​HOW DOES MENTORING WORK?

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 In our culture, most education follows a simple, information delivery model:
Passing a test or essay assignment is supposed to demonstrate a student understands the information and can apply it. Sometimes it works, sometimes it does not. Think of your experience at school, university and most training courses.

For a student to integrate the learning as well as organisational culture and values, an apprenticeship model is much more effective:  ​
The master / mentor demonstrates and the apprentice observes, getting a feel for what the mentor is doing and why. They imitate their mentor and experiment, engaging in trial and error and receiving correction along the way. Eventually the apprentice can apply the knowledge and innovate.

Mentoring / apprenticing is the most powerful way of learning:
  • Many professions like law have adopted formal apprenticeship programmes. David Gonski, a leading Australian lawyer and businessman, called his first mentor, the late Justice Kim Santow a saint. He taught Gonski how to not only be a good solicitor but a good person. By sitting in his office Gonski learned by osmosis how Santow ran his life, his practice as well as the way he looked at the world. (excerpt from Helping Hand by Andrew McMillen in Virgin Australia Magazine, February 2013) 
  • Germany’s economic success is partly attributed to its unique apprenticeship system where young workers learn to imitate skilled masters, and eventually surpass them through innovation. Countries relying on classroom based worker training fare worse in many measures of economic performance. (Why is Germany so much better at training its workers? by Tamar Jacoby in The Atlantic, October 16, 2014 https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2014/10/why-germany-is-so-much-better-at-training-its-workers/381550/)
  • Successful sporting enterprises engage experienced athletes to mentor younger team members. When Ian Thorpe was brought in to work with Australia’s top swimmers, he noted “I think I can help them understand what it’s like to be at the very elite level of swimming.” (Ian Thorpe to mentor elite athletes by Nicole Jeffry in The Australian December 2, 2010)
  • Spiritual aspirants the world over wanting more than preaching and reading the texts are invited to come alongside and imitate their rabbis, spiritual directors or gurus.  

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​HOW IS MENTORING DIFFERENT FROM TRAINING, COACHING, ETC?

 Mentoring is defined as a “working, relational experience through which one person empowers and enables another by sharing their wisdom and resources.”
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There is a lot of overlap between managing, training, coaching, mentoring and counselling.
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​ Mentoring is concerned with supporting a person’s well-being and direction, and can be focused on both one’s life and career.

A mentor is comparable to an elder in traditional indigenous societies. He works quietly in the background, supporting another man to acquire wisdom in areas of life, with goals and priorities, of his choosing. Mentoring builds capability over the long term, looking beyond tasks and short term goals. The mentor creates a safe learning environment, fostering curiosity, inquiry and reflection. The mentee is in control of the direction of the process and feeds back insights to the mentor.

By contrast,
  • Counselling is a therapeutic intervention to address an issue of someone’s well-being.
  • Coaches use a preferred coaching model to make observations and analysis to assist a coachee to improve skills within their job or area of accountability. It is task focused, relatively short term oriented and feedback tends to be one way from the coach.
  • Training is concerned with acquiring skills.
  • Managing involves building and sustaining an effective team of subordinates capable of producing the outputs they are accountable for.