The Mentoring Mountain

This thesis has already highlighted that successful mentoring relationships evolve if the expectations of both mentor and mentee are aligned and met in the early stages.

Findings from this study indicated that conversations in the early phase of mentoring tended to focus upon the nuts and bolts of headship but, as the relationship between mentor and mentee grew, the immediate task focus was overtaken by more complex people management issues. Having built a foundation of trust in dealing with the internal challenges of processes and then people in school, the mentoring relationship may begin to focus on more externally focussed issues – political insight and strategic planning.

Mentoring is more successful if both career enhancing and psychosocial functions can be encapsulated; wise mentors employ techniques to put mentees at ease in the early stages of the relationship to develop rapport which allows the ‗thornier‘ issues to be

discussed. This thesis proposes a model which offers a synopsis of the evolution of the personal relationship in relation to the learning that takes place.

Figure 1 depicts the Mentoring Mountain – a model to describe how a mentoring relationship may evolve over time. Whether and when this mountain can be climbed by the mentoring dyad is determined by a complex interplay of factors arising from relationship between mentor and mentee, the level of complexity of the issue required to be addressed and the preparedness of the dyad to shoulder the risk involved. It is proposed that as the needs of the mentee move from an operational to strategic focus, the issues become increasingly complex. With this shift there is also more inherent risk – risk of exposure or risk of consequence - and without a solid foundation of personal trust and mutual respect, the mentoring relationship may not progress as the benefits may not outweigh the risks perceived.

Figure 1 The Mentoring Mountain

As the mentoring mountain is climbed, it is proposed that the purpose of the conversation shifts from ‗doing‘ to ‗being‘. Learning about doing is conceptualised as gaining knowledge about certain things - the knowing how and knowing what of headship (Burgoyne and Williams 2007) with notions of certainty and precision - what this thesis has considered the ‗nuts and bolts‘, survival skills of early headship, transactional leadership or, more simply, management.

Personal Dilemmas

Strategy and Politics People and Operations

Nuts and Bolts Tasks

The Relationship Rapport/Trust/Confidentiality The Issue Complexity/Uncertainty/Risk

More sophisticated mentoring conversations are required at the higher slopes of the mountain and have a greater focus on being – on the tacit, personal knowledge, self awareness, empathy and self-regulation needed to make wise judgements in complex situations where values are contested and the leader has to find a pathway through paradox (Handy 1994 p.3). It is at this higher altitude where personal and social competences can be developed; traits required in the predominant paradigm of transformational leadership in schools. Mentoring at the mountain summit is reserved for issues where there is greatest ambiguity and risk - a space where the novice leader can safely explore ethical tensions, moral dilemmas, doubts, uncertainties and crises of identity.

6.5.1. Mentoring at the margins of the mountain

This thesis has established the need for shared expectation and positive feelings about mentoring to allow the mentoring relationship to develop; relationships can be spoiled where expectations change and the relationship is no longer mutually enhancing. It is proposed that such effects can be included within the model in Figure 1. If the positive feeling, expectation, need or the learning goal orientation (Kim 2007) differs between mentor and mentee, the relationship could stall at the base of the mentoring mountain, resulting in a focus on lower level task focussed issues, symptomatic of ‗marginal‘

mentoring with limited effectiveness (Ragins et al. 2000, Simon and Eby 2003).

Marginal mentoring reflects a theme within this study where there was the recognition that mentoring was perceived to be extremely useful but acknowledgment that there were many factors that had to be right in order for the relationship to fulfil expectations. If mentoring did not progress to a place where more challenging developmental conversations took place, or personally fulfilling relationships resulted, there was a sense of disappointment expressed. In these cases, blame was rarely targeted at the individual mentors and mentees but on external factors – the matching process, clarity of expectation, practical arrangements and the training and support provided by the CSLA. It is proposed that the basis for the use of mentoring as a strategy is flawed if it is expected to fulfil the functions of classic mentoring. It is not surprising that there are inconsistencies in what is expected in terms of both outcome and process of mentoring in the CSLA if it is not a dyad but triad - with the responsibility for the relationship perceived to be the CSLA. It could be argued that the responsibility for the success of the relationship ultimately does fall on the employer if mentoring occurs in contracted time as the time spent on mentoring is publicly funded.

As such, secondary school mentoring is an employer-led support strategy and can be

examined in terms of outcomes to the organisation. The model enacted by most primary school mentoring dyads is more challenging to characterise in terms of ownership, as it tended to be outwith the pupil day but within contracted hours.

6.6. What does mentoring do that other forms of leadership