Mentoring at UTS:
Guide to Being a Mentor
Georgina Barratt-See
Contents
1.
What is a mentor?........................................................................................................................................ 2
a.
Definition: ................................................................................................................................................. 2
b.
Origin: ....................................................................................................................................................... 2
2.
What do you need to know to be a mentor?............................................................................................... 2
a.
Understanding the purpose of your mentoring ....................................................................................... 2
b.
Understanding building the mentoring relationship ............................................................................... 2
i.
Open and closed questions ................................................................................................................... 3
ii.
Icebreakers ........................................................................................................................................... 3
iii.
Empathy .............................................................................................................................................. 3
iv.
Building trust ....................................................................................................................................... 4
v.
Being reliable and able and willing....................................................................................................... 4
c.
Understanding of communication............................................................................................................ 4
i.
Communication is (almost) always distorted. ....................................................................................... 4
ii.
Listening skills....................................................................................................................................... 5
iii.
Appropriate use of types of communication ...................................................................................... 5
iv.
Beliefs, values and cross-cultural communication .............................................................................. 5
d.
Understanding of boundaries .................................................................................................................. 6
i.
Assertiveness......................................................................................................................................... 6
ii.
What are your boundaries going to be? .............................................................................................. 7
e.
Understanding of referral processes and services available .................................................................... 7
i.
When to refer on ................................................................................................................................... 7
ii.
Services ................................................................................................................................................ 7
iii.
Typical types of support that may assist your mentee ....................................................................... 7
f.
Understanding of self-care and sources of support for you ..................................................................... 8
i.
Health .................................................................................................................................................... 8
ii.
Stress management ............................................................................................................................. 8
I would like to express my great thanks to staff at UNSW Counselling Service for assistance and preparation of material. Thank you in particular Julie
Grove, Annie Andrews, Natalie Glaser, Steve Halperin & Penny Shores.
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1. What is a mentor?
a. Definition:


an experienced and trusted adviser: he was her friend and mentor until his death
an experienced person in a company or educational institution who trains and counsels new
employees or students.
b. Origin:
mid 18th century: via French and Latin from Greek Mentōr, the name of the adviser of the young
Telemachus in Homer's Odyssey1
So a mentor is someone who can guide others, helping and supporting them. Generally in modern usage, it’s
someone who assists during a transition period, particularly when they’re new to an organisation or
institution like UTS.
2. What do you need to know to be a mentor?
a. Understanding the purpose of your mentoring
The most important thing a mentor needs to know is this – your mentoring role is one that you should aim to
become redundant. This is particularly when helping people to adjust to an environment, in order to make
sure there isn’t an unhelpful dependence, and to help them make their way in the environment.
What is the purpose of your mentoring? That will guide what you do and how you do it. For example, if it’s a
long-term career mentor, it may be over a period of time, whereas adjusting to uni or a new workplace is a
shorter time frame. Be clear about what academic support you are going offer, if any. If your mentoring
program offers academic support, make sure it doesn’t breach the rules of Academic Misconduct
http://www.gsu.uts.edu.au/rules/16-2.html .
For example, if your mentoring program allows some academic support, make sure it is academic support,
rather than helping with any assessable material. For example, helping a student understand how to find a
reference and how to read references is good, but don’t do the work of understanding the reference for
them. You can help to link them with a librarian or their lecturer if they’re stuck on an assignment, but don’t
do the work of understanding the assignment for them. You may want to hear them give their presentation,
and provide feedback, but don’t write their presentation for them.
b. Understanding building the mentoring relationship
Like any relationship, building a mentoring relationship takes work. The first thing to remember is: it’s not
about you, it’s about them. The mentoring relationship isn’t a two-way relationship, in that they become
your mentor or advisor. Your job is to assist them in the purpose of the mentoring (e.g. transition). This
doesn’t mean that you won’t share from your own experiences, but the focus should be on them.
1
http://oxforddictionaries.com/definition/mentor accessed 23 June 2011
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Relationships take time to develop. You will not (necessarily) form an instant connection with someone. You
may need to spend some time getting to know them first, and allowing them to get to know you. Initial
questions can be very useful in situations like this –simple questions that are easy to answer. The use of
open questions is very handy.
i.
Open and closed questions
These questions are ‘open’ questions. They open up the discussion. Open questions typically start with a
“how”, “why”, “would” or “could”. Examples of questions are: “Why did you choose to study at UTS?” “What
do you enjoy doing when you’re not studying?”, “How are you finding UTS?”, etc.
