Mentoring Strategies
As you begin to embark on your career and begin to interact and utilize your own apprentice(s), there are several roles with which you will have to become comfortable. Those roles are interpersonal, informal, and decisional. Captured within these three roles are four learning strategies that should be considered when working with apprentices; coaching, practicing, assessing, and reinforcement. These are described below.
Roles of the Mentor
Interpersonal Roles
Mentors are required to interact with a substantial number of people during a workweek. They may have conversations or meetings with other journeypeople, supervisors, site supervisors or managers, project teams, owners, suppliers, and the general public. Numerous studies have shown that good relationships are the backbone for getting things done and increasing efficiency as well as effectiveness. Relationships are the richest source of information for mentors because of their personal nature and their immediate impact upon daily operations.
Mentors are also responsible for the work of the people in their unit, and their actions in this regard are directly related to their role as a leader. The influence of senior apprentices and/or journeypersons is most clearly seen in the leadership/mentorship role. Formal authority to train others rests upon them and provides an opportunity for great potential in personal and professional growth. Their leadership determines, in a large degree, how successful they will become as well as how successful and confident their apprentices become.
Does the leader’s/mentor’s role matter? Just ask any journeyperson who has accomplished great things in their career. Did they work hard to achieve their current status? Yes, but they will also talk about how specific mentors helped them grow in understanding not only the technical aspects of their craft but also the interpersonal aspects as well.
Informational Roles
Mentors are required to gather, collate, analyze, store, and disseminate many kinds of information. In doing so, they become information resource centers, often storing huge amounts of information in their own heads, moving quickly from the role of gatherer to the role of disseminator in minutes. Although many business organizations install large, expensive management information systems to perform many of those functions, nothing can match the speed and intuitive power of a well-trained mentor’s brain for information processing. Not surprisingly, most mentors prefer it that way.
In the informational role, mentors pass privileged information directly to subordinates, who might otherwise have no access to it. Mentors must decide not only who should receive such information, but how much of it, how often, and in what form. Increasingly, mentors are being asked to decide whether subordinates, peers, customers, business partners, and others should have direct access to information without having to contact the mentor directly.
Decisional Roles
Ultimately, mentors are charged with the responsibility of making decisions on behalf of both the organization and the apprentices with an interest in both. Such decisions are often made under circumstances of high ambiguity and with inadequate information. Often, the other two mentor roles—interpersonal and informational—will assist a mentor in making difficult decisions in which outcomes are not clear and interests are often conflicting.
Mentors who take a longer-term view of their responsibilities are among the first to realize that they will need to reinvent themselves and their ways of modeling tasks and behaviours as older methods become obsolete and the digital era evolves over time.
Crises can arise because poor mentors let circumstances deteriorate or spin out of control. Conversely, good to great mentors find themselves in the midst of a crisis that they may not have anticipated but must react in and through it just the same.
This third role involves making decisions about who gets what, how much, when, and why. Resources, including time, equipment, human labor, or production space are all limited. Mentors must make sensible decisions about such matters while still retaining, motivating, and developing the best of their apprentices.
Watch the following video and although the setting is about mentoring new teachers, the principles are very transferrable to the context of mentoring/coaching in the skilled trades. With which role would you relate more? The mentor or the mentored?
How to Best Prepare
In a report from the Canadian Apprenticeship Forum[1] it was reported that journeyperson mentors can best prepare themselves for their mentoring role by remembering these key aspects;
- Learning about different styles of learning and communication.
- Knowing what they want to teach their apprentices.
- Choosing the right context to teach/model those skills.
- Learning about how to best get the concept communicated to their apprentice (pedagogy).
- Knowing what to look for and how to correct mistakes (assessment strategy).
- Choosing different teaching models to ensure
Finally, the last three practices that any mentor in the trades should have to consider is the role and practice of actually practicing what you want to teach, assessing the apprentice, and reinforcing the good skills and behavior while maximizing learning opportunities for both you and your apprentice.
Practicing
Practicing what you want to teach goes far beyond what your actual craft demands of and from you. Of course, there is an important aspect of actually looking for mastery in your craft. But there also resides within the role of practitioner the concept of asking your apprentice to demonstrate behaviours that you are also willing to participate.
For example, are you constantly late? Late to arrive and late from getting back to work after your scheduled breaks? While at the same time demanding that your apprentice show up on time (actually, if we’re honest we want our apprentices to show up early), and return back to work on time? This kind of behaviour may work with you because of your role and influence but it also teaches those under your stewardship that you do not respect anyone but yourself.
