Mentors & Prospective Mentors: Frequently Asked Questions
Q. How much time does it take to serve as a mentor? I'm really busy and am afraid I don't have enough time to devote to mentoring.
- A. As stated in our program's Guidelines and Best Practices, you should meet at least once per month with your mentee. Some mentoring partnerships meet more often, every two weeks by their own agreement. Assume those are 1 hour meetings, thus 1-2 hours per month. In addition, all mentors receive their own copy of The Mentor's Guide, 3rd ed., 2022. We do expect mentors to read and use this resource to guide and refine your mentoring practice. Assume you spend an hour reading or looking into other information on behalf of your mentee, and/or communicating with other mentors in our Teams channel.
- Thus, serving as a mentor might involve on average about 2-3 hours each month. Out of your roughly 160 work hours available each month, that's about 2% of your monthly work time.
Q. Are there any benefits to mentors in the library's Mentoring Program?
- A. There are a lot of benefits including developing leadership and interpersonal skills, which is helpful for your own professional development. Many mentors also feel satisfaction in helping a colleague learn and develop. Good mentoring plays a very important role in helping the library as a whole become more inclusive, helping new colleagues feel they belong and can succeed here. Good mentoring also plays a role in retention. It's something you can point to on your c.v., annual evaluations, and promotions that shows you are paying it forward in your commitment to help new colleagues while also aligning your actions with the ISU Strategic Plan. Even if we ourselves have had some less than satisfactory experiences along our career path, many mentors are motivated to make the path easier for others who follow. We are also looking into ways to make service in our Mentoring Program more visible in annual evaluations and promotions, and are seeking to establish a Mentoring award to recognize outstanding mentoring service in our program.
Q. Why is the library's Mentoring Program focused only on getting promoted?
- A. It's not. The library's Mentoring Program focuses on the needs of Academic Librarians who enter ISU Library as AL I or II. Mentoring pairs discuss and address many issues of interest or concern to the mentee. Our assessment surveys show that mentoring pairs discuss many topics, including how to put presentations together, rehearsing / reviewing presentations or papers, networking and how to increase visibility, organizational climate, campus and community climate, navigating the library environment, professional organizations, job searches, and more. Of course, those who are interested in being promoted can certainly discuss those issues with their mentor.
- Since mid-2018, the Mentoring Program encourages mentees to take the lead in meetings and on agendas: whatever mentoring issues they wish to discuss or work on becomes the focus.
Q. Supervisors should be able to provide all the mentoring a new Academic Librarian needs. Why can't supervisors just mentor their supervisees?
- A. Most research indicates that supervisors should not attempt to serve in a formal capacity as mentor to their own supervisees. For one thing, supervisors lack objectivity when it comes to their supervisees. Supervisors also hold power over their supervisees, being responsible for their annual performance reviews. However well intentioned, a supervisor attempting to serve a dual role may find themselves in a conflict of interest or other complicated situation with their supervisee. As one researcher states, it is a "slippery slope that often limits the authenticity of the relationship." Similarly, supervisees may need a more objective and neutral ear when it comes to some issues, including departmental dynamics, getting additional feedback or assistance, or even discussing an issue they may be having with a supervisor.
- It is best for all concerned to keep these roles separate, allowing supervisees to broaden their network by having an objective mentor who is invested in their success.
Q. Why is the library's Mentoring Program only for Academic Librarian I's and II's?
- A. Entry-level AL I's and II's have been the focus for years as the library seeks to acclimate new librarians. In part this is a legacy issue as the Mentoring Program -- like most mentoring programs in academia -- was based on a faculty mentoring model. The point is to help ensure new librarians and archivists get on a path toward success. Obviously supervisors and unit colleagues play an important role here. Mentors also play a unique important role in helping new librarians feel a sense of belonging in knowing someone else beyond their unit or department is actively invested in their success. For retention, it is critical to do what we can to assist new librarians during this especially vulnerable stage.
- There is some interest in broadening the Mentoring Program to include other work classifications. This is a great idea that will rely largely on interest, learning goals, and availability of mentors.
Q. Should we really be having librarian mentors from other departments mentoring librarians whose jobs they do not understand? For example, archivists and librarians are really different.
- A. Mentors are not teaching mentees how to do their jobs. Mentees have their own supervisor and unit colleagues for that kind of support, as well as regional or national colleagues through professional organizations. Mentors in our program provide a different kind of assistance, such as seeing to the psychosocial needs of new Academic Librarians entering a new environment, new campus and community, or new role; mentors help in common areas such as short- and long-term career goals, helping hone presentations or papers, helping the mentee build their network, and so on. While each Academic Librarian's needs may be different, it shouldn't be necessary for an excellent and effective mentor to be from the same niche area or share the same set of professional responsibility areas as the mentee. In fact it can be beneficial for a mentee to have a mentor from outside their department or area as this can broaden their network and perspectives as well.
Q. The Mentoring Program was evaluated in Summer 2022. What changes or improvements have been made since then?
- A. Lots of good changes have been made to further strengthen the program:
- The "icebreaker" meeting between prospective mentees and mentors has been changed to include opportunities for one-on-one short meetings with mentor(s) of interest. This improvement suggested by a mentee via our evaluation survey. We will need to continue to refine this process especially when more than one mentee is seeking a mentor.
- Mentees and mentors now receive their own copies of mentoring guide books. Mentees receive The Mentee's Guide: Making Mentoring Work for You, and mentors receive their own copy of The Mentor's Guide, 3rd ed. 2022. In survey results, some mentees and mentors felt it would be helpful to have more guidance available to them to structure meetings, set goals, etc. Both books are authored by well-known mentoring researcher Lois J. Zachary; both books include helpful approaches, worksheets, checklists, scenarios, reflection guides, and other resources.
