Designing A Mentoring Job Description, Mentor Application and Contract

© 2008 by Barry Sweeny

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I get many requests for help in defining a mentor job description and a mentor application. These seem so straight forward, but actually, they require us to become involved in a more complex area than may be first apparent. There are three aspects to working in this area:

1. The conceptual framework which guides your creation and use of mentor statements

2. Statements mentors might need to make BEFORE becoming a mentor, like

* a mentor application

3. Statements mentors might make which clarify the commitment they are making as they BECOME a mentor. Examples of these statements might be:

* A mentor’s oath

* A mentoring contract

* Acceptance of a job description

Before we can look at each of these four mentor statements (#’s 2 and 3), we need to discuss (#1) the conceptual relationships between effective mentor characteristics, roles, and tasks. Then we can use that framework to consider how best to design and use applications and any other statements we might ask mentors to make.

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#1 - THE CONCEPTUAL FRAMEWORK

The first question we must answer is ”what are the relationships among the characteristics, roles, and tasks of effective mentors?” Here is a diagram that can help clarify these terms.

Characteristics & Mentor Roles Are:	Mentor Tasks Are:
The most global & intangible	More specific & concrete
The hardest to use objectively	Easiest to use objectively

In actual practice, I find that the lists of “characteristics” of effective mentors which many programs develop are actually pretty useless because they intermix the “roles” and the “tasks” of effective mentors. Unfortunately, people use these two terms interchangeably when they actually mean different things.

ROLES describe what a mentor should BE or BE LIKE, and so are more subjective and abstract. This is what makes it so tricky and maybe useless when we use them for something like mentor selection, the frequent purpose of a mentor job description and application.

If the roles of effective mentors are used to develop a mentoring application that will help you select effective mentors, the selection process will become pretty subjective too. For example, one mentor role is that the mentor serves as a “friend”. My question is, “What mentor, on filling in an application, will state that they are not friendly?” How can I say whether you are or are not someone else’s friend? Yet truly, some mentors do not ACT like friends of their protege. This is why I feel roles are not too helpful. I do feel that all mentoring and induction programs need to define “The Roles of Ideal Mentors”. However, in order to make roles even more useful, such as for guiding decisions or mentoring behaviors, we also need to make those roles more concrete and observable by defining their equivalent TASKS. Doing so will make using them easier because they will be more specific and objective.

TASKS are those things which effective mentors must DO. They are observable behaviors and so it is much easier to be objective about whether they are present or not in any mentor. For example, the tasks that relate to the role of a friendly mentor might be stated as follows:

Effective mentors demonstrate friendship to their proteges by:

A. ADVOCATING for their protege
B. LISTENING to the protege’s ideas, dreams, needs, & concerns
C. PROTECTING CONFIDENCE, by establishing & maintaining the mutual respect & trust needed for the risk-taking necessary for learning & professional growth
D. REACHING OUT, as in helping a protege feel less a guest & more a peer & team member
E. CELEBRATING by recognizing accomplishments, affirming growth, & building professional self confidence.

This is why, in my own mentor training materials, I present both the ideal roles and ideal tasks done by effective mentors. That way mentors and proteges can see the more abstract attitudes and dispositions behind the concrete ways which mentors behave.

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USING MENTORING TASKS AS A GUIDE FOR DECISIONS

Before we can select some other program’s application to use or we design our own, we must have clarified the characteristics or mentoring roles that we want our mentors to assume (to BE) and then have translated those roles into more tangible mentoring tasks (to DO). Once we have defined what we want to see mentors DO, then we can consider the application, contract, or other statement’s language to make them descriptive of those tangible behaviors.

Now we can turn our attention to the selection or development of effective mentor statements, such as applications and contracts. If you do not already have a “Characteristics of Effective Mentors” or other such page on which to build, you may need to review documents you can find from other programs to SELECT one that can meet your program’s needs or seek Barry's help. If you do already have such a document, you may need to revise it to make it a more effective description to guide mentor selection and matching by the program and the behaviors of the mentors once they are assigned.

