The Foundation for Human Resources Development recently organised a well-attended half-day conference on coaching and mentoring at Hilton Malta's Portomaso Suite.
Coaching and mentoring offer the person at work a special, intensive opportunity to address thoughts, emotions and spiritual factors directly, which are strongly linked to performance and output.
For managers, executives and directors coaching and mentoring is an ideal way to address competence and professional issues that could influence the performance of a larger number of people.
The seminar started with a brief introduction by Maria Pia Chircop, FHRD CEO, highlighting the three main core beliefs of mentoring and coaching, which are to: inspire; liberate, give freedom to think and act ; and celebrate success and achievement.
FHRD president Noel Scerri said in his address to the many HR practitioners present that the theme for the seminar was specifically chosen, in line with the FHRD's mission. However, he said, not enough research has so far been conducted on coaching and mentoring locally.
A mentoring culture could help organisations move from a command and control situation to better staff motivation, he said.
Professor David Clutterbuck was the first main speaker. A leading management writer and thinker, Professor Clutterbuck has more than 40 books and hundreds of articles to his name. He is also co-founder of the European Mentoring and Coaching Council and runs his own international consultancy, Clutterbuck Associates.
Mr Clutterbuck gave a very interesting talk about the benefits of mentoring, starting with why us as homo sapien sapiens have survived, unlike the Neanderthal man. It is our ability to share our learning and our curiosity that has been the key to our success, Mr Clutterbuck said.
Mentoring, Mr Clutterbuck added, is basically "offline help by one person to another in making significant transitions in knowledge, work or thinking". This is why anyone can be mentored, from graduates and new recruits to professionals. It is definitely not an up-down issue or a gender issue; men can mentor women and vice-versa, he said.
What a mentor cannot be is a direct boss as conflicts of interest could arise. A boss is more prone to assess and judge performance while a mentor is more inclined to gain mutual trust and confidentiality with ideas tested out together, he said.
This is why a good mentor must be good at listening with empathy, must always be ready to share experiences and learning, develops insight through reflection, acts as a sounding board and offers professional friendship, Mr Clutterbuck said.
Besides the benefits to the individuals, mentoring also brings advantages to the organisation by enhancing job performances; retaining talent; is cost-effective; and allows for mutual development.
Mr Clutterbuck went on to distinguish between supervision (boss) and mentoring (mentor). While supervision is more about goal commitment, immediate performance, the organisation's needs and extrinsic feedback, mentoring addressed relationship commitments, future performances, individual needs and intrinsic feedback, he said.
A good mentor must have the ability to instigate the mentees to think, to find solutions themselves. Mentors must be able to help others develop their wisdom, as many times mentees have the solutions themselves. Mentors must ask the difficult questions. Good mentors usually must have their own library of difficult questions, Mr Clutterbuck said.
"The purpose of learning dialogue is not to find a better answer. It is to find a better question. From a better question flows a stream of possibilities, in which better answers are eddies on the journey to discovery," he said.
With today's advances in technology, mentoring can also be done electronically but like everything this has its ups and downs. Mr Clutterbuck cited the following as the downside of e-mentoring:
¤ More difficult to recognise the undertones;
¤ Words can sometimes be misleading; and
¤ Heavier focus on transactional exchanges rather than on relationship-building tends to make the relationship shallower.
However, there are also pluses, such as:
¤ Mentors have more time to think about advice and questions;
¤ Mentees have more time to consider their answers;
¤ More rapid responses by the mentor in urgent circumstances; and
¤ Dialogue is broken into shorter, progressive exchanges spread over several days rather that one face-to-face session.
Mr Clutterbuck concluded his speech by listing seven critical factors that make for a successful mentoring programme. They are: clarity of purpose, voluntary participation; induction training; total involvement of participants and managers; total support; effective measurement and review processes; balance between support and control.
International standards for mentoring programmes in employment ask for six key factors: clarity of purpose; stakeholder training and briefing; selecting and matching; measurement and review; ethics and pastoral care; support systems and administration.
The second speaker to address the seminar was clinical psychologist Dr Paul Micallef, consultant/advisor with the Department of Health.
