-
The
Developmental Mentoring Continuum
© 2008,
Barry Sweeny
INDEX:
A Framework That Illustrates
the Sequence of Mentoring Applications Across Age and Career Levels
There are so many applications for mentoring!
Mentoring strategies are used to guide and assist at-risk youth,
newly hired employees, fast track managers, higher education students,
all kinds of people in every imaginable walk of life, position,
and kind of organization. There are so many applications that
we may not see the consistant, simple, sequential flow of mentoring
through life and careers.
The Developmental Mentoring Continuum is a framework
which was developed to illustrate that sequence of mentoring applications
across age and career levels. Maybe that span of applications
seems of little use to you? DON'T BE TO HASTY TO MOVE ON without
reading and considering this continuum. EVERY organizations has
a hierarchy structure of some kind, and that means there is a
potential for multi level mentoring to deliver more effective
learning and improvement of performance.
The Basic "Unit"
within the Developmental Mentoring Continuum is one person who is
both:
- A Protege, learning from a mentor, and...
- A Mentor, sharing what they know with
others.
The adjacent figure illustrates this basic "unit"
as the oval labelled "Me".
The M stands for the role the person plays as
a Mentor, and the P represents this same person's role as a Protege,
when the person works with his/her own mentor. The arrows show
how the mentoring relationships of this one person link to other
persons, each serving as both a mentor and a protege in their
own relationships.
The Basic Concept
Next, each of those persons' relationships extend
to working as a protege and as a mentor with still other persons,
repeating the basic unit over and over again. The essential concept
behind this is, "Everyone IS a mentor, and is BEING mentored."
We are all continually learning and supporting others' learning.
That is a true learning organization, or what the author calls
a "mentoring culture".
The Developmental Mentoring
Continuum
The Continuum below illustrates how each
persons' relationships extend to working as a protege and as a
mentor with still other persons, repeating the basic unit over
and over again.
Across this Continuum the content of the dialogue
changes depending of the goals and responsibilities of each
person, but the mentoring strategies remain the same.
The Continuum shows skill, career
and leadership development at an adult level, such as occurs in
one’s career, but these goals also are part of earlier youth and
student mentoring levels as well. As one person grows and moves
through the Continuum, they may benefit from many separate, unrelated,
informal mentoring experiences and formal mentoring programs.
Even within one program, the goals of mentoring
change, there is overlap in each relationship, and so the same
activities are used to serve more than one goal.
How Mentoring Starts & How
It Grows
Often, when a new mentoring program starts, it is within one
organization and the program focus is on just one or two
of these developmental levels, depending on their perception of
unmet needs. Eventually, as the organization comes to value what
mentoring contributes at those levels, other unmet developmental
needs, performance expectations, and additional goals will be
adopted. Then mentoring is expanded to function across the
levels of experience in staff and the hierarchy of roles,
to build the capacity of all.
Sometimes the mentoring even extends beyond the limits of the
organization:
- Because the PEOPLE want to “give back” the
mentoring “gift” that they feel they have received as proteges,
and...
- Because the ORGANIZATION wants to develop those
on whom the organization’s future success depends.
The essential concept behind it all is, "Each
person IS a mentor, and is BEING mentored." All are continually
learning and supporting others' learning.
