Mentorship

Image: robertsaric.com

The origin of the word 'mentor' can be traced back to the Greek mythodology. Mentor was the son of Alcimus or Anchialus. The adoption and usage of the personal name 'Mentor' in English as a term meaning someone who imparts wisdom to and shares knowledge with a less experienced person or a colleague. This was as a result of Mentor's relationship with Telemachus (son of Odysseus) who later became Mentor's foster-child.

Mentoring is the process of giving advice to a person or challenging a person to do his/her best on both a personal and professional level. As a child, parents and other close family relations fill this role. In a typical African community, this role is played by almost all elderly people.

In mentoring, the mentor has to have a sense of selflessness knowing that the highest compliment that can ever be paid to you as a mentor will never occur in your presence. Mentoring is also not a club or a special group that is reserved for special people. Anyone at all can be a mentor and it is advisable for every individual to have a mentor; be a mentee and also be a mentor at one point in life.

A mentee is the protégé or the student of the mentor or the one being mentored. In the Greek mythodology, Telemachus would be seen as the perfect description of a mentee. A mentee should be humble and ever ready to learn new things.

Today, mentors provide expertise to less experienced individuals to help them advance in their careers, enhance their education and build their networks. In many different arenas, people have benefited from being part of a mentoring relationship or a mentoring programme. (eg. YLMP)

Finally, being able to rely on individuals who will share their experiences with you is invaluable for you to establish a great future.

Mentor with the YLMP!!!

Yes it's that time of the year again, we're accepting mentor applications for the 2011/2012 Young Leaders Mentorship Programme. We have a number of exciting things in store for you this year!

Firstly, the YLMP will be operating in two schools this year; both Kinbu Secondary Technical School and Accra High School. Secondly, for the first time we're looking at opening up our mentoring opportunities to university students outside Ghana!

We're really looking forward to seeing where this will take us. However, we'll only run the e-mentor scheme if we have enough potential e-mentors for every group to have at least one. That's where we're going to need your input. If you're interested leave a comment here, on our Facebook page or tweet us @infoYLMP with the hashtag #YLMPementor.

We're really excited about this project and would love to launch it this year along with our regular mentoring programme. We'd also love to hear any suggestions you might have.

For more information about our programme and what we do, have a look at our About Us page. You can also scoot around this blog for details of our past activities and events. You'll be able to find more titbits on our Facebook and Twitter pages.

Benefits of mentoring

Mentoring is often touted to be an extremely satisfying experience not only for mentees, but for mentors also. The specific reasons for this vary from person to person and from relationship to relationship. As always however, there are some general aspects that overlap and these are what I'd like to talk about today. Anne Rolfe* has identified four such areas which I'll share with you:

1. The development and growth of the individuals
   
2. Connecting and building relationships, as well as the thought process used in mentoring, contribute to people’s well-being.
   
3. Tapping into tacit knowledge. This is the main purpose of mentoring; literally picking someone’s brain for the wisdom born of experience.
   
4. Gaining perspective. Increasing the intelligence people bring to any situation by seeing more than one point of view. This improves, decision-making, teamwork and workplace harmony.

As I mentioned before, these are general areas and so we're only just scratching the surface here. Aside from the satisfaction you get from knowing you're making a positive difference in someone's life, your mentees can unlock whole new areas of interest you never knew you had, talents you never knew you had. If you've never been a mentor and have the interest and commitment, I'd certainly advise you to do so!

You can mentor anyone who is willing to learn from you; a family member, someone in your class or church... the list goes on. Or, you could apply to be a mentor on our programme. Applications for our next programme will be opening in a few months, so keep checking the blogs for updates if you're interested!

*You can follow Anne Rolfe on Twitter here.

10 ways to make your mentees great

I'd like to share part of a post from a blog called 'Leadership Freak'. It was originally posted under 'Great leaders make others great'. Besides the leadership aspect, it provides some pretty sound advice for mentors. Have a read and make your mentees great!

Your greatest challenge isn’t leading, it’s making others great. Settle for nothing less than growing leaders that become greater than you.