Closed questions will elicit a short answer, such as “yes” or “no”. They are useful to clarify information or
close down the conversation. “So, you had a good day yesterday?” or “Is your mother feeling better?” are
examples of closed questions.
ii.
Icebreakers
Icebreakers are simply methods of “breaking the ice” or reducing the anxiety people have when they meet
strangers for the first time. They are used a lot in workshops to help the participants get to know each other
so they can encourage and support each other and work together. The key is to give people the permission
to talk to each other.
In the mentoring relationship, if you are mentoring a group of mentees, then you could use some of these
activities to help people get to know each other. If you are mentoring one-on-one, then you could modify
these activities to help you break the ice with your mentee.
Good examples of icebreakers include the following:
-
-
Pair students up and then ask them to find out some information about each other and report back
to the wider group.
Getting the group to create a collage to represent them on a piece of butchers paper
Getting the group in 2 concentric circles and pair them up, and ask them to introduce each other and
then have a few questions to discuss, before the outer circle rotates around so that there is a new
pairing and a new chance to meet people
Playing a bingo game where students have to find someone who fits each particular criterion –>
which allows students to talk to each other with a specific purpose
It’s best to avoid icebreakers that involve any physical contact, as people from a variety of backgrounds will
be comfortable with different levels of contact with others.
iii.
Empathy
Empathy is the idea that you stand alongside someone and view it from their eyes. Ways to demonstrate
and cultivate empathy are to try to understand the situation from their perspective, without judgment or
blame.
You can do this by trying to understand their underlying feelings, emotions, and the values that they hold.
Their values may not be the same as yours, but to truly express an empathic response, try as best you can to
understand the importance of their values to them.
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A useful technique to build your own empathic response is to listen to the underlying emotion beneath the
words of a mentee. For example, a mentee may say to you: “I am scared to meet the lecturer”. You may
never have felt scared to meet a lecturer, but you may have been scared to meet someone in a particular
situation, or perhaps you’ve been scared to go somewhere, or try out something new. This allows you to
work out appropriate responses to their situation, based on your own experiences.
iv.
Building trust
Building trust is possibly the most important aspect of being a mentor. If the mentee feels they cannot trust
you, then they will not feel comfortable asking you questions or sharing their story with you.
There are many ways to build trust, of course. These are a few:
-
v.
Share some of your own story. Work out what parts of your story you are comfortable sharing
beforehand, so that you ensure you are happy with the level of sharing. (This is an example of
developing appropriate boundaries).
Acknowledge and respect them and their story.
Use your communication and listening skills appropriately
Be clear about the boundaries of the relationship
Being reliable and able and willing
If you’re not reliable, not able or not willing, your mentee will sense it and it will be difficult to maintain a
good relationship. Consider the following:
1. Trying to always keep your word – do what you said you’d do
2. Following up with the mentee(s) and taking the initiative to contact them (remember that you need
to take the initiative, as the mentor, and don’t wait for them to contact you)
3. Knowing what you are able to help with, and what you need additional assistance with, and where
to seek that additional assistance
4. Remembering that your mentee(s) will sense if you are not willing, so reminding yourself of the
importance of the role and why you decided to be a mentor to maintain your enthusiasm
c. Understanding of communication
Good communication is at the essence of the mentoring relationship. There are a number of things that it is
important to know about communication.
i.
Communication is (almost) always distorted.
When you communicate with someone, there are 6 possible messages:
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
The message you want to say
The message you actually end up saying
The message the person hears
The message the person thinks they hear
What the other person communicates about your message
What you think the other person communicates about your message
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Barriers to communication also include physical distance, language, emotional state, and collective
understanding2. For example, communication is easier face to face than by email than phone, because so
much of our body language and other cues is lost when we are not communicating face to face.
Collective understanding means that much of what is communicated is already understood in the
relationship. When you are crossing cultures to mentor, or mentoring someone who has grown up in a
different way to you, you will need to work hard at building collective understanding.
ii.
Listening skills
Listening is a critical activity for any good mentor.
Some of the traps of bad listening to avoid include:
1. Thinking about what you’re going to say, rather than hearing what they’re saying. This happens
when you think “ahead” rather than remaining with them in the conversation.
