Getting Mentors to Support Your Learning from a Variety of Perspectives

As a leader, are you accessing mentors who can provide you with a variety of perspectives?

Many of the jobs that Baby Boomers will vacate over the next two decades will go to up-coming new leaders.  The right mentors can help you improve the quality of your learning along the way. Consider contacting the following types of people to serve as your mentors:

• A senior executive with experience in an area where your school/organization is focusing. These people can help you develop a big-picture mind-set.
• A high-performing peer. Gain a broader perspective within your field by asking a highly-effective peer to be a mentor for you.
• A person whom you serve. . Get into your parents' / clients' shoes and see how the school/organization looks from the standpoint of those being served by it.

Adapted from Guide to Getting the Mentoring You Need (HBR OnPoint Collection).

Are you Mentoring? If not, why not?

As a leader, are you mentoring the next generation of leaders?

It's rewarding to become a mentor and it's a role that every leader should take on. But you can't take every young, aspiring leader under your wing. Ask yourself these three questions to choose the right protégé:

• How motivated is the mentee? Assess the reasons for the junior person's drive to become a leader. Your mentee has to be motivated if you're going to have a successful relationship.  Do your values align? 
• How far is there to go? Where is the mentee in terms of experience versus where she wants to be? You should take someone on with developmental gaps that you can help fill.
• Do I have the relevant experience and time? You never want to shortchange a mentoring relationship. Be sure you can effectively support the mentee in terms of knowledge and effort.  Remember, you're 'serving' them....so be ready to provide the time, energy, and skills needed to help.

Adapted from "Get the Mentoring Equation Right" by Whitney Johnson.

Committing to Continuous Personal Growth

As a leader, how have you committed to continuous personal growth?

Early in your career, you may ask mentors to help you with specific skills. But as you face mid-career challenges, you need mentoring that's tailored to your individual strengths and learning goals. And, you need mentors who can increase your access to leader-learning opportunities. Work with advisers who can help you take the skills you've honed in your current role and apply them to broader challenges in order to increase your effectiveness. Attract these mentors by demonstrating your experience and articulating your eagerness and commitment to continuous personal growth.



Adapted from Guide to Getting the Mentoring You Need (Harvard Business Review Press).

Leadership Presence

As a leader, how do you build your leadership 'presence'?

Simply because you hold a leadership role, it doesn't mean that you have 'leader presence'.  Leader presence is not an innate quality; it is a set of behaviors that you can learn over time. Whether you are a natural wallflower or a social butterfly, you can enhance your presence by doing the following:

• Focus and relax. Calm is the foundation of presence. Use your breathing as an anchor that you return to when you get stressed or start to lose focus.
• Gain awareness. To change your behavior, you need to know how you are perceived. Pay attention to how people react to you and ask for candid feedback from those you trust.
• Practice with support. Telling a colleague or mentor you're working on presence can boost your skills and confidence. The feedback you receive can also reinforce momentum.
• Start by buying time. One of the first behaviours to demonstrate presence is informing those who ask questions that you need some time.  Try saying this:  "This is important.  I want to give it some thought and to check with some others.  I don't want to rush my response.  I'll get back to you tomorrow."  Comments like this build your presence by indicating that you take time, you see what's important, you think things through, you reflect, you consult when necessary, and you'll respond when you are ready.  Each of these is an aspect of 'leader presence'.

Adapted from "Developing Executive Presence" by Joshua Ehrlich.

Mentoring - Maintaining a Valuable Relationship

As a leader, how do you sustain a learning relationship with your mentor?

Securing the right mentor is a major hurdle, but maintaining the relationship can be just as challenging. To keep the mentoring relationship going, try these three things:

• Provide structure. Set up regular meetings with agendas so your conversations don't degenerate into aimless chitchat. Make sure each meeting moves you toward your goals.
• Expect rigor. If your mentor doesn't provide regular assignments, ask for them, and work them into your agenda.  You have a mentor for learning so ensure that the learning occurs.
• Know when to move on. Once you've achieved your goals, move on before the law of diminishing returns kicks in. But stay in touch. Your mentor may become a valuable supporter of your 'leader learning' even once your formal relationship ends.

Adapted from Guide to Getting the Mentoring You Need (HBR OnPoint Collection).

Mentoring - Getting the Right Start

As a leader, do you take advantage of mentoring to build and refine your skills?

