In this webinar, unlock your potential by building intentional mentoring relationships and a personal “board of directors” to turn guidance into lasting success. Join Dr. Gregory R. Thompson, University of lowa, and the UMR Professional Development Committee as we dive deeper into mentorship through engaging discussion and practical tools.
Presenter: Dr. Gregory R. Thompson, University of lowa
Watch The Recording:
This webinar from UMR-ACUHO is sponsored by Roompact and brought to you for free. Discover more of our own and sponsored webinars here:
UMR-ACUHO is the Upper Midwest regional association for college and university housing officers. Check out their website to learn more about what they do and how to get involved.
Transcript:
Kwaku Abinaba:
Today’s topic is something we believe resonates with everyone. No matter where you are in your professional journey, whether you are on an entry level hall coordinator or a director of residence life, this section will be beneficial to you. So today’s section is titled Mindful: Mentoring Crafting Your Constellation of Champions. We all know that mentorship isn’t just about receiving advice, it is just about building intentional relationships that create opportunities and offer support. And this session will explore how you and I can develop a meaningful mentor-mentee relationship rooted in purpose and what? And growth. And also build your personal board of directors, your constellation of champions. And of course use mentorship as a strategic tool for navigating challenges and creating new pathways. We are incredibly excited to have you here or to dive into this topic and we are even more happy, more thrilled to be joined by a leader and a scholar in this area.
So please join me in welcoming Dr. Greg Thompson, director of Residence Education at the University of Iowa. Here’s a little bit about Dr. G, or Dr. Thompson, popularly known as Dr. G. Dr. G holds Bachelor of Science in elementary education from Eastern Illinois University, a master of arts in educational leadership and policy analysis from the University of Missouri and a PhD in higher education and student affairs from the University of Iowa. Dr. G brings over 20 years of experience working with students and staff in campus housing and residence life with previous professional role at the University of Wisconsin-Whitewater and the University of Northern Iowa. Welcome Dr. G. And once again, thank you so much for agreeing to share your insights on this wonderful topic.
Before we get started, just a few quick note. Today’s section is being recorded and will be made available on our website afterward. And please, your video and name may appear in the recording if your camera is turned on and you have been promoted or you may be promoted to panelists in the zoom so we can foster more interaction. So feel free to have your camera on. We are here to interact, ask questions so feel free to turn your video on. And please keep your microphone muted unless invited to speak or participate. If you experience any technical issues or have any questions, please send a message in the chat to Nicole, Andy, or myself and we’ll help you. We also want to extend our sincere thank you to Roompact for sponsoring today’s section and for their ongoing support for professional development across our field. Their partnership helps us bring the meaningful learning opportunities to you. And without much ado I would like to hand over the platform to our wonderful doctor or our wonderful presenter, Dr. G. Dr. G, you’re welcome.
Dr. Gregory R. Thompson:
Thank you Kwaku. I appreciate it. I also really appreciate that you are broadcasting that live video straight from Iowa City, Iowa where tropical breezes and gentle waves are always just a quick step away from our residence halls as well too. So thanks so much to UMR for inviting me to be a speaker today and thanks for Roompact for their great continued sponsorship of all that we’re doing in the region. It’s always nice to have so much support in UMR for the types of things that really help our professionals and all of us continue to grow, develop, and I am very grateful for the opportunity to be speaking with you all today and to talk about this topic in particular, this mentoring piece that’s going on. So as Kwaku so artfully introduced me, I’ve got a lot of different experiences working professionally and mentorship and how we create mentoring relationships both for ourselves and for those that we work with has always been a bit of a passion area for me along the way. I think a lot of my career and particularly a lot of my leadership opportunities have been the result of excellent opportunities around mentorship and making connections with folks that have continued to pour into me and allowed me opportunities to pour into others.
I am a past president of UMR-ACUHO and I very much directly attribute that trajectory of leadership within this organization to the value of strong mentors that helped see in me different potential that I could provide to the region and to other professionals that encouraged me to get involved within UMR as well too.
So I am Greg. I go by Dr. G on campus. Kwaku always calls me. Some of my staff refuse to call me Dr. G. It’s a bit of a transition in some ways. I do use he/him pronouns. And again, I’m excited to be with you today. I’m going to go ahead and do a screen share so that you’ll be able to see some of the slides that I’ll be talking off of today. We’re going to have a couple interactive pieces along the way as we go here as well too. But really this is a webinar. It’s also a lunch and learn so if you’re snacking away over the lunch hour, like I would be doing right now, totally cool as well too. So if you have questions at any point along the way, feel free to throw it in the chat and we’ll get them answered. And I’ll leave a little time at the end as well to ask or field any questions that you might have. So let me pull up my screen share here and we’ll get ready to go.
