Our latest instalment of the Mentor Profile Project comes from Marina, who shares all about how she uses daily mentoring skills as part of her leadership role and management style.
Read on to find out how she makes a difference to her teams.
What type of mentoring do you practice? (e.g paid/volunteer, youth/workplace/school/apprentice etc.)
I am trained in coaching and mentoring, and I have done some formal mentoring work, but at the moment I am not being paid as a mentor or a coach.
That said, I take a daily mentoring approach to my work as a manager in the sensory team. Whilst this is not a paid, official mentor role, I very much still use the skills and approaches which I have learnt.
How long have you been a mentor?
Honestly, I would say a lifetime! I have always gravitated towards certain types of roles which used skills around listening and providing support. It wasn’t until I completed my mentor training course that I realised I had been already instinctively providing daily mentoring to people for years.
I would just naturally ask questions about where someone wants to be, questions such as “where would you like to go with this? How far would you like to get?” and then make suggestions of “maybe try this, what do you think?”. I would always say to come back if they needed more support on anything.
Rather than doing it as a formal thing, I feel like I try to draw things out of people. As I would mention, “oh, I’ve noticed you naturally do that- do you like doing that? Or is it something that takes a little bit of energy out of you?”
What (if any) type of training have you completed/intend to undertake?
I completed the Level 3 Mentoring with Coaching Qualification through The Mentoring School as my official training. I did that during COVID, which was really such a lonely time because you couldn’t talk to many people; you couldn’t meet in groups and all that sort of thing.
And I remember doing one of the assignments and it got lost! I called IT, and I was trying to find where I had saved it bit by bit, and I just burst into tears. By the time I found as much as I could and had to start the rest again, my deadline had gone. I remember phoning The Mentoring School and speaking with Richard- poor thing, he had a howling woman on the end of the phone crying over my lost work… (I did do the assignment and get an extension, so it ended up fine).
I look back on it now and think, if it had been normal times I probably wouldn’t have cried. I probably wouldn’t have responded that way. I would have been able to talk it through with someone else. But my emotions were already so high due to lockdown and I just cried.
It made me really start thinking about people who feel they can’t do something- that it is just too much. I managed to pull myself together and get it sorted, but what about people who can’t do that, who really need to just have someone on their side to say, “You can do this. It’s okay. Yes it will be late, but you know what? You got some more time.”
It gave me a perspective that I didn’t have before- that you can actually encourage and support someone even in that low, low point of feeling as if the world is about to end. You know, everybody else might go “oh, well, no, the world’s not going to end” but your emotions are telling you that it is. So, for me it is about helping someone see through that- to find that perspective again through a daily mentoring approach.
Even though I didn’t like what happened, I feel that it helped me to understand that emotional pain to a new depth. I think sometimes you can have really horrible experiences, but that then gives you something else to work with.
What made you interested in becoming a mentor?
Like I said before, I have pretty much spent my whole life doing daily mentoring of others without even realising that was what I was doing. It is genuinely just a natural part of my leadership and management style. I am really driven by helping people- wanting them to recognise and reach their full potential.
I kind of got to where I am because I don’t give up. If I want something, I am going to do it (and make a lot of mistakes along the way). When you have no guidance, you can fall into all sorts of problems. In one way that was good because it has given me a wide scope- I’ve worked different jobs, been so many places and done so many things.
But I guess, in a way, I want to be the person for someone else that I could have used in their situation.
What is your favourite part about being a mentor?
Most definitely seeing people’s brains tick over- that moment when you can see the penny drop and they realise that they know the solution to their problem. It is a wonderful feeling when all the effort that we have put in over a long time of daily mentoring suddenly comes together and the person I am supporting finally feels confident in what they know and can achieve.
Daily mentoring definitely delivers the type of learning that lasts. I really enjoy knowing that what someone experiences and how they develop through the process will have a lifelong impact.
What is a challenge you have faced whilst mentoring?
A key part of daily mentoring is that the mentee leads and sets their own goals. I sometimes find it hard when they set unrealistic expectations on themselves or completely overcomplicate what they want to achieve. Then they just can’t see how to get around the hurdles of it.
The thing is you can’t just tell someone what they should do. It is about helping them to figure it out for themselves. But sometimes people are not prepared to do that sort of thinking, so you have to get really creative to get them to the point where they can claim it for themselves.
For example, it is a delicate balance of helping them to consider whether their goal is actually their goal, or whether they are acting on other people’s expectations. If that is the case, then no matter how good the mentor the outcome won’t be as positive as they would like it to be.
It can also be hard when you have to make it clear to a mentee that what they have been doing so far has been a big part of whatever problem they have been facing. For example, in my sector detail plays a vital part of policy and procedure, especially around serious situations such as safeguarding. As a manager I need my staff to fully understand this and, as part of that, recognise when their previous method has been wrong.
The best approach I have found so far through daily mentoring has been getting them to understand just what an impact they have on another person’s life- to set the context and reason for why this issue of detail is so important. It’s getting them to realise that whilst they may have a form that needs to be filled out, they need to remember doing a good job allows them to properly support their client.
I know that this daily mentoring approach will benefit everybody in the long run, with the learning actually sticking, but I can still find it challenging to maintain this mindset rather than just telling somebody what to do.
What piece of advice would you give to people thinking about being a mentor?
I would say make sure that you have taken the time to really reflect and engage with your own experiences as a basis for empathy. You need to be in touch with your own emotions and insecurities, so that when you are interacting with someone who might not be at their best you can do so with real understanding.
Never judge somebody.
Also, you need to give people the space to just talk. Use some open questions as prompts, but then just let them spill and their real issues will start to surface naturally. Once you have identified these root problems, you can then start to really unpick the layers behind behaviours.
Finally, be sure to continuously reflect on you mentoring experience. Write down your thoughts about what is happening and work things through between sessions. This lets you self-evaluate your approach, spot areas to address that might have been missed in the moment and see where the support that you are providing could be improved.
What are your plans for mentoring in the future?
I will definitely continue to use a daily mentoring approach in my daily management and leadership roles. There’s a group of people who do coaching and mentoring within social care now, and they have asked me to join them, so I am going to do that. Our first meeting is fairly soon, and I believe that someone will be giving a talk which should be interesting.
To learn more about how your journey into mentoring could look, and how you can use daily mentoring in your life, be sure to check out our guide to Getting Started in Mentoring.