Back to Basics:
Defining mentoring and
its building blocks
Dr. Harley E. Flack Student
Mentoring Program
Rowan University
Adapted from The Mentor’s Guide by L. Zachary and
Students Helping Students by S. Edner & F. Newton
Prepared by Gardy Guiteau
Assistant Director of Mentoring and
Academic Enrichment
Introductions and Ice Breaker
• General Introductions - Please tell us your
name, major, class level, and what you hope to get
out of this training.
• Concentric Circles - In concentric circles please
take 2 minutes per person to answer the following
questions:
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2.
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5.
What does mentoring mean to you?
Have you ever had a mentor? If yes, who? If no, why
do you think you have not?
Is mentoring important to college students? Why?
What made you interested in becoming a peer-mentor
in this mentoring program?
How much energy do you think it takes to be a peermentor?
Agenda
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Introductions and Ice Breaker
Learning Objectives of the training
Defining the role of a Peer-Mentor
Developing a Mentoring Self
Understanding your mentee
Supporting mentees through common challenges
Lunch
Confidentiality and building a Mentoring Relationship
Effective Communication and Active Listening
Using campus resources and developing referral skills
Closing and Evaluations
Learning Objectives of this Training
After completing this training you will be able to:
• Define the role of a peer-mentor and list 3 qualities of a
successful peer-mentor.
• Understand the importance of self-awareness to the
mentoring role.
• Explain the personal, social and contextual changes that first
year students experience.
• Describe some of the personal and academic challenges that
their mentees face.
• Identify support systems that can be put in place to help
mentees overcome their challenges.
• Understand the importance of confidentiality, trust, and
empathy to the development of good mentoring relationships.
• Demonstrate the skills of active listening and giving
constructive feedback.
• List at least four situations in which they should refer their
mentees to professional support services on campus.
The Role of A Peer-Mentor
A peer-mentor serves as:
• A special and trusting person who, knowing more
through experience, commits their time, attention
and energy to assist a less knowing peer.
• A facilitator who creates and maintains an
environment that is conducive to the learning of
their mentee.
• A facilitator of learning in such a way that
knowledge, skills, or abilities connect to action in
the present and possibility in the future.
• A developer of a mentoring relationship based on
learning during which the mentee will grow more
responsible and independent.
• A role model who is admired, observed, and
emulated for their special qualities by their peers.
Hand-out
Developing a Mentoring Self
• Strong mentoring relationships start with a
mentor who has a “clear understanding of their
own personal journey” (Zachary 2000).
• To be a successful peer-mentor is to be clear and
aware of one’s own challenges and to be willing
and able to share them with one’s mentee.
• As a role model peer-mentors must be willing to
allow others to bear witness to the way that they
approach choice, challenges and opportunities.
• Individually please complete the Journey
Timeline, then in groups of four please
discuss your individual timeline.
Understanding your Mentee:
Being aware of the life changes
• “Students in the traditional college age group…
make many changes in how they think, how they
feel, what they believe, what they value, and how
they act in the world” (Ender & Newton 2000).
• As a peer-mentor, understanding that your mentees
(as you did and continue to do) are going through
significant life changes will help you in taking an
active role in helping them positively adjust to those
changes.
• Crucial to understanding your mentees is a general
understanding of how student growth occurs and in
what situations.
Understanding your Mentee:
Some key terminology
Understanding how student growth occurs requires an
understanding of how some common terms relate to one
another.
• Challenge occurs in one or more areas of personal and social life
and arises from new or changing circumstances.
• Dissonance refers to an experience of discomfort and anxiety
when the status quo is disrupted.
• Crisis describes periods when a person faces an important decision
point.
• Change refers to alterations that occur over time in student
thinking, feeling, and doing.
• Development describes a series of changes that people typically
experience over the course of a lifetime.
• Growth implies the presumption of a progressive direction as one
moves toward maturity with greater complexity, differentiation, and
integration.
• Maturation implies the movement is occurring toward the next
higher level of development.
Understanding your Mentee:
Five key principles of student growth
All of your mentees will be in the process of facing
challenges that cause dissonance or crises which if
resolved will lead to maturation. This growth is guided
by five principles:
• Principle 1: Student growth and development occurs as a
result of pressure from the environment.
• Principle 2: Maturation is a process that is gradual and
happens as a result of successful resolution of different crises.
• Principle 3: Maturation is a cumulative process where
students move from simple development to more complex self
understanding.
• Principle 4: Students develop at different rate and by
individually unique means.
• Principle 5: In each phase of maturation, a student must
master certain skills, knowledge, or behaviors so that they can
successfully move on to the next phase.
Hand-out
Understanding Common College
Student Challenges
• Personal Adjustment challenges are created by the
simple fact that college is a new experience involving a
new environment, new people, and new responsibilities.
• Intellectual and Academic challenges are those
related to declaring a major, signing up for courses, and
overcoming limitations.
• Physical challenges include students’ concerns about
their physical appearance or competence.
• Interpersonal challenges initially focus around
finding a group to belong to and later involves
expressing and managing feelings in relationships.
• Career and Lifestyle challenges involve anxiety
around making decisions that may have long-term
consequences on their lives.
Supporting Mentees through
Challenges
• Take a genuine interest in mentee’s personal
situation.
• Help student become aware of all of their options.
• Provide avenues by which students can explore
alternative options.
• Model problem solving strategies with your mentee.
• Help mentees think critically about their situation
by giving useful feedback.
• Be proactive by inviting mentees to participate in
events and activities that will help them personally
and academically.
Lunch Break
Lunch is being provided. We will
break for 30 minutes. As we are on
a tight schedule, if you have to leave
the building, please make sure that
you return on time.
Building the Mentoring Relationship:
Four stages of the mentoring
Good mentors are those who recognize and use the
knowledge that mentoring relationships develop in
the following cyclical stages:
• Preparing: This stage involves both mentor and
mentee getting clear about why they are engaging one
another and if they are ready and able to do so.
• Negotiating: In this stage the mentor and mentee set
ground rules or terms of engagement to which they
mutually agree.
• Mentoring: It is during this stage that the bulk of the
work of nurturing and supporting the mentee’s growth
and development as a student occurs.
• Closing: This stages involves evaluating,
acknowledging, and celebrating successes; this stage is in
itself an evolutionary process.
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Building the Mentoring Relationship:
Confidentiality is key
• A breach in confidentiality is sometimes one of the
key reasons why a mentoring relationship falls
apart.
• It is crucial that you develop some clear
confidentiality guidelines with your mentee.
• But talking with a mentee about confidentiality can
feel awkward and unnatural. The following are
some effective ways of doing so:
▫ Approach the conversation from a place of establishing
mutual respect.
▫ Start by asking your mentee how they define
confidentiality.
▫ Complete an Assumption Testing Checklist about
confidentiality with your mentee.
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Building the Mentoring Relationship:
Time Matters
Successful mentoring relationships require that
both peer-mentors and mentees commit adequate
time to allow for the establishing, building, and
sustaining of the mentoring relationships. This
then requires the following in terms of time:
• Committing to be a peer-mentor means being ready to
block off a realistic amount of time to spend with each
mentee.
• It is necessary that both mentor and mentee invest in
being in contact regularly in the initial stages of the
partnership.
• Creating mentoring meeting times that allow you and
your mentee to not be rushing in or out of the meeting.
Developing Key Mentoring Skills:
Effective helping communication
Advice Giving
Effective Helping Communication
• Does not take much time.
• No problem exploration happens.
• Puts the peer-mentor in the
“Expert” role and only speak from
their own perspective.
• Does not require much personal or
emotional energy.
• Does not require a great deal of
skill or communication of
understanding and empathy from
the giver.
• Does not allow the mentee to take
ownership and responsibility of
resolving their problem.
• Have no limitations.
• Time consuming.
• Underlying concerns or issues are
investigated and dealt with.
• The mentee is regarded as the
expert on their feelings and beliefs
on the matter.
• Requires investment of personal
and emotional energy.
• Requires development of skills and
faculties such as active listening ,
giving effective feedback, respect,
and empathy.
• Allows mentees to become agents
of their own lives and to develop
responsibility and independence.
• Requires peer-mentors to, at times,
refer mentees to professionals.
Developing Key Mentoring Skills :
Active Listening
• Pay attention – Give your mentee your undivided attention.
▫ Maintain eye contact.
▫ Put aside distracting thoughts. Don’t mentally prepare a rebuttal!
▫ Avoid being distracted by environmental factors.
• Show that you are listening – Use body language and gestures to convey your
attention.
▫ Nod occasionally.
▫ Smile and use other facial expressions.
• Provide feedback – Our personal filters, assumptions, judgments, and beliefs can distort
what we hear. As a listener, your role is to understand what is being said. This may require
you to reflect what is being said and ask questions.
▫ Ask questions to clarify certain points. “What do you mean when you say…” “Is this
what you mean?”
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Summarize the speaker’s comments periodically.
• Suspend Judgment – Interrupting is a waste of time. It frustrates the people when they
are trying explaining themselves and limits full understanding of the message.
▫ Allow the mentee to finish his or her sentences.
▫ Don’t interrupt with counterarguments.
• Respond Appropriately – Active listening is a model for respecting and understanding
your mentee. The point is to gaining information and perspective.
▫ Be candid, open, and honest in your responses.
▫ Assert your opinions respectfully.
▫ Treat the other person like you would want to be treated
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Developing Key Mentoring Skills:
Giving effective feedback
• Feedback is information about performance that leads to
action to affirm or develop performance.
• It is as much about reinforcing effective and strong
performance as it is about identifying areas of potential
improvement.
• The outcome of the feedback process should be someone
who is engaged, energized and motivated to strive for
increased performance.
• Feedback is based on a series of cycles of:
▫ Presenting a clear and specific summary of observation
of behavior.
▫ Describing the impact of the behavior on others, or
the situation, or how it made the observer feel.
▫ Discussing the implications of that behavior in dayto-day situations.
Developing Key Mentoring Skills:
Making referrals – When to refer
It can be difficult to determine when to refer a student to another resource. This pressure
can lead to a tendency to give quick advice or offering a solution by providing a suggestion
out of your own repertoire. Often your own solution may not be the answer to your mentee’s
concerns and a quick referral may feel like a brush-off or the beginning of a run-around. So
what you want to do as a peer-mentor is:
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Listen carefully
▫ The first, and often the most important step, is to listen carefully and clearly so as to understand
what the individual needs in the way of assistance.
▫ Remember as a peer you are perceived as an approachable, friendly source to ask for assistance.
Your support, encouragement, and guidance may be sufficient to help an individual figure out what
to do, but there will be times when the student’s concern is beyond your knowledge. This is the
point when you consider referral.
Know you limits
▫ The second most important item regarding referrals is to know your own limits for giving
assistance.
▫ Trying to help a student with a serious problem when you posses minimum skill and experience can
do more harm than good. So when in doubt, refer the student to a more qualified resource.
Seek Consultation
▫ This step is for the helper to seek a consultation with a knowledgeable resource person to find out
about options for the student being helped.
▫ The student being assisted would first be informed that you, as a peer mentor would like to consult
with another source that can give suggestions or input as to the next step in assistance.
▫ By clarifying what you are seeking from consultation and getting the student’s consent, you are
enabling the student to be informed and in control of this process.
▫ When seeking consultation assistance, it is important to have clear and complete information about
the needs of the student you are representing.
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Developing Key Mentoring Skills:
Making referrals – How to refer
When you refer someone to another resource, you want the referral to be seen
as welcome assistance and not some sort of brush off. So be honest, direct and
straightforward in your recommendation. Explain in a clear and open manner
why you feel it is desirable or necessary to make a referral. Beyond honesty you
need to do the following:
• Become knowledgeable
▫ Explain fully the services that can be obtained from the resource agency or person you
are recommending.
▫ Provide confirming data about how the referral source can be useful and describe the
sources qualifications or capabilities.
▫ This information can be reassuring to the student so that they will receive the help
they need.
• Demonstrate Respect
▫ Allow the student to assume responsibility and control in making a contact or
appointment.
▫ Student initiation and follow-up enhance commitment and promote a sense of
independence in taking charge of the situation.
• Personalize the referral process
▫ It can be useful to give the student the name of a particular person who can be a direct
contact.
▫ This will personalize and make the experience seem less intimidating. Be carefully
though, it may be best not to provide the name of anyone who may be hard to contact
or may seem less available that a general referral.
Revisiting your Mentoring Self
In groups of two: Based on what you know now
about student growth, the areas in which they
face challenges, and factors that influence
change and development, please revisit your
Journey Time Line.
• Does this new knowledge shed new light on your
own journey as a student?
• Are you now able to identify some new markers in
your time line that you did not think of before?
• How, if at all, are you thinking about your journey
differently now based on this information?
• Do you now see more ways by which you can share
your past and current challenges and how you dealt
or are dealing with them?
Closing and Evaluation
• Go Around: Thinking back on what you
hoped that you would learn at the
beginning of the day to now, did you learn
what you hoped? Did you learn something
different.
• Complete Training Evaluation