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A MENTOR JOB DESCRIPTION
A mentor application should at least contain a list of mentoring tasks, or it should be accompanied by the mentor tasks list. However, ideally a mentoring job description should contain BOTH a list of the ideal mentoring ROLES and the TASKS that effective mentors do. Be sure that these contain language that defines these roles and tasks as IDEALS toward which mentors should work. Also state that the best mentors are those who adapt what they do to fit the unique needs of their specific protege. That means:

• Mentors may NOT need to be (roles) and do (tasks) with all proteges, all those things which are on the ideal lists.
• Mentors WILL need to be and do all the things on the ideal list as they serve a range of different proteges across an extended time.

What follows is a job description I found on the Internet. I provide it here to give readers the opportunity to use the ideas I have presented in this paper to evaluate an example job description for its usefulness and to consider whether it is focused on general roles (BE) or on specific tasks (DO), or both.Consider this an opportunity to test your understanding of the best prctices described above.

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A SAMPLE - FULL TIME MENTOR JOB DESCRIPTION

Is this a good job description?

Based on reading my ideas earlier in this article, would you think that I would like this job description?

• If you were a mentor candidate, would you know what to consider to help you decide if you should apply to be a mentor?
• If you already were a mentor in this program, would you know what was expected of you?

If you concluded that I believe such a job description is a good one (not great), you are right. It is specific and task-focused enough that a candidate could envision exactly what they must do as a mentor, yet it is not so specific as to be a “laundry list” that is overly prescriptive.

While this sample job description is a “good” one, the problem I find is that it does not ALSO help me decide as a mentor candidate if I am the kind of person that an effective mentor must be. If I am already a mentor, this job description does not ALSO help me self-assess whether I am demonstrating the kinds of attitudes I should to be an effective mentor. In other words, this sample job description is useful in that it is focused on the specific TASKS, but would be even more helpful to also define mentoring ROLES.

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THE MENTOR APPLICATION

I suggest that mentors be asked to complete an application. Applications are an important opportunity for prompting mentor candidates’ reflection on the specific kinds of things that they will need to do and be when they become mentors. Such applications affirm that we don’t just want a bunch of mentors assigned. We want effective mentoring to happen, and we are clear about what effective mentoring looks like. If mentors can’t “see” themselves doing those specific things, then they should not become mentors.

Given these earlier statements, I bet you can guess how I feel about the approach of many mentoring programs that use applications which request information about the mentor candidate relative to the characteristics of effective mentors. Now you know that I find these only to work in theory and not in a practical sense.

Usually I encourage programs to first develop a job description for mentors which defines the basic roles and tasks mentors must perform, and then I suggest they need to develop the mentoring application to provide the information about how the mentor sees their ability to do what the job description includes.

For example, if the mentoring role requires a person who is a good listener, empathic, interested in the welfare of others, etc. then the application needs to ask something specific like, "Describe a situation in which you were involved with another adult and which demonstrates that you are a good listener, empathic, and that you promote the welfare of others."

The mentor application may also need certain additional items since the process and criteria for mentor selection often require certain qualifications. In such a case, the application should also ask the mentor candidate to provide certain information and even "certify" certain things, such as:

• If the mentoring job requires a master's degree, the application should ask for when that degree was earned, in what topic, and at what university.
• If the mentoring job requires attendance at a prior informational meeting, the application should ask the date of the meeting attended, so that the sign-in sheet (you did save that! Right?) can be checked for the date.
• If there is a requirement that the supervisor approve of the mentor's application (often the case) there should be a place for that, and probably a statement such as...

"The supervisor's signature verifies that the supervisor knows the candidate has applied to serve as a teacher mentor, approves the candidacy, and will provide the required released time to do the mentoring work."

I would urge you to be careful not to make the application an essay test however. If there are some complex issues to include, there are at least two alternatives to asking a mentor candidate to write an essay about a topic.

