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.

Why do you want to be a leader?

You're in a leadership position.  But why?

The vast majority of individuals in leadership positions are there by choice.  In many cases, if not most, you have applied for a leadership role and been promoted.  But why did you apply for your role?  What was it that made you interested in leading?  If you are passionate about the work, you likely find the work rewarding and you gain satisfaction from the successes of your team.  However, if you're not passionate about the work, you may find that much of what you need to do feels burdensome or excessively challenging.  If you are thinking about a leadership role, you need to ask yourself why you want it and then to look inside yourself to find if you have a passion about the work.  If the passion isn't there, you're setting yourself up for disappointment.  You'll be taking charge of work that you fundamentally don't care about.  Is that how you want to spend your days, weeks, months, years? 

Think carefully about why you want to lead and what work you'll be leading.  If you have a deep caring about the work, the challenges you'll find as a leader, will be more bearable and the successes that much sweeter. 

If Learning is the Work...

As a leader, how do you support, encourage, enable learning for your staff? 

Michael Fullan tells us that "Learning is the work".  If this is the case, it has great significance for leaders.  It means that we must be aware of what learning needs to take place and then to determine the best ways to support, encourage, and enable it if we wish to create authentic learning communities.  We may even need to help our staff members understand just what this means in terms of their professional practice.  Indeed, it may also mean that we need to understand and come to terms with this in terms of our own leadership practice. 

According to Fullan (2008), "The secret behind 'learning is the work' lies in our integration of the precision needed for consistent performance (using what we already know) with the new learning required for continuous improvement." 

It's a simple statement but it requires thought about what this means and how it translates into practice in a school or organization.  It assumes that we are focused on continuous improvement in both practice and results.  It also assumes that everyone is 'on board' with this type of thinking.  As a leader, this may involve new thinking and reculturing around professional practice - for your staff and possibly even for you.

I look forward to your comments about Fullan's statement.  


From:  The Six Secrets of Change by Michael Fullan (2008)

Now that you have the position

You now have the leadership position.  But do you have the skills?

As a leader, you have a formal leadership role.  But formal leadership roles demand a set of skills that you may not necessarily have.  People frequently are promoted because they were exemplary in their position.  However, this doesn't automatically translate into having the skills required in a leadership role.  As a leader, can you identify the necessary skill sets for your position?  When that's done, can you then identify which of these skill sets you have, which skill sets you don't have, and which ones you are developing?  Once this 'gap analysis' has been done, you have some important thinking to do about how you will build the skills that you need in your role.  In other words, what do you need to learn and how will you learn it?  Every great leader is also a great learner.  Leadership demands learning and continual refinement of the skills of leadership.  What is your plan to be a great leader? 

Here is a list of just some of the skill sets that great leaders have:

• setting direction for the work of your staff
• building purposeful, authentic relationships...and then sustaining them
• knowing how to motivate people
• knowing how to handle difficult conversations while maintaining the integrity of staff members
• problem-solving
• supporting each member of your staff in building their capacity to do the work
• coaching and mentoring.....and knowing the difference
• planning for succession and ensuring that there are always others who can carry on the work
• being accountable
• taking responsibility
• identifying the focus of the work and supporting staff in keeping the focus
• dealing with distracters so that they don't impact on your staff
• distributing / sharing leadership with others
• ...and the list goes on....

Student / Staff / Parent Voice

As a leader, how do you access student / staff / parent voice and keep open the lines of communication?

As leaders, we need to stay strongly connected to our students, staff, and parents if we lead schools.  The same applies to staff and clients in organizations.  How do we access the thoughts, perspectives, concerns, and ideas of those with whom we work and those whom we serve?  We need mechanisms so that all of these 'stakeholders' know that they can express their opinions, they will be heard, and they will be responded to.  If we don't have these avenues of communication open and readily accessible, we run the risk of leading organizations that are hierarchical and decreasingly responsive to the needs of those they serve and those who work within these schools/organizations.  In a world where people have previously unheard of access to communication in the palm of their hand, we, as leaders, can create ever-improving schools and organizations by mobilizing the intelligence of our stakeholders.  Avoid open lines of communication at your peril. 

Process, Process, Process

As a leader, how do you use 'process'?

Leaders are called upon to do and be anything and everything in today's schools/organizations.  With multiple demands from multiple sources, it can sometimes feel easier and more straightforward simply to provide people with information or answers.  This may be expedient but it doesn't serve your school or organization well.  What happens when you're not there?  Where will people get information or find their answers?  In the interest of building capacity in your staff so that everyone feels capable and self-directed, it is essential to create a culture where processes are used on a regular basis.  Whether the issue is the provision of information, problem-solving, information gathering, planning,.....or whatever,.....there are always processes that can help.  As a leader, the key piece of information for you is to learn appropriate processes that you can use, to use them often, and to create a culture where your staff, students, parents, and others understand the value of processes for bringing the best thinking to an issue. 

One of my favourites is Facilitating with Ease! by Ingrid Bens.  It's full of great processes for anything you need to do. 

Readers, do you have other sources for processes?  If so, please post them in the Comments section.

 

Being an Enabler

As a leader, how do you serve as an enabler for your staff? 

As a leader, one of your key roles is to serve as an enabler for your staff.  You need to enable your staff to do their work to the best of their ability.  You do this by ensuring they have:

• the tools they need
• the knowledge they need
• the skills they need
• a workplace that supports their mental and emotional well-being
• clarity of purpose in their work
• a belief that their work has value
• freedom from distracters
• protection from activity traps
• easy access to you
• problem-resolving processes
• ...and on the list goes....

This list - and all of the other things that could be added to it - demands a significant skill set on your part.  How do you build and refine the skills you need to be a leader who enables others to do their best work?