A Rough Guide to Mentoring

What's the point of a research consortium? It's a tough, existential question to face on a snowy, February day, but a valid one. 

When I started as Director of Eastern Arc, the regional research consortium comprising the universities of East Anglia, Essex and Kent, I looked around at the other consortia across the UK. I managed to find at least 12, all with different raisons d'etre. For some it was to share equipment, for others it was to facilitate engagement with industry, and others it was to provide a framework for doctoral training. 

For me, it was broader than that. In the words of the ill-fated 'remain' campaign, it enables members to be 'stronger together,' to share knowledge and expertise and to find areas where they can work to support each other. 

However, it also allows us to think differently about how we work. Higher education in the UK has become increasingly marketised, and we are forced into competition more often than collaboration. Consortia run counter to that, and they enable us to find the commonalities from which we jointly benefit. 

One area that we have done so is in mentoring. Last year I worked with Tracey Loughran, a professor of history at Essex, to develop a scheme that would allow academics at each of the three EARC universities to be mentored by a colleague at one of the others. 

Having a mentor at a different university meant that you could step outside the specific, local issues of your own department, faculty and institution, to go beyond the politics and structures, and to get some objective insights. 

For us it was important that the scheme had two features: that it was genuinely academic-led, and that it was light-touch and unbureaucratic. We didn't want it to be what many mentoring schemes had become: a framework for appraisal overseen by human resources. Although that had a place, it wasn’t what we wanted. 

We launched it in the summer, with a deadline of October. We expected a handful of participants; instead, we got 84. Tracey did the heavy-lifting in match-making them; we had to recruit a further 10 mentors for particular cases where we didn't have an appropriate match. By the end of term we finally had the partnerships set up, and we invited everyone to kick-off meetings in the New Year. 

To support those taking part, we prepared three guides: one was a broad introduction to the principles and purpose of mentoring, and the other two were guidelines for mentors and mentees. These are available here, and we are happy to share them with anyone else who is thinking of setting up a mentoring scheme. 

'Mentoring should be viewed as a relationship rather than a management activity,' wrote Tracey in the introduction to the first of these. 'It should be a safe non-judgmental relationship that facilitates a wide range of learning, experimentation and development.' 

So what does this relationship look like in practice? Here are six key points to consider if you are thinking of becoming a mentor or a mentee for the first time. 

• Trust, confidence, and respect are at the heart of the relationship. Both mentees and mentors must feel able to be honest and open with each other, able to talk in confidence, knowing that their viewpoints and concerns will be respected. As well as in the discussion itself, this respect and trust should be manifest in how the meetings are organised, their frequency and duration. 
• Mentees should take the lead. They set the agenda and raise the issues they want to discuss. Although you may, as a mentor, be able to bring your experience to bear in the discussion, your role is primarily to listen and to encourage the mentee to explore their issues, to understand their challenges, and to coach them in identifying the solutions. To do so, you should be an active listener - see the fifth point below. 
• Mentors will fulfil many roles. In doing so, the mentors may act as a sounding board, a facilitator, an advisor, a role model, a motivator and a challenger. S/he will need to take on these different roles at different times, and must be able to recognise which is appropriate when. 
• Mentees should be open. To get the most from the relationship you need to think aloud, challenge yourself, and take a different viewpoint. It is only by stepping outside of your comfort zone that you can really appreciate your position, and understand what your options are. 
• Mentors should be ‘active listeners’. You do not need to know everything or to offer ready-made solutions. Instead, you should listen, try to understand the mentee's aspirations and anxieties,and help the mentee to reach a new understanding. Active listening is how you do this: listen, and show that you are listening either verbally or nonverbally, and use open questions that go beyond yes/no answers. 
• Keep it professional. Although the relationship is friendly, it needs to remain professional and objective. There needs to be a certain distance, as this is crucial to maintain the honesty necessary for the mentoring to be effective. 

And honesty is what it is all about. Not only should you be honest within the meeting, but you need to be honest about the meetings. You haven’t failed if you feel that it isn’t working; sometimes mentoring relationships just don’t. 

It can be useful to have a ‘no-fault’ exit clause within a formal mentoring agreement that you sign prior to starting. This may seem a step too far, but you may be helpful in setting up the parameters of the relationship. We have a template for one in our mentoring guide. 

We have yet to complete the first cycle of the Eastern Arc mentoring scheme, but we hope to run it on an annual basis. Reaching out across the Arc, making connections between the universities, and being open to new ways of thinking is what a collaboration is all about. If we do nothing else with EARC, setting up this framework through which academics can help each other will be an achievement worth the investment. 

To find out more about the Eastern Arc Mentoring Scheme, click here. Special thanks to Tracey Loughran who suggested the scheme in the first place and provided the academic leadership of it.