2. Getting distracted by external stimuli. For example, you see a friend and wave to them. That will
signal to your mentee that you’re not listening to them
3. Interrupting what they’re saying
You can use different listening techniques such as paraphrasing what they’ve said, summarising what
they’ve said, clarifying what they’ve said, and reflecting the feelings they’re expressing as well as the
content. For example, instead of saying: “And so you came to uni today and went to class”, after they tell
you what they did today, you might say “And so you came to uni and went to class. It sounds like that was
hard for you?”, which picks up the feelings underpinning their story.
iii.
Appropriate use of types of communication
Different types of communication have different purposes. One thing to remember is that in the mentoring
relationship, it will be much easier if you’re able to meet face to face (or via an internet program like Skype).
This because so much of the way we communicate is not in the words we actually say. It’s in the body
language, the tone of voice, the volume, etc. If you can’t meet face to face, try to talk to each other on the
phone. At least there are some cues from speaking on the phone. The most difficult way is via email. Try to
only use email, if you can, to set up a face to face meeting.
iv.
Beliefs, values and cross-cultural communication
You probably won’t have to think very long until you can think of an example of cross-cultural
communication gone wrong. When you understand the limits of communication, between people of the
same culture and language, then the possibilities for cross-cultural misunderstandings are high, because the
collective understanding of culture is missing.
But luckily, with some good strategies, you can work hard at being a good cross-cultural communicator.
Some tips include:
1. Differences between people are interesting, fascinating and you can learn a lot from people of
other cultures. So the first principle is to be positive and optimistic in your engagement with other
cultures and embrace the opportunity to learn and grow from each other.
2
http://www.buzzle.com/articles/barriers-to-effective-communication.html Accessed 16/11/11
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2. Try to avoid assumptions where possible. Of course, we live our lives making assumptions, but
cultural stereotypes are not helpful in this situation, so try to get to know the person based on
their personality, not the “expected” personality or behaviour you may think they have.
3. Using principles of active listening are really important when speaking to someone from another
culture. Useful phrases include:
 So what I hear you saying is…
 I’m not sure I understand. Do you mean (x) or (y)?
 It sounds like things have been (….) – how are you feeling about..
 What do you mean when you say…?
4. If you can, draw on your own experiences of going to another culture. This will help you
understand what was helpful to you in that situation and allow you to build your empathic
responses.
5. Recognise that every culture has strengths and weaknesses. For example, the Australian culture
can be seen as happy go lucky, but there are always examples of Australians overseas who take this
beyond this behaviour.
6. Patience and understanding – the person you are mentoring may be adjusting to many different
things which bring stress on themselves
d. Understanding of boundaries
Because it’s not a friendship, it’s really important to
understand what your boundaries are before the mentoring
relationship occurs. Boundaries are basically your
protection over your personal self and information. They
generally should be flexible and dependent on the nature of
the relationship.
i.
Assertiveness
Assertiveness is a style of communication. Being assertive in
your mentoring allows you to clearly communicate your
boundaries, explain your position, and seek to work
towards a cooperative solution.
Some questions about your boundaries
are:
1. Are you willing for your mentee to
have your email address?
2. What about your personal phone
number?
3. Are you willing to share details of
your family life?
4. Are you willing to share details of
your professional life?
Assertiveness can be contrasted with passive behaviour (sometimes thought of as a “doormat” style),
passive-aggressive (where you appear to agree, but are still upset and angry about it, which sometimes
results in subversive behaviour) or aggressive behaviour.
A useful model for assertiveness is the DESO model (Paterson, 2000). In this model you describe what is
troubling you, express how you feel about it, specify what you’d like to change, and state the outcome if it
doesn’t happen.
For example, your flatmate has not been washing up and putting away their dishes. A DESO model would
say:
“I am upset because you haven’t been washing up and putting away the dishes. I’d like to have the dishes
washed up every day and put away. I understand it may not be a priority to you but it is important to me.
Could we work out a way of dealing with this so we’re both ok with it? I don’t want to feel resentful.”
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The DESO model may be useful if you need to talk to your mentee about something that is bothering you.
Otherwise it’s a useful model in any situation.
ii.
What are your boundaries going to be?
It’s important to think about the answers to some of the following questions around what your boundaries
(or personal limits).
1. How available are you going to be for your mentee? E.g. if they send an email, how long will it be
before you respond? How often will you meet with them?
