As I was skimming articles the other day I came across this headline from Harvard Business Review: “Find a Micro-Mentor for Your Next Short-Term Project”
I felt immediately deflated.
It was the management tip of the day, and the description indicated that since mentors are in short supply, securing their attention requires offering a short-term arrangement of less than a month to complete a singular project.
The idea that future mentoring might parallel the micro-blog trend is disappointing to me. The term is currently used to describe a variety of personal and professional relationships where the more experienced pedagogue imparts upon the newly minted protege wisdom, guidance, support, and perspective for self-development.
If professional mentoring is trending towards brief stints with one, task-oriented outcome, what differentiates it from project management?
The etymology of this word comes from Greek mythology. Mentor was the friend to King Ulysses who cared for the King’s son, Telemachus, during his twenty-year absence. Mentor’s influence on Telemachus was formative to his insight, moral development, and character growth, thus the association of his name with this valuable role. (source)
There are many famous and exemplary mentoring pairs, even ones that pre-date the creation of the word. In the Old Testament there’s Elijah and Elisha; in the New Testament, Paul and Timothy; there’s Socrates and Plato; Teresa of Avila and St. John of the Cross; Freud and Jung; in more modern times, Bing Crosby and Frank Sinatra; Ezra Pound and T.S. Eliot; Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau, and the list goes on and on.
There’s a fascinating history in between the mythological introduction of the word and our current usage. It’s worth researching to understand the evolution of the concept and how its changing usage mirrors cultural trends. I’ll leave the rest to your own intrigue.
The modern iteration of the term was initiated with the 1978 pivotal work, The Seasons of a Man’s Life. It was at this critical juncture that mentoring ideology moved from communal learning to self-actualization. (source)
Rather than emphasizing individuation, I believe the goal of mentoring is not only to benefit the people on both sides but also the lives of their surrounding circles of influence. If mentoring becomes self-actualizing or condensed project management, the community suffers. This form of reductionism, if broadly applied, would also leave us without essential accountability.
The longevity of the mentoring relationship is one of its most endearing qualities. The opportunity to meet with a trusted adviser who understands us, knows our history, and is available to our questions is invaluable.
While I understand that there’s a denotative divide between personal and professional, here, I sometimes wonder if there should be. If we divide mentoring relationships categorically, we lose the impact of the term as indicative of someone who gets the whole picture and shapes the whole person.
If our culture is trending towards this type of reductionism regarding mentors, I hope we can resist the temptation to trend with it. I’m concerned that if the original intention of those relationships is diminished, it will lead to less accountability and minimal opportunity to be sharpened by the wisdom, insight, and character of those who have gone before us.
For my own love of poetry, I wonder what T.S. Eliot’s works would’ve been like had he spent only a month with Ezra Pound…
Hey Amy,
Mentoring is so beautiful and it would be a tragedy for it to not extend as far as it is able. Becoming more aware of these changes in culture helps me understand myself and my own tendency towards individualization. Thanks for depicting and explaining mentoring relationships, defined outside of cultures trends. I have some follow up questions… what does communal learning look like in a relationship? How does someone in one mentoring relationship impact a surrounding community? I’m sure it happens by naturally and intentionally carrying what they’ve grown in and experienced. I guess the natural part is just expressing yourself (who you are and how you’ve grown). And, maybe the intentional part is encouraging dialogue with others, sharing back and forth; instead of neglecting those conversations in the busyness of getting or doing the next thing increase ourselves. (But, it’s interesting because, in Maslow’s needs, love and belonging needs come before self-actualizing needs. So, according to Maslow, we need to feel a sense of belonging in a community, even before we can grow more fully into who we are meant to be. (Maybe being a part of a community is more important and more meaningful than trying to self-actualize yourself) But, I was wondering before thoughts of Maslow’s needs, what does it look like to intentionally intermingle what we experience among relationships rather than categorize and separate relationships?
Thanks for your thoughts,
~Marina
Great questions, Marina. I’m glad to see you value these concepts enough that you’re willing to wrestle with them. The difference between community-oriented learning and self-actualization is that self-actualization has the individual’s growth and development as the primary focus. The individual’s personal fulfillment is the main goal. A community-focused approach would say that personal growth and development is only valuable when it’s used to care for others, connect with them, and help them mature. Self-awareness in isolation is tragically incomplete. It hasn’t accomplished the ultimate goal of impacting others. Self-awareness rarely happens in isolation anyway. And, as you’ve stated, that isolation is counterproductive to our desires to belong. Mentoring, at its heart, should facilitate our sense of belonging and cultivate our maturity.
Amy
I was both informed and stimulated by this article on mentoring.
It is particularly timely since I have taken on a new associate who, while experienced, regularly seeks my guidance from many more years of practice. I have noticed, however, that what you say about both the mentor and protege benefitting from the relationship is true. My new associate has brought a fresh, vigorous prospective and taught me things; which I am open to and benefit from.
David
David,
Thank you for your comment. I’ve always experienced mentoring relationships as mutually beneficial and strategic opportunities to sharpen the mentor’s personal development and humility. When we engage in such profound relationships, no matter what side of the dyad, we can’t help but be changed.