential for the mentor, to be a proactive and insightful role model and to recognize when and how to draw appropriately on their own experience. For the mentee, self-awareness provides a practical foundation, upon which to reflect and to select what to adopt from the mentor’s advice and example
Commitment to learning: Current research suggests that commitment to learning is more important than commitment to the relationship, in terms of both appropriate behaviors and outcomes for the mentee. Mentors, who have given up active learning, tend to be more self-obsessed and directive than those, who genuinely see the relationship as an opportunity to develop their own skills and acquire new understandings.
Preparation: Alongside lack of time to meet, one of the principal reasons mentoring relationships fail is that one or both parties fails to invest time in thinking through, either before or after the mentoring dialogue. With e-mail, there really is no excuse in most circumstances for the mentee not to forewarn the mentor a few days ahead of what s/he would like to talk about. In preparing for the meeting, the mentor should attempt to establish the facts about their issue, explore what they want to achieve from the dialogue with the mentor and, where possible, identify some examples to illustrate the dilemma they face. Some effective mentees hold an imaginary conversation with the mentor, to provide greater depth to their preparation. After the mentoring session, the mentee should always spend at least an hour reflecting on what has been said and examining the implications more deeply.
The mentor also needs to spend time ahead of the meeting, thinking through a road map.
Managing: Effective mentors, have the flexibility to adapt to a variety of protégé, needs. They also have sufficient of a store of techniques and generic questions to vary their responses as needed. They also demonstrate an awareness of how the relationship evolves – when to encourage the mentee to engage in the process, when to review progress and when to gradually disengage from the formal relationship, empowering the mentee to become self-sufficient.
Effective protégés have sufficient understanding of the mentoring process to contribute to it – helping the mentor help them. There are some competencies, which may be needed by the mentor or protégés only – for example, the mentor needs to have a sense of the big picture and to be able to draw on a deeper or wider range of experience, without imposing this knowledge upon the mentee. However, the majority of the competencies, as we have seen, are mutual in nature.
What happens, if one of the parties lacks some of these skills? In these cases, a range of additional support services may be needed to help the protégés make good use of the mentoring opportunity.
Where the mentor lacks key skills, it may prevent the relationship getting off the ground, or reduce the range of benefits the protégé, the mentor and the organization achieve. Hence the importance of relationship reviews – in defining areas, for skills improvement.
Where the review process is supplemented by opportunities for mentors (and where possible, protégés) to share learning and practice new skills, the quality of the relationships and the program as a whole tends to be high. Supervision by more experienced mentors also has a positive impact.
Commitment: For the mentor operating in a non-professional context, it isn’t necessary to be competent in all the areas outlined above. It’s normally sufficient to be average and to be committed to a gradual development of capabilities in the role.
For any relationship to grow and be fruitful the association must bring tangible value to the parties involved and it is the same here as well. While the protégés would be thrilled at being mentored or shepherded through a career, the mentor must believe that the relationship is helping him/her grow and is not one sided.
While this attempt might look utopian in the present scenario, a serious effort must be made with an eye on the future to balance and make a rather delicate relationship work.
Proactive behavior on both sides equips the protégés in turn with the skills and confidence to become mentors themselves, in due course and to build a sustainable cycle, of trust and relationship.
In my interaction with industry, I have rarely come across, an organization where a successful mentor-protégé relationship has been built and sustained itself, mainly because, of insecurities on both sides and a perception that the mentor is not being suitably rewarded for his/her efforts. Only when the partners, get to acknowledge that they own the process and that the mentor is doing a service that will eventually aid his own career, that we will see success of this rather wonderful but sadly neglected concept.
Our culture (Indian), also clearly demarcates, relationships between the junior/senior, old and young, creating a block even before the journey begins. For the mentoring process to even begin we need to bridge hierarchies and destroy cultural barriers.