Leaders need mentors.  Few of us can truly be as effective as we'd like without a solid mentoring relationship in place.  Once you've secured a mentor, kick off the relationship the right way. Here are three things you can do as a mentee to help create a successful partnership:

• Get to know your mentor. Don't immediately ask for advice. Take the time to acquaint yourself with your mentor. Ask questions about her experience and working style, and share in return.
• Air concerns. You may be nervous about admitting your mistakes and fears. Establish an expectation of confidentiality up front, and remember this discretion should be mutual.
• Set milestones. To gauge progress, set goals and chart a path to achieve them. To expedite the process, draft a list of milestones and ask your mentor for feedback.

Adapted from Guide to Getting the Mentoring You Need (HBR OnPoint Collection).

Serving as a Mentor

As a leader, do you offer to mentor new or inexperienced leaders?

An important role for any leader is the mentoring of new or inexperienced leaders.  It provides a great service to someone who is in the exact same spot you were at one time.....but it also helps you.

Mentoring a new leader is simply the right thing to do.  Somewhere along the line, someone believed in you and supported your move into leadership.  One form of paying back this kindness is to mentor another.  New leaders need individuals whom they can trust so they can share their uncertainties in difficult times and gain some solid knowledge from someone like you who simply has more experience in the role.

More than being the right thing to do, mentoring a new leader can help you too.  Your mentee gives you insight into how people are feeling and thinking in the workplace.  You may have forgotten what it's like to be new in a role and a bit unsure of yourself.  Providing a safe and confidential forum for discussion helps you build your understanding of others.  Further, mentoring helps you learn how to build capacity in others.  A key role for a leader is building capacity in your staff.  Mentoring gives you a chance to practise and hone your skills. 

Mentoring or Coaching - Part 2

As a leader, do you engage in coaching? Do you support your staff in receiving coaching?

As mentioned in the previous post, the terms 'mentoring' and 'coaching' are often used interchangeably but research literature differentiates between the two.  The difference between mentoring and coaching needs to be understood if we wish to use the terms correctly.

It's coaching if:

• the coach has been trained in a specific style of coaching and uses it at all times while coaching
• the coachee has a learning plan which forms the basis of the coaching conversations
• the coaching conversations are intended to support the coachee in the development of identified skills
• the coach mediates the thinking of the coachee
• reflective thinking is routinely incorporated into the coaching conversations to deepen the learning
• the coaching conversations are focused on the growth of the coachee
• the coach does not talk about him/herself.  It's always about the coachee.
• there is a time limit to the coaching relationship

Adapted from 'Coaching For Learning' - York Region District School Board

Mentoring and Coaching - Part 1

As a leader, do you have a mentor?  Do you support your staff in working with mentors? 

The terms 'mentoring' and 'coaching' are often used interchangeably but research literature differentiates between the two.  Mentoring is defined as a broad range of supports for individuals transitioning into new roles.  Mentoring is often a long-term relationship between a less-experienced person and a mentor who is well-experienced.  Coaching, on the other hand, is a formal and intentional process designed to focus on a coachee's learning needs and is led by a trained coach. 

Mentoring can be an invaluable support because individuals often choose their own mentors and maintain the relationships over a long period of time.  Below are a few suggestions about mentors over the life of a career.  These suggestions below are adapted from: "Keeping Great People with Three Kinds of Mentors" by Anthony Tjan.

• Peer mentors. In the early stages of a person's career, a mentor can help speed up the learning curve. This relationship helps the mentee understand how things work at the organization.
• Career mentors. After the initial period at a workplace, employees need to have a senior staff member serve as a career advisor and advocate.
• Life mentors. A life mentor serves as a periodic sounding board when one is faced with a career challenge. Organizations can't necessarily offer a life mentor but they can encourage seeking one.

First Principalship

As a leader, how 'authentic' are you?

The staff's reaction to me and to my way of leading was largely negative, and my newness contributed to my own uncertainty.  I began to believe I would need traits other than the ones I had, in addition to all the competencies I needed to master as a principal.  To veil my uncertainty, I thought I needed to present myself as having an assurance that I frankly didn't yet have.  I thought I needed to act "as if" until I got there.  I sought to become a principal they would respect and value, yet I wasn't sure how to do this.  I mistakenly had confused being nonauthoritarian with being authentic, but authenticity does not mean abdicating authority.  In addition, being authentic was even more of a challenge when so many people had their own, different expectations about what I should do and be.

I knew who I was as a person, but I needed to learn what it meant to be authentic as a principal.  It would not work to define my leadership by the traits other people had used to define their leadership.  I would be an authentic leader only if I used the attributes I already had to become the principal I aspired to be.  With the help of mentors and other allies, I found the support I needed to once again feel and display the self-confidence I had had before becoming a principal.  I was moving closer to true authenticity as a leader, which required claiming the authority of my own experience, claiming my own thoughts and feelings, and sharing them.

From:  Are you Sure you're the Principal by Susan Villani
Published by: Corwin Press