Mentoring

Bob Garvey, Professor of Mentoring and Coaching at Sheffield Hallam University

Graphic – I don't need mentoring, I need more time!

Professor Bob Garvey: Yeah, fair point "I don't need mentoring, I just need more time" fair point of course. One of the things when you're busy, when people are busy is that often the ability to reflect on what's going on disappears and then we just react, respond and do busy busy and that's what leads to stress.  Giving yourself a bit of space every now and again to reflect about what is important about what you are doing pays huge dividends. It enables you to think things through, it reduces your stress, it builds your confidence and it solves your problems.

Graphic – What does mentoring have to offer?

Professor Bob Garvey: As you start approaching the new Diploma, whether you are a teacher in a school or a colleague working in a FE college or a work based practitioner or an employer's group there will be challenges and problems that you will encounter. Problems shared are problems halved and if you can talk about it to someone else you can develop insights into those problems, you can develop understandings into those problems and move forward and take appropriate action to make the thing work. It's about offering each other support in times of change.

Graphic – How will I benefit?

Professor Bob Garvey: The kind of benefits that you get with mentoring are increased confidence, self assurance, you get problems resolved and solved and new insights into things and new understandings and as that happens you deal with the transition and change more effectively.

Graphic – Will it benefit my learners?

Professor Bob Garvey: Of course the Diploma is ultimately for the people that are learning there is no doubt about that and everybody that is engaged in the educational process is interested in how it affects the people that they work with, the learners. If you are feeling confident, if you are feeling that you are able to resolve and meet the challenges then that will come through in the way in which you work with the people you are working with, with your learners. In doing that they will feel confident, they will feel assured, they will feel excited and energised because they'll feed from you.

Graphic – What's involved?

Professor Bob Garvey: One of the great things about mentoring is that it's very ordinary and very normal. It's about human relationships and it's about learning to have a different kind of conversation and at the heart of it is learning to listen to others and ask appropriate questions. So anyone can do that... But you need a group of people that you can work with. You need to get to understand each other, you need to establish some ground rules and then start working with the process, take it in turns, have one person to have an issue they want to discuss, you'll explore it, you'll think about it, you'll develop an understanding and then you'll decide what action you're going to take and how that action might be supported to move you forward.