However, with regard to practicing, it is important to have the apprentice practice with a new skill that you have taught them. In some cases, this practice can occur right within the actual task, most times right beside you and under your direct supervision. In other contexts, you might want to consider having the apprentice demonstrate their understanding of the skill where the impact of making a mistake, and thus causing damage, can be minimized or eliminated. This may also provide the apprentice with a sense of confidence knowing that what they do right or wrong will no jeopardize the overall goal of the project.
Assessing
Assessment is not confined to the technical training institution’s classroom, lab, or shop area. Often the most effective assessment happens on the job and when the journeyperson is directly supervising the work.
In educational terms, there are two basic forms of assessment. Formative and summative. Formative assessment (on-going assessment) is the kind of assessment that is given during the time the apprentice is performing a particular task. This would necessitate the journeyperson being right beside the apprentice. However, with this type of assessment the apprentice is offered the opportunity to make small corrections, often in real-time, to correct any minor errors or omissions while maintaining a mandate of completing the task on time and without going back to fix any errors. Summative assessment (final assessments) is the kind of assessment that occurs after the work is completed. This type of assessment allows for room for the apprentice to feel in control of mastering their skill, yet with one significant drawback. If there are any errors or omissions, the apprentice must go back and fix them. This could cause a strain on time and resources which is why in most cases, this type of assessment is reserved for more advanced learners.
As with any assessment strategy, several factors play key roles in determining assessment outcomes.
For both the apprentice as well as the journeyperson. They are;
- What do you want to assess?
- Knowledge and understanding?
- Technical / Practical Skills?
- Functional Skills (Essential Skills)?
- How are you going to perform the assessment?
- Self-assessment?
- Peer-assessment?
- Spot Inspections?
- Industry Inspections?
Feedback
When performing any kind of feedback mechanism for learning it is important to keep in mind the need to be paying more attention to the present and the future rather than the past. Effective feedback can be very motivating as well as increase the confidence of your apprentices. Conversely, poorly constructed or communicated feedback can have the opposite effect and even influence the future performance of an apprentice. Practicing poor feedback mechanisms under the guise of your own personal experience as an apprentice is not only outdated and wrong, it does nothing to increase the professionalism of your craft.
In offering feedback, the mentor may consider employing the ‘What Went Well’ method as well as the ‘Even Better If…’ method. Focusing on what went well for the apprentice highlights their ability to perform some, if not most of, the skill(s) you are trying to teach. Using this type of method encourages the apprentice to critically think their way through the process and actually enables the apprentice to learn at a deeper level. Which leads to better retention and higher confidence.
Having the apprentice tell what might have been even better will further strengthen the learning moment and actually go a long way in building another potential mentor within your craft. An essential skill, critical thinking, not only encourages troubleshooting skills it also supports decision making processes and communication skills.
Reinforcing
The methods we choose to provide our feedback will either reinforce a growth mindset or a fixed mindset perspective. Those apprentices with a growth mindset often advance through their careers to become future supervisors or even contractors or business owners. The growth type of mindsets often encourages others to learn from their mistakes and thus reinforce their learning to deeper levels. As another essential skill, continuous learning is based primarily on a growth mindset. If an apprentice believes that they have the capacity to learn more technical skills, then they can manage changes that might occur in their chosen field due to changes in technology or in the type of tools and resources available.
Those with a fixed mindset often view themselves as people who cannot learn very much, have always suffered setbacks and even prejudices due to the application of poor feedback methods. If they believe that they cannot learn from their mistakes they are less likely to take on additional responsibilities and may even face temptations to cover up their mistakes. This is why it is so critical for the mentor to become familiar with the different learning preferences of those they mentor. Empowering your apprentice(s) to develop a growth mindset flows from your type of feedback and reinforcing strategies. They will begin to understand that their failures are not a reflection of their intelligence and thus your apprentices will become more resilient as well as becoming more confident to seek out solutions for their problems on their own.
Key Takeaways
Resources
Organizational Behavior – https://openstax.org/details/books/organizational-behavior
Canadian Apprenticeship Forum: Effective Journeyperson Apprentice Mentoring on the job: Tips, Strategies, and Resources. 2013.
Ingle, S., & Duckworth, V. (2013). Teaching and training vocational learners. Los Angeles, CA: Sage.
[1] Canadian Apprenticeship Forum: Effective Journeyperson-Apprentice Mentoring. 2013