- Eligibility to serve as a mentor now includes librarians and archivists who enter ISU Library as AL III or AL IV. The requirement for them to have gone through their own successful promotion at ISU Library has been removed.
- For mentors, a Teams channel has been created to facilitate group communication and discussion. Over time, the goal is to improve communication and learning through this online community of practice. Occasional meetings may be added.
- Making mentoring count: Mentors and librarians eligible to serve as mentors indicated on surveys that it could be helpful to include service in the library's mentoring program on Annual Evaluations and in the promotion processes. We are currently working with the Academic Librarian Committee to include service as a mentor in our program on Annual Evaluation and promotion processes and documentation; this work is ongoing in Fall 2022.
- Mentoring Award: Mentors and librarians eligible to serve as mentors indicated that a Mentoring award could be helpful for recognizing this important but often invisible work. We are actively looking into the development of such an award, as of Fall 2022. We are looking at the University's mentoring award as a potential model to follow.
- Identifying mentoring needs of mid-career and established-career librarians: Two listening sessions were held in early Fall 2022 to better understand mentoring needs for these groups. Most topics that emerged dealt with coping with isolation and silos; job coaching, and professional development to learn a new skill such as project management. These needs can be addressed and met through other means than actual mentoring, and discussing with one's supervisor would be a good first step. Group mentoring or learning circles could certainly be established in the future if shared interests emerge, such as writing circles or project accountability circles.
- This guide and this page! The surveys and listening sessions showed there are some gaps in our understanding of what the current mentoring program consists of, what is its focus, and what exactly constitutes mentoring. Much of this is a legacy issue as most mentors and prospective mentors went through the library's mentoring program before it was redesigned in mid-2018. Our program was first evaluated in 2019, which helped inform our redesign to focus on the needs of mentees and for mentees to drive meetings and agendas. Our Mentoring Program LibGuide includes our research-based Best Practices, resources, and helpful information - plus now also this page reflecting what we have learned through our latest round of program evaluations.
Q. What's the difference between mentoring and job coaching, job shadowing, or professional development in general? I could also just ask someone knowledgeable about something. Aren't all of these things really mentoring?
- A. The research and practitioner literature typically indicate these are different things. It may be common to fudge these together but in order to focus on improving mentoring, it's helpful to define and distinguish these clearly. At its most basic, mentoring is about a learning relationship between two or more people. For that relationship to succeed, there needs to be trust. Trust is developed over time through clear communication and coming to agreement on parameters, goals, and such things as meeting times and frequency. Mentoring is typically a long-term relationship with learning and development as the main goals. Multiple goals and issues can be addressed in a typical mentoring relationship, along with plenty of brainstorming, discussion, feedback, and active listening. Mentoring can suffer if trust is broken or both parties do not hold themselves accountable to show up and engage in meetings.
- In the traditional one-on-one mentoring model, the relationship is typically focused on meeting the learning, development, and belonging needs of the mentee. At the same time, both the mentee and mentor benefit from the relationship, learning from each other and each growing professionally. Both parties need to actively engage in learning and making the relationship work well.
- Group mentoring models also include the need for trust and typically members work to support one another and help each other stay accountable in terms of a specific and often long-term goal, such as writing or publishing.
All professional learning and development goals may not be suitable or possible for a mentor to address, which is another reason why it's important to distinguish between the various types of professional development.
Other types of development listed in the question above are typically shorter term, much less focused on the whole person and less focused on trust, accountability, or relationship.
- Asking someone about something is basically just a conversation. It can be very informal, random, and finite. If you are repeatedly seeking someone's advice or input, that could potentially develop into a learning relationship of some kind, but it may lack the kind of objectivity, trust, and investment in your success that a true mentoring relationship should include. And because the person is technically not your mentor, they may not have any commitment to make themselves available to you.
- Job coaching is more contractual and performance-based. There is a certain job skill or technique a person wants to learn or practice over a designated time period. The coach may review, critique, or correct the resulting work. The contract typically concludes when the person has sufficiently learned that skill. Job coaching may be initiated by an individual or by their supervisor especially in cases where specific skillsets need to be expanded or improved.
- Job shadowing is an arrangement to follow and/or interview another professional to learn more about their job responsibilities. Job shadowing may be initiated by an individual and potentially facilitated by their supervisor. It would also involve the availability and agreement of the person being shadowed. Job shadowing is typically finite and very short-term.
- Learning something new is a goal in most forms of professional development. Professional development is a very broad category of different types of learning programs or learning content. This could take many forms such as a fee-based or free course or program, a workshop series, a one-off webinar among many others. If a learning cohort or discussion group is a feature, some limited relationship could develop but this is typically finite. Wanting to learn something new can be initiated by the individual and should involve their supervisor's awareness / consent if fee-based and / or time consuming while on the job.
Q. Is it possible to have more than one mentor?
- A. Of course! Various professional organizations and chapters have mentoring opportunities that are more focused on an individual career niche, which would be an excellent way for deepening one's understanding of one's own professional practice responsibilities. In academic mentoring programs, it's common to hear the phrase that "there is no one guru." We shouldn't expect any mentor to know everything or have experience and knowledge in all areas. Mentors in our Mentoring Program know the ISU Library and our processes, culture, campus, community, and history here. We have deep professional knowledge at the local, regional, and often national levels, and experiences in many areas that are likely relevant and helpful to share with others, and we are helpful sounding boards on local procedures and issues of all kinds. It is very possible for an AL I or II to have both a mentor from our program and a more subject-specific mentor from a professional organization. Similarly, networking groups and Faculty & Staff Associations exist on campus and can serve as other ways to connect to a different kind of mentoring.