8/6/2019 Lessons in Mentoring

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8/6/2019 Lessons in Mentoring

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 Do you think we are not mentor-

ing our subordinates? What do

 you expect us to do differently? as the question that was posed by one of oursenior managers at the end of a day-long pro-gramme on mentoring. I felt that the efforts

of the whole day were watered down by thissimple question. As we grow into senior lev-els, one vital responsibility that gets addedup, though it may not be spelt out explicitlyin your Job Description is ‘mentoring’ of thegreenhorns. Mentoring calls for an earnest in-terest to groom the youngsters and it is moreabout attitude than about skills. It is quite atask to provide structured instructions as towhat mentors should do on a daily, weeklyor monthly basis and any such regimentedexercise would be devoid of the spirit of mentoring. However, when I recently hap-pened to observe the way yoga masters taughttheir learners to learn some difficult postures(asanas), I felt quite a few things could applyto mentoring practice.

Drill the habit of 'learning by do

ing'You cannot simply learn the difficult posturesof yoga just by listening to your yoga master.What masters do to teach them is to get youinto doing it right away. You get to listen toinstructions as you practice and now your lis-

tening is more intense because it matters towhat you do.

Mentoring is not about giving monologues toyour captive protégés but getting them intoaction. Assign them projects and assignmentswhere they can learn from first hand experi-ence. The best way to help them is to guidethem by sharing from your experience the pos-sible pitfalls they need to be wary of.

Give it when they need it the most

Masters were doing the rounds and giving us

instructions, but were not intervening in everystep. The mere feeling that they were aroundgave us the confidence to try out postureswhich we would dare not, left to ourselves.And help was at hand, when we faced diffi-culty.

It is but natural that a greenhorn would betwice careful about trying out anything newfor the fear of making mistakes and wouldrather avoid the risk. But that does not meanthat you spoon-feed. As a mentor, all you need

to do is to give them the confidence that whenyou are around, they can’t go wrong and if atall they do, you are there to assure them ‘mainhoon na’.

Push for the little extra stretch

A maxim we have in our vernacular says, ‘whatwas not bent at five can not be bent at fifty’.After attending the yoga session, I don’t sub-scribe to this view anymore. You can, if youpersevere to bend of course, under the guid-

ance of a right trainer. Yes, there could bepain in trying to flex what has hardened upfor years. But the gentle push the masters gaveat the right point made us stretch beyond thenormal, and the feeling that we were capableof doing it took the pain out of the extra-stretch.Mentoring is no different. It is the onus of mentors to ensure that their protégés do notsettle into a comfort zone that may mar theirgrowth. Mentors need to give that extra pushto stretch them beyond the comfort zone andtake them to newer levels consistently.

 Support when they tilt

Sometimes, when a beginner in an organisa-tion is assigned to a difficult and challengingproject that calls for coping with differentpushes and pulls, demanding customers andtight deadlines, s/he may tend to lose emo-tional balance and might decide to call it quits.

All that is needed of mentors is to providethat emotional support to keep their proté-gés in balance like how our yoga masters did.They were right there and provided a kind of 

scaffolding support to prevent us from tilt-ing and falling off while trying some difficultupside-down postures (Sirasasana).

Make them feel good even in

awkward positions

A beginner, when trying to do a new thing,could get into an awkward situation untils/he learns the ropes and becomes adept at it.You would agree with me if you could recallthe time you made your first presentation to

top management. Many a time, awkward situ-ations thwart the youngsters from trying it outagain in future and becoming better at it. If itis a crucial skill for success, then it could martheir growth. But a mentor can help a greatdeal in such situations by elevating their feel-ings and giving constructive feedback whilestripping out the awkward feeling associatedwith the event.

So, if you have been doing all these already,then you don’t probably need to be sitting in amentoring session.

9 to 6

Bharath Gopalan

The writer is a Learning & Development pro-fessional and presently steers the L&D prac-tice at Madras Cements. He holds MastersDegrees in Psychology and Human ResourceManagement.

Apr 2011 | The Business Enterprise