Okay. So as we said today we’re going to talk about mindful mentoring and that may be a new concept to some folks about what that looks like or what that means. And so if so we will explain it along the way as we get going. And then we’re going to talk about this concept of a constellation of champions or a board of directors. And that’s not a new concept. I didn’t create that term myself that’s been out there in a number of spaces and places, but I think it’s a really useful tool to help contextualize and frame the types of work that we do do and how we can think about the ways that we mentor and how we can be very intentional about it. All right. So part of the goal of our session today is to talk a little bit with all of you hopefully for some empowerment around how you can build those intentional transformative mentoring relationships. And we know that those are important because those are the things that really drive our personal and professional growth. Maybe you have already had some of those relationships and connections and your professional or personal lives and you know what that value can be or maybe you’re still working to get that developed and learn about your own skillsets as a mentor or what you need as a mentee as well too.
Overall, what we’re really going to do, and we’re going to talk a lot about this concept of mindful mentoring and we’ll spend a little time talking about your personal constellation of champions, how to get that diverse piece as well. You all are already mentors if you’re working in the housing profession. A lot of what you do is mentorship. We talk about supervision, we talk about advising, but a lot of the pieces of what you’re doing along the way is mentoring. And so this topic, while we’re exploring, we’re diving into it, what I really want you to center and frame for yourself is this concept that you already are a mentor. You already are probably receiving mentorship in a number of ways. And what we want to do again is how do we continue to build on that intentionality, that transformational piece as well too. We’re going to be talking a little bit about a book that I’ve been reading that I’ve been pulling some of this information from as well too, which we’ll get to a couple slides down the way. But in this book, the author really talks about mentors being like a teacher mindset in terms of it’s beyond that supervision, it’s beyond that advisory piece. We’re talking how do we build a teaching relationship with folks that emphasize high expectation support and fostering agency for the folks that we’re working with as well too.
So I’m going to ask you all to … Nicole, if you could launch that poll for me. We’re going to do a quick poll really quick just asking about what mentorship looks like for you right now. So really take a minute to answer this poll. How many mentors do you currently have in your professional life? And this is a broad definition of mentors, so there’s not a wrong or right answer. But how many folks would you say are mentors and your professional life? All right. So we’ve got some good pieces coming in here. Anywhere from one to two, looks like the majority, and then somebody with three to five mentors as well too. And we have somebody that maybe hasn’t identified that mentor yet as well too, which is also a really relevant piece for some folks as well. We’re going to talk a little bit today about what that looks like, how we go about soliciting or asking for folks to serve in that mentorship role as well. So thanks for doing that. See the results there.
And let’s talk a little bit about the roadmap. So first and foremost, we’ve talked about that pieces that we’re going to go forward. One of the things that I like to start with when I talk about mentorship … And maybe this is true for some of you as well too. When I was an emerging professional in the field or … It sounds weird to say a younger professional because I don’t think I’m an old professional. But when I was taught about mentorship, a lot of what was shared with me at that time was that mentorship was something that had to be formalized. It was a conversation you had with someone in which you started to draft out expectations for each other. You came up with a plan of when you were going to meet, you were going to have this very almost rigid, almost contractual relationship with someone in which there was an exchange of mutual benefit. They would provide you with guidance, leadership advice, you would provide them … I don’t know. With adoration, worship, that sort of thing as well too. I don’t think that that’s necessarily what we’re looking for in a mentoring relationship, but there was supposed to be some formal ritualistic pieces attached to that in terms of where you asked, they considered, they decided if they were going to give on some of that.
I think when we think about this concept of mindful mentoring though, really what we’re trying to do is reframe what the concept of mentoring really is. And I would challenge us to think a little bit beyond that formal definition of mentorship to think about how our relationships with each other, the folks that we are supervising and advising already have that natural sense of mentoring along the way. So when we talk about this notion of mindful mentoring, really what we’re talking about a lot is this intentional piece of being present. And rather than having it feel like a formal contractual relationship, what we want it to feel like is a reciprocal relationship. And the concept that I really like when I think about mentorship and I’ve read about these pieces is that we want it to go beyond something that feels like an advice relationship or even like a relationship you might have with your therapist where you’re sharing concerns, struggles, joