The Priory Witham Academy, Lincoln, UK, recognised the potential value of putting senior and middle leaders through the IAPC&M-accredited Advanced Workplace Mentoring course. It ensured that school leaders responsible for mentoring staff had
a) the opportunity to enhance their skills and
b) a common language to talk with each other.
Additionally, it meant that the mentorship role was recognised as a key professional development priority for the academy.
The academy leaders all had mentoring others as a component of their job descriptions. Still, they had not spent time clarifying, individually or collectively, what it meant or looked like in practice. Not unusually, their job descriptions required coaching and mentoring others. The leaders had all been on a coaching programme but were confused about the differing roles.
There was also a wide range of views about each concept and how coaching and mentoring differed in practice. Even though most leaders had been mentoring for many years or had been mentored, they could not agree on the mentoring process.
So, the Advanced Workplace Mentoring course took these school leaders on an intellectual and practical journey to work through the distinction between coaching and mentoring conceptually and pragmatically. The course conceptualised mentoring as directive coaching within an overall continuum model for supporting colleagues in the workplace. The model is conveyed in Diagram 1.
Diagram 1
The power of this model proved transformative in helping the school leaders see how they work with colleagues ( coaching and mentoring) and how their approach can vary (depending on their position on the continuum) relative to the needs of the individual they are helping.
The course took the position that Mentoring was ‘Directive coaching’ and Coaching was ‘non-directive coaching’. These leaders are now supporting others with the professional challenges they face in a highly effective way that builds on the continuum mindfully and skillfully.
The Advanced Workplace Mentoring course also provides ample opportunity for practice and introduces participants to a solution-focused model, broadly described in the top row of Diagram 2.
Solution Focussed, Non-Directive v Directive Coaching
Diagram 2
The mindful, skilful coach/mentor works with their client through the five-stage process, moving across the Non-Directive – directive continuum as appropriate to meet the client’s needs.
Solution Focused Non-Directive v Directive Coaching
Diagram 3
The route through the matrix indicated in green in Diagram 3 was appropriate for one relatively inexperienced colleague. So, the leader started moving them towards greater confidence by finding ways through the professional challenges they were facing. The school leaders found this matrix helpful in planning support for their mentorship work.
The learning styles of the coach/mentor and the client coachee/mentee were introduced as further dimensions for consideration. The interaction between the client’s learning style and the directive/non-directive continuum was considered in-depth using case examples that the leaders brought to the course.
The learning styles model and the mentor–coach continuum provided the leaders with vehicles to gain insights into the possible reasons for their past less-than-effective attempts to support colleagues. Their new solutions-focused approach provided them with a more effective way to secure positive energy in their work with clients, collectively creating a more positive and solution-focused ethos within the school.
The course has added the following value to the individual school leaders, and the school as an organisation has benefited as follows:
All senior and middle leaders are now certificated mentors
The school is confident they have all been through a course accredited by a recognised body.
The school consistently interprets the notion of coach/mentor and collectively senses what it means to be supported individually through the solution-focused process described above.
Coaching/mentoring is now an embedded feature of the culture of the school
Colleagues are served by one another using a known model.
Touchstone Development Ltd. provides the 6-hour Advanced Workplace Mentoring course accredited by IAPCM, which can be delivered face-to-face or virtually.