10 ways to make others great

1. Think less about what you want and more about what they want. Tap into who they want to be. Ask - how can I help you get where you want to go?
2. Provide opportunities for failure. Nothing succeeds like a good failure. Our failures, more than successes, make us. Organizations that learn from failure go farther than ones that punish them.
3. Accept average performance as long as there’s passion to learn and grow.
4. Throw wood on their fire. Anyone can quench someone. Try igniting them. Passion, passion, passion …
5. Learn from them by honoring what they know. They learn by teaching you. Additionally, Honor opens the door to influence.
6. Listen to your selfishness. Give to others what you want from them. Not so you’ll get it back but so they’ll be built up.
7. Step back so they can step forward. Prepare them. Provide resources. Set deadlines. Remember, leaders learn by leading.
8. Be a safety net. Young leaders need a place of refuge where they can recover, renew, and refocus.
9. Be direct with correction. Don’t play around. Describe wrong behaviors and explain the path to success.
10. Leverage ownership over accountability. The power of accountability fades in light of ownership. Say, “This is your project.”

Execution of some of these points may be a little different in your role as a mentor because we aren't (directly) trying to create leaders for the workplace (i.e. we encourage you to be good leaders for your mentees rather than good managers). I hope it can still be a useful resource for you.

To see the original post, click here.

A closer look at the 8 P's of mentoring

As many of you will already know, the main speaker at out our mentor training session was Dr Adadevoh (founder and president of the International Leadership Foundation - ILF). Dr Adadevoh has extensive knowledge on the subject of leadership, mentoring and development (as development spins off good leadership). You can find a short clip of a speech he gave at a UN Breakfast Summit after the cut (from the ILF website). He kindly agreed to host this session for the second year running. Both times, he spoke extensively on the 8 P's of mentoring, and I want to draw a little attention to them. First of all, I will give you a brief recap on what the 8 P's are:

• Purpose
• Personal assessment
• Potential
• Problem formulation
  
• Principles for change
• Plan of action
  
• Partnerships
  
• Progress tracking

All these things are central to the YLMP mentoring process, and indeed to any mentor-mentee relationship. At Databank Foundation, we believe in giving our mentors the freedom to decide how their mentoring is going to run. There are, however, a few things that we ask that you all do. I will take each in turn to illustrate this.

Purpose can refer to two things - the purpose (or destiny) of your mentee or the purpose of your mentoring relationship. We believe that every individual is made with a God-given purpose, and truly successful mentoring will help mentees uncover this purpose. The purpose of the mentoring relationship is broadly to develop leadership qualities, but of course you are free to engage in other objectives as well. These can be documented in the YLMP Progress Appraisal Form.

Personal assessment is an ongoing process that focuses on discovering gifts, talents, strengths and weaknesses. These are bound to come up in many discussions you have, so I will not go into them now.

Potential is based on purpose and personal assessment. A life mission can be formulated from these two things. All mentors are required to have some sort of discussion about this with their mentees - a cheat sheet will be provided for this.

Problem formulation and Principles for change deal with identifying the things that prevent mentees from achieving their potential, and working out what needs to change in order to overcome these barriers. Both are central to the Appraisal Form.

A Plan of action will also be formulated in the Appraisal Form in the form of specific, time based deliverables.

Partnerships are formed as soon as you enter the mentoring relationship (senior mentor, Junior mentors, mentees, Databank Foundation), and Progress tracking is engaged in throughout the year.

Mentoring resources

It's been a little while since I shared any mentoring resources, and since the deadline for applications for new mentors is fast approaching (there's still time to apply!), here are some resources for new mentors:

Guide for Mentoring: Do you want to be a mentor?
This includes what details in the role of a mentor, what it takes to be a good mentor, tips for a successful relationship, how to help your mentee learn and finally, what to do after goals have been achieved.

Guide for Mentoring: Appendix
Although this is a separate document from the one above, it is more or less a continuation. It includes questions and answers, common myths, useful websites and resources, a mentoring agreement and a feedback questionnaire. Although to some extent Databank Foundation will set the terms of your mentoring agreement and will provide mentees with a feedback questionnaire at the end of the programme, you are free to experiment with others.

If you'd like to apply for the next Young Leaders Mentorship Programme, click here for eligibility requirements and application details. If you know someone you think might like to apply, simply point them in our direction. The deadline's this Friday though, so you'll have to hurry!

Tips from a seasoned mentor

Mentoring can be an extremely rewarding experience both for mentor and mentee. That is of course, if it is done correctly. There are many variables that can determine the success of a mentoring relationship - preparedness is definitely one of them. The first few meetings are hugely important and can set the tone for the tone for the entire relationship. No one knows what to expect when they meet someone for the first time, which can make preparing for this slightly difficult. There is always something you can do, however. Below are a few tips from Rey Carr, a coach credentialing expert and 'mentoring veteran' as it were:

Make a list
Preparing for your first meeting: I make a list of things that I would have wanted to know when I was in the position of the person who I will be meeting with. My list might include information about me (as the mentor) about the organization or position, about what it was like to be starting out, about what it was like in a new organization, or about expectations concerning our relationship. I write these details down in note form and then I send them to the person I will be mentoring.

Take the initiative
I often take the initiative to make the first call, although I do appreciate it when the other person will call to arrange a meeting. I hold my meeting time as essential. I don't shift it around to accommodate my busy schedule. Only an emergency will alter my date.

Be clear about purpose and boundaries
Gift-giving, acting as an advocate for career advancement, loaning money, or becoming involved in dispute resolution are all out-of-bounds for me in my mentoring relationships. I feel comfortable talking about ethical or moral issues, however, and I like to be clear about ground rules. I have had different experiences with having a formal agreement. Sometimes I do not have one and other times we may develop a comprehensive agreement document.

Create an agenda
When we meet I ask the other person if it is okay if I identify some items for an agenda. I list two or three and then ask the other person if they have any items they would like to add. Some of my typical items are (1) getting to know each other, (2) logistics, (3) goals and expectations, (4) concerns that might interfere with our meeting together, (5) initial impressions, (6) questions I have about you, and (7) why I think I can be a worthy mentor. Although this might seem trivial, I always make sure that I call the person by the name they prefer to be called. I even have a fun activity that makes this a valuable learning.

Listen deeply and ask powerful questions
The two skills that I think are essential for successful mentoring are (1) in-depth listening, that is, suspending judgment, listening for understanding and providing an accepting and supportive atmosphere; and (2) asking powerful questions, that is, questions that are challenging in a friendly way and questions that help the other person talk about what is important to that person. I seldom ask "why" questions. Most of my questions can be described as "open-ended" and usually start with "how" or "what."

Women mentors night

This is for all lady university students and graduates out there. The Eagle Women Empowerment Club is organising a Ladies Mentoring Night in collaboration with Vital Voices (one of the blogs on our Blog widget on the side) and the National Union of Students. It is planned to be a "forum for peer learning, information exchange, business development and access to resources and tools, all of which are supportive of building networks for women in Ghana.

"The Programme is designed to engage experienced Resource persons who have excelled to interact with tertiary students."

It will be held in the British Council Hall on Friday 23rd July between 5 and 8pm. Speakers will include Juliet Asante (CEO of Eagle Productions Limited) and Comfort Ocran (CEO of Legacy & Legacy), fellows of the Africa Leadership Initiative, a programme Databank Foundation is involved with. The following topics will be discussed:

· Becoming An Entrepreneur
· Choosing a Career
· Investments

For further information you can call 0244- 228288, 0244-075678 or 020-9210718.


Thanks for the information David!

Success stories

I know you are all aware of the benefits of mentoring, especially if you work with the YLMP. This being the case, you will also know that mentoring can be challenging at times. I found a few quotes - 'success stories' from various mentoring programmes - that I want to share to encourage you to push through the tough times. Hope you enjoy the read! :)

By mentors:

"Over the past 3 years of serving as a mentor, I have enjoyed myself tremendously. I feel that my fellow mentors and I have made a significant impact in the lives of our students. What I have enjoyed most about the program has been interacting and getting to know my mentee. For an hour each week, I get to escape from my world and return to simpler times of elementary school. Whether talking about music class, field trips, or the latest book report...it is refreshing to see life from a different perspective."

"I have enjoyed being a positive role model. Greeted with enthusiasm every visit, it is warming to see that my presence is so greatly appreciated and that simply by being there to talk and help with homework, I can make such a large impact...I have enjoyed the simple pleasure of taking time out of my hectic schedule to interact with my mentee on a personal level."

"At first I was very nervous and I didn't really think it would be very rewarding, and didn't really think I could be effective. However, now I realize how little it really takes for these kids to get something from me, and now I look forward to it every week and try to encourage all my co-workers to get involved."

"While it is a great feeling to give back to my community, it is even more rewarding to see the direct impact mentoring has on individual lives, mentors and mentees alike. To be able to be a positive role model in a child's life, who may not have one otherwise, is a feeling unparalleled for everyone involved. My experience mentoring has inspired me to dedicate the rest of my life to helping and educating others, who I hope in turn will continue to pay forward the wonderful gift of mentoring in the future."

Mentoring resources

June has come by so fast! I've just come across a few resources that I think would be very helpful for anyone in a mentoring relationship. I thought I would share them with you. They aren't very long; I hope you find them useful.

- The Mentoring Life Cycle

- Getting to the Gold (Building a relationship with your mentees)

- Tools for Mentoring Adolescents

- School Based Mentoring: 'High risk' and economically disadvantaged students

They all come from MENTOR, which is a good website for you to check out. It's a shame they don't have a blog, it would probably be a very helpful source. They do however, have links to all sorts of information and resources you might find interesting. The information is all quite condensed; they cover each topic quite extensively.

Conselling based education

One of the tools that we aim to promote through the YLMP is Counselling Based Education (CBE). Below is a brief description of what CBE entails and hopes to achieve. It was written by Seth Tandoh, who works with Media Youth Project:

"CBE is a style of sharing information that utilises the trainee's own curiosity and life experiences. Unlike a typical Ghanaian classroom set-up where students are "lectured at" from rigid, inflexible notes, the trainee is required to give something of himself.

Here are some of the unique aspects of CBE as practiced by Media Youth Project. The first four relate to training methods:

1. We throw away conventional 'chew and pour' teaching.
At Media Youth Project the trainee himself becomes part of the learning process.

2. We keep learning groups small so we can give everyone individual attention.
By keeping the numbers small (between 3-10), the leader can give each individual attention and, in love, help him or her to chart a consistent course of self-development.

3. We place great emphasis on practicals.
Emphasis on putting what one has learnt into immediate use.

Mini Seminar: The Power of Positive Thinking

As you might know, we had a mini seminar for mentees today (Friday 7th May) on the Power of Positive Thinking. The seminar was led by Mr K. B. Nyantekyi Owusu, a business consultant with a passion for the youth and youth development.

Unfortunately, we were unable to start at the allocated time, and many mentees left before we had a chance to speak with them. It was nonetheless a great seminar. Mr Owusu spoke with enthusiasm and purpose, first engaging the mentees by asking for their take on the words 'power', 'positive', and 'thinking'. From the answers he was given, you could tell Mr Owusu had already set his audience thinking. He went on to give an enlightening overview of how the power of thought affects our lives. The heart of the message was based around the idea "as a man thinketh, so is he".

After the seminar was over, we had a brief session for mentors to have a chat with their mentees.

As promised, you can find a short clip from the seminar below. For photos, see the previous post (or click here).

How do you know when mentoring works?

The following was compiled by Ann Rolfe, a leading mentoring specialist in Australia. This is what she had to say about mentoring:

Whether you use sophisticated metrics or simply ask participants, it is important to gain feedback on mentoring to evaluate whether the relationships worked, made a difference and contributed worthwhile organisational outcomes. Plan to gather both qualitative and quantitative data before, during and after the mentoring.

Success Indicators - identify what you can measure pre and post mentoring to gauge benefits;
Early Follow-up - check in with people soon after the program launch to ensure that they have made contact and begun the mentoring relationship;
Monitor - stay in touch, build two-way communication, identify any potential problems and resolve them sooner, rather than later;
Mid-point Review - get the group together, face-to-face or via webinar. Workshop what's working well and what could improve. Help them create strategies to gain the most value from their mentoring
Finalé - a final group session gives closure to participants. Make it special and acknowledge their contribution. This is the time to recognise their achievements and take feedback for improvement for future programs. Questionnaires can be used to elicit their evaluation and quantify qualitative input.
Post-program - schedule review of longer-term success indicators at appropriate intervals. Mentoring will show immediate benefits but the greatest gains come from the enduring effect of mentoring.

Mentoring as a one-off event may be indelible for individuals but mentoring imbedded in the culture is the ultimate measure of success. If the benefits of mentoring are to be perpetuated, it is what you do after your mentoring program that will determine if mentoring works.

(SOURCE)

Note: Ann Rolfe's blog has been added to our 'Interesting Blogs' widget on the right hand side.

Mini Seminar: Personal Finance (Photos)

We're getting closer and closer to knowing what the budget will be for renovating the library (see here for information on where we're at so far). In the meantime, these are photos from a Mini Seminar on Personal Finance, which was held on the 12th of February by Asana Pegobelgo.

Who is a Mentor? Tips for building successful mentoring relationships

This article is adapted from the Indiana University's Office of Mentoring Services & Leadership Development website.

While there are many different ways of answering the question of who is a mentor, a basic definition with which we can begin is that a mentor is a special kind of helper who works with others in a positive, constructive way so that both mentor and protégé (or mentee) have the potential to grow through the relationship.

Mentoring is a way of offering a variety of services to mentees throughout the duration of the mentoring period, and sometimes even after. The program takes what's called a 'developmental' approach, which in everyday language means that we're working to create services that support mentees as they grow, learn, and mature through their living and learning experience.

Therefore, a mentor is an individual who creates a paraprofessional working relationship with students aimed towards personalizing and improving the quality of student life and learning.

So, how do mentors fulfill their role?

As we consider what mentors do that leads to achieving the goal of 'personalizing and improving the quality of student life and learning,' it's important to realize that:

1. many of the same things we do in everyday life to 'help others are similar to the role of a mentor, and
2. it is a mentor's responsibility to take what we do in everyday life and develop those 'helping' abilities into a set of paraprofessional mentoring skills.

Some of the things that one might do to help a friend who's having a hard time might include:

• providing information and advice based on your experience and ideas;
• encouraging him or her to take a healthy, positive, and constructive risk;
• 'being there' just to listen and understand;
• offering honest and positive feedback;
• planning and thinking with her or him about how to work through a challenging or confusing situation;
• sharing different points of view to understand an issue or problem from as many different ideas and ways of thinking as possible; and,
• making use of multiple perspectives to base decisions in choosing from the best of all the options, creating an action plan, and following through with that plan.

Helping, providing, encouraging, being there, offering, planning, sharing, and making -- these are all things we do to help one another as we grow, learn, and change through everyday living and learning. And, in large part, this list provides another dimension of understanding who is a mentor and what he or she does. But, we need to go further to understand what it means to become a skilled mentor.

Mini Seminar: STIs, HIV/AIDS, & Sexual Abstinence

On the 12th of March, all mentees participated in a 'mini seminar' on STIS, HIV/AIDS, and sexual abstinence. Although we started off with a few glitches including technical problems, once we got going everything ran smoothly.

The seminar was led by Abyna
Ansaa-Adjei (better known to many as Madam), a lady with a special interest in seeing youth make the absolute most of their potential. She started off with an interactive demonstration, dividing mentees into three groups. Each mentee in group one was given four different pieces of coloured paper. They were asked to exchange these among themselves. Group two were asked to go around asking people their names, and to write them down. Group three were asked to write down where they would like to be in 10 years.

After this was done and everyone was settled back in their seats, representatives from each group explained what they had done to the rest of the group. Madam then explained the purpose of each exercise. For group one, the different colours represented different sexual partners. For group two, she illustrated how names written down showed how STIs can spread from person to person. Finally for group three, Madam asked various mentees to explain how contracting HIV/AIDS can prevent them from becoming the person they had described themselves as being in ten years.










After a lively start that engaged all present, it was time to get down to some serious business. From definitions to the social attitudes that allow sexually transmitted infections like HIV/AIDS to run rife, Madam gave an informative talk that addressed it all.

Who Moved My Cheese?

As you might be aware, one of the books this year’s mentees will be studying is the hugely influential Who Moved My Cheese? by Spencer Johnson. First published in 1998, Who Moved My Cheese? addresses the concept of dealing with change through a witty parable that compares the behaviour of mice and ‘Littlepeople’ - beings that look and think like people, but are the size of mice.

When the cheese the mice (Sniff and Scurry) and Littlepeople (Hem and Haw) depend on suddenly disappears form Cheese Station C, the two sets of characters react very differently. Having previously noticed the supply of cheese dwindling, Sniff and Scurry simply pack up their things and leave to find new cheese. Hem and Haw however, are determined to get to the bottom of the issue and try many different things to try and get ‘their’ cheese back. The story follows Haw, who eventually leaves Cheese Station C after realising that complaining about having not having cheese isn’t going to make the cheese come back, or get him any answers. See here for a more detailed synopsis of the book (as well as some criticism).

Who Moved My Cheese? is a truly enlightening story that explains very simply how to change your perspective on change in a way that makes it seem less threatening. It is a must read for anyone – change is inevitable no matter who you are, so why not learn to make it a platform for innovation and success?

There are editions for teens and for children, and even an award winning movie, so everyone can relate to the story and learn from the simple lessons that it puts forward.

If you have not read the book and would like to, you can find copies at all major bookstores. For more information about the books and the movie, you can also see the Who Moved My Cheese? website.

Say Cheese!!