2. Are you going to help your mentee with their uni work? If so, when and how? It might be better just
to give general advice, because you need to bear in mind academic misconduct rules:
http://www.sau.uts.edu.au/academic/misconduct/
3. How are you going to help them to help themselves to become independent adults?
4. What are your responsibilities in the relationship, and what are theirs?
e. Understanding of referral processes and services available
It’s important to understand your role as a mentor is not to fix all your mentees problems, and that there are
professional services available at UTS to assist you.
i.
When to refer on
The most important principle of being a mentor is knowing when you need to seek support for your mentee
or yourself. Generally, if there is anything that worries you, concerns you, or you are not sure what do, then
talk to your mentoring coordinator. If you don’t know who that is, you can always seek support from the UTS
Student Services Unit: student.services@uts.edu.au, 02 9514 1177.
This is particularly important if any of the following comes up:
1. You feel the mentee is at risk to themselves – i.e. you are worried for their safety or well-being
2. You believe someone else is in danger or at risk to others
If it is out of hours, ring UTS Security emergency number on 02 9514 1192 or see this list of emergency
referral services: http://www.ssu.uts.edu.au/contact/emergency.html
ii.
Services
In addition to the list of emergency services: http://www.ssu.uts.edu.au/contact/emergency.html there are
many UTS services that are available, from childcare options to new social opportunities for students. See:
http://www.uts.edu.au/students/index.html
iii.
Typical types of support that may assist your mentee
1. Another campus tour, or explanation of the services available. Orientation can be overwhelming (or
a while ago), so sometimes it’s good to talk about services and supports available post-orientation.
2. Understanding of how university learning works and the importance of independent study and skills
being developed, and how you’ve developed those yourself (or struggled to do so!)
3. Telling them about your own experiences and challenges and how you overcame them or continue
to struggle with them – often people can feel like they’re the only one experiencing a challenge and
it can be very helpful to find out they’re not alone
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4. Helping them, but not doing it for them, with typical student administrative challenges such as
enrolment, negotiating UTS online, etc.
f. Understanding of self-care and sources of support for you
One aspect of the “helping professions”, even just mentoring, is the idea of “burnout”. That’s why it’s
important to look after yourself – your health, your study and your time management.
i.
Health
Developing good habits now can make a difference to your health into the future. Often people find that the
things they want to change about their health management are overwhelming, so why not start with
something small? What’s one small change you can try to make to improve your health? You may want to
think about sleep hygiene (what change can you make to improve your sleeping), adding some exercise into
your week such as a walk or increase or change your exercise (if you already exercise), or what small change
can you make to your eating habits?
ii.
Stress management
Stress is a normal part of life and usually a little bit of stress is needed to help us perform at our peak.
However, too much stress, or too many “stressors” (things that
Some activities to de-stress are:
cause stress) can leave us paralysed or stressed out. Recognising
these stressors and when they get overwhelming is important.
1. Spend time with friends and family
There are three important factors in stress management3:
1. Knowing how managing health and stress management
are linked, so trying to keep your eating, sleeping and
exercising reasonably on track will help a lot
2. Having activities to help you de-stress
3. Building supportive relationships with friends and family
and knowing how to get in touch with them
You can learn a lot more about how to look out for yourself and
common issues affecting students at the Counselling Service
website, which has a range of self-help resources including:
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
who care and support you
Running around with friends in a
park
Having a massage
Playing sport
Having a bath
Going on a bushwalk
Getting in touch with the outside
environment – sit in a park, stare at
the clouds, splash through puddles,
stare at the stars etc etc
Stress Management: http://www.ssu.uts.edu.au/counselling/self/stress.html
Dealing with loneliness: http://www.ssu.uts.edu.au/counselling/self/loneliness.html
Managing your time: http://www.ssu.uts.edu.au/counselling/self/managetime.html
Coping with exams: http://www.ssu.uts.edu.au/counselling/self/exams.html
Dealing with perfectionism: http://www.ssu.uts.edu.au/counselling/self/perfectionism.html
Dealing with procrastination: http://www.ssu.uts.edu.au/counselling/self/procrastination.html
See also: Paterson, R.J. (2000). “The Assertiveness Handbook: how to express your ideas and stand up for
yourself in work and relationships.” USA: New Harbinger Publications.
3
http://www.ssu.uts.edu.au/counselling/self/stress.html accessed 21 November 2011
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