Mentoring Toward an Exit: Which way to go from here?

Mentor has developed the department. She has invested many years to build an understanding of her domain, Technology in Education. She has worked with the community at large, school administrators, lay leaders, Ministry representatives, consultants, teachers, students, even parents to ‘get the word out’, to help people understand the importance of changing the learning environment. Her twist, her niche, her in-road is to use technology as a catalyst for change. Traditional education does not work with today’s youth and it is time for teachers, administrators and even parents to meet the students on ‘their turf’, to value the new world of work, one where teamwork and communication have replaced the old “3 Rs”. Technology is a tool to be exploited for this function. And that is her goal; to change education to meet the needs of students!

Life’s circumstances have changed for the Mentor and she is looking forward to new challenges. She would like to at least cut down the hours she works, the ideal solution is to hire someone, mentor that person with the understanding that the Mentee would learn “the ropes” and then replace the Mentor!

The mentorship began as an exit and succession strategy for the Mentor. The relationship developed, it enriched the life of Mentor as well as Mentee. The connection strengthened, the conversations between Mentor and Mentee deepened and the lines blurred…just who was mentoring whom? And what was the topic of the mentorship?

For the Mentee the content of the new position, the day-to-day functions, the short and long-term planning, the various projects, the relationships to be built with community members, even the departments’ long-term goals were explored. The U.S. Department of Labor’s SCANS (Secretary’s Commission on Achieving Necessary Skills) Competencies and Foundation Skills, lists five areas of competence:
• Resources. The ability to identify, organize, plan, and allocate resources.
• Interpersonal. The ability to work well with others
• Information. The ability to acquire and use information.
• Systems. The ability to understand complex interrelationships.
• Technology. The ability to work with a variety of technologies
(From http://www.icouldbe.org/standard/schools/schools_evaluation.asp )
These SCANS competencies are clearly the ones Mentee was working on!


For the Mentor the art of sharing information, resources, sharing physical space, truly understanding the motivations and context of the community members’ ideas and ideals, learning to strip away the ‘politics’ and understand different peoples’ motivations, worries, professional and even personal agendas was a challenge. Exhilirating! Motivating! Time worthwhile as Mentor and Mentee were developing a meaningful relationship with one another. After all as the people from Mentor.ca write; “At the core of virtually all successful and personally satisfying mentoring is a meaningful relationship with another person.” (http://www.mentors.ca/mentortips.html)

The shoe dropped. Mentee is unhappy. The reasons are real. The motivation is gone. In time the Mentee will leave. What will the Mentor do if and when this happens? This is an adventure, an adventure for your mind. Read on and choose your own ending for this adventure as you explore the Mentors’ options.

Ending One:
Mentor is disappointed. She reflects on the situation and understands that sometimes things just do not work out. The mix of people and relationships are not always clear. It did not work. Let us try again she says and looks forward to working with a new hire and beginning the process once again.

Ending Two:
Mentor is disappointed. She reflects on the situation and understands clearly the challenges and disappointments the Mentee faced. She sympathizes with the Mentee as she realizes that those same challenges were hers and she was unable to overcome them herself. While she was in that position her coping mechanisms were basically to ignore the shortcomings of others, to turn the other cheek and focus solely on the goal of the position: to change education to meet the needs of students! Further, the Mentor realizes that these challenges, these personal relationships will not change and she feels helpless in her ability to assist anyone else to overcome them. She has always believed and lived by her personal rule of not asking anyone to do anything she was not prepared to do herself. And, if she herself couldn’t successfully live with and work with these difficult situations she could not possibly stand by, train and work with someone else and then leave them to fend for themselves. She just could not leave someone else in the difficult environment as it stands and since the Mentor cannot change the environment she chose to leave the department, move on to her new life’s challenges and chalk it all up to experience!

Ending Three:
Mentor is disappointed. She believes that in order to maintain her personal integrity she must follow her heart, make a statement and end with Ending Two. However, this Mentor was always an idealist. This ending is just not right. Challenges remain; she built a department that will more than likely die if she were to leave it like this. Her initiatives will fall by the wayside and most importantly the work that she accomplished, to date, will be lost! Who will continue? What type of legacy did she leave? She feels like a failure! And so, full of disappointment but ideals intact the Mentor stays to fight the fight.
The Mentor realizes that her role of leader has been informally changed to not only leading change with her own succession but also to lead the change of her supervisors and the larger department where she is a team member. This will be messy. This may even be considered by others as unprofessional but this Mentor sees it as her only solution. She will call a meeting with her supervisor’s supervisor, and move higher and higher up the chain of command to people who will finally listen. At the same time she will bring the issues to the attention of the lay leaders, the board that oversees the department. All this in an effort to bring about change of leadership styles and put into play processes for accountability, openness, honesty and integrity! She will do all that she can do to not only mentor a new Mentee (or even perhaps the original Mentee) but also to change the work environment and leave the legacy that she believes in. In this process the Mentor will not only accomplish her original goal to change education to meet the needs of students but also her new goal to assist in the development of a Educational Services Department whose core value is to work with integrity, understanding and the value of others. She will finally be able to leave knowing she helped to create the ideal work environment, where others will clamor to learn, work and be involved. Where her legacy lives!

Which ending will our Mentor choose? What will be her legacy?
Our Mentor did choose Ending Three, she spoke with her supervisor’s supervisor, the Chairman of the Board of the department and even a community director. Mentee stayed in the department and continues to work with Mentor although their interactions are less frequent but none-the-less intensive. Mentor took her retirement and although she made it known to her supervisor, her supervisor’s supervisor, the Chairman of the Board as well as the community leader that during ‘retirement’ she felt it necessary to give of herself to a community not one of these individuals asked for her assistance. As a matter of fact her old supervisor has even snubbed her by not even acknowledging her presence at both professional and social events…another incident indicating a lack of understanding of the importance of human resource management abilities.
I must admit that as the Mentor (I’m sure you guessed it by now!) I am VERY PROUD of my behavior. I stood up for what I believed in. I tried to work with the system and yet work outside the box by bringing new and innovative policies and procedures to my work. I created a department (albeit of one!) that works with a team of teachers and created a community of learners amongst the technology educators from the schools of the Association. I really did try to use positive human resource management! The leadership of our community continues to disappoint me. I brought a very difficult situation to their attention. They, at first, seemed to be supportive and interested in helping to make change. After all they realized that it was not only me who was leaving, other key individuals in our department have also left. I’ve heard that the working conditions in this department remain the same. I have moved on to work in other organizations that seem to better understand the importance of human resource management, organizations that acknowledge the time and efforts of others, supervisors who value the knowledge, skills and interactions of team members as they work together. Perhaps Mentee with a new vision and voice will be help to augment the human resource management skills of the community.