Dr Micallef's talk centred around the psychology of performance. He started off by comparing an apprenticeship scheme to a mentoring scheme in which the main aim is to develop the person in the long term on a personal and professional level. Whereas coaching addresses short- to medium-term professional skills directly linked to organisational output and results.
The formula that B(ehaviour) is the function of the P(erson) + E(nvironments) explains how performance is directly influenced by the individual and the environment in which that individual operates. There is a total interdependent link between the person (personal and professional skills) and the immediate environment (family, friends, colleagues, manager, occupational hazards, etc.) and the wider environments (media, society, government, unions, etc.), he said.
Malta is an ideal place for mentoring and coaching, he said, especially because of the size of the country since mentoring is a way of giving personal and confidential attention to each other and addresses insecurity. A good mentor must have common skills, such as self-awareness; building rapport; communication skills, be able to change; and must be goal setting.
"A person who is going to work as a coach and/or mentor needs to understand that self-awareness, understanding yourself and becoming aware of what you need to perform optimally, interpersonal and emotional skills, and the ability to facilitate self determination in others is crucial," he said.
When mentoring, it is also important to keep in mind the individual's expectations, he said, which are usually based on fulfilment, satisfaction, happiness, clean fun, health and success. By focusing on these aspects we can develop human strengths and competencies, he said.
Speaking on the identity and role of a person within an organisation, Dr Micallef said that to enhance performance one has to develop the individual person by addressing and influencing the person's conscious and sub-conscious mix of decisions about how hard s/he will work to perform well and improve his/her performance.
He said that human beings are primarily made up of five fundamental dimensions: the physical (body); mental (thoughts); emotional (feelings); behavioural (actions); and spiritual (purpose in life) aspects. In order to promote optimal performance one has to address all these dimensions.
He compared thoughts, emotions and behaviours to an iceberg with the emotions directly above the surface and behaviours even more obvious jutting above. The bigger and more crucial chunk is beneath the surface and these are our thoughts, which are often very difficult to get to and understand.
He added that to help people shift their thoughts, we first have to appreciate that human beings are normally mentally programmed to think in a particular way, for example to be busy or to please others or to deny oneself certain good things in life or to defend oneself, to delay gratification, or to control as many things possible or to be self-critical and responding to emotional triggers. This long-standing mental programming is what requires attention in coaching and mentoring sessions that directly address people's performance at work. From womb to death we are constantly learning and adapting to changes in our lives, he said.
Self-care is also an important factor and achieving a healthy work-life balance involves challenging the way you think, the ability to identify emotions appropriately and then behave accordingly, he added.
When a person considers change, s/he normally goes through a process that is best described by a model used to understand people wishing to change a particularly unpleasant behaviour, like drug or alcohol abuse. He spoke of a spiral of change that is positive in that it shows that once a person manages to perform some form of change, s/he never goes back to 'square one' because s/he has learnt to conduct change.
The spiral starts with a person being in a pre-contemplation phase that then gradually changes to a contemplation stage once a person decides to do something about their unproductive, if not dangerous, behaviour. A decision then leads to determination, which in turn triggers action. The hard part comes when one has to maintain change.
At this point some actually manage to take on board the new, more constructive behaviour and they exit the spiral successfully. Others, however, either lapse and manage to pick themselves up quickly or relapse into old behaviours.
At this point, however, one has gained the experience of change and will never fall back to the predetermination stage. The spiral has taken them up one level and they have gained that positive experience if they can do it once, they can do it again.
The golden key and core to being a successful/competent coach or mentor is communication skills. Excellent communication skills are essential tools and help in appreciating self-awareness and the need for self-care; respect, trust, self-confidence; honesty and genuineness, Dr Micallef said. The best style of communicating is by being assertive (seeking a mutually acceptable solution); unlike aggressive (getting your own way) or passive (not to cause disruption).
Coaching and mentoring offer people a special form of individual formal meeting that helps to cultivate people no matter where the organisation is going. These opportunities help us manage people and their performance, as well as the pace of change and development. They help us manage knowledge and relationships as well as the value every person brings to the organisation, Dr Micallef concluded.
Three workshops followed the seminar: one on creating a culture of mentoring; what makes an effective mentor; and how mentoring can help organisations and individuals to change. The findings from each rapporteur were then presented as were recommendations from the two main speakers.
Professor Clutterbuck wrapped up the conference before lunch.