1. Develop, field test, and then refine a limited set of questions that will reveal what you need to know without requiring extensive writing. For example, mentors must possess many qualities and be able to effectively promote the growth of another adult. This requires skills that are not often learned in a classroom with children. Uncovering a candidate’s abilities with other adults could become a very cumbersome process, and yet it is critical to a mentor’s success. Here is an example of a question that does reveal what is needed on this topic, but without requiring an extensive essay.

“What previous experience have you had in leading other adults and what did you learn from that experience about how to be an effective leader of adult activities?”

2. If such questions cannot be developed, or if the topic requires more than a brief written answer, or if interaction may be needed to answer the question or to clarify an answer, it's probably better that there be an interview instead, where true dialog and interaction can occur.

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A MENTORING CONTRACT OR AGREEMENT

There are three issues I want to raise concerning contracts:

1. The Various Approaches
2. The Label “Contract”
3. The Use of A Mentoring “Oath”

1. A “contract” is a document that formalizes what we agree to do, usually because it requires the signature by each of the parties to the agreement. Here are some suggestions for approaches:

A. The typical approach is a “mentor contract” which defines what mentors agree to do. Usually, these expectations are a simple restatement of the mentoring roles and tasks or job description. I think this is often too one sided, as if the mentors have no expectations of the program or district.

B. A better approach is a “mentoring contract” defining what both the mentor and the program will do.

C. The best method is based on a wider definition of “mentoring” and is a contract in which the program coordinator, mentor and PROTEGE agree what they will do together.

2. Regarding the label “contract”, my preference is not to use the word “contract” within a mentoring program, unless it refers to the employee’s contract. In other words, I would reserve that word to mean only one thing. A better term is “agreement”, in part because it is a different term with a meaning that will not be confused with another different document, and in part because it sounds less institutional and more relationship-based.

3. Rather than use a mentoring contract or agreement alone, I would suggest using a mentoring “Oath”. An oath is a promise and a sacred commitment. A “Mentoring Oath” can be defined to include all parties to the mentoring process by making the language general enough to apply to all the parties. The mentor and protege state the oath together as they must work together to each contribute to the growth of the other person, AND to ensure that they are an effective mentoring pair or team.

The mentor program leader also should take the oath and do so in front of the mentors and proteges. The oath applies to the coordinator since that person plays the role of Mentor of Mentors, and is responsible for the on-going training and support of the mentor. This suggests that the Mentor of Mentors should know and model the same mentoring roles and tasks and use the same mentoring strategies as do the new mentors. How else would the mentors learn to be effective mentors, but through the example of the program leader(s)?

There is one other reason why I like the “oath” approach. Such an approach answers a question that few have every considered, the term “profession”. A profession is a highly complex career which requires considerable advanced preparation, uses a specialized vocabulary, involves complex behaviors requiring judgement and experience, and in which members assume understood moral, ethical, or service related responsibilities. Finally, a profession is usually "guarded" by its own members, meaning that joining the profession requires some process of selection and induction - a formal step is taken on assumption of duties.

That understanding of the term suggests (and I agree) that mentoring is a “profession”. My question is, “If it is a profession, what do it’s members PROFESS?”

In other words, like other professions whose members take an oath, mentors need to clarify what they profess to be true, their ideals. Mentoring should be based on such a profession of those ideals to which we aspire. Interesting idea, isn’t it? To write such an oath for mentoring would require some careful thinking about what ideals are and about the ideal roles and tasks toward which we agree to work.

If this idea appeals to you, consider the use of a “Mentoring Oath”. If your program has high expectations for the results of mentoring, defining and using documents such as mentoring job descriptions, agreements, and/or oaths will be an important way to clarify and focus on how to attain those expectations. Designing such documents is a complex but very critical and rewarding process. Its success may impact your entire program’s effectiveness because these documents set expectations for program participants.

I hope this paper has given you what you need to get started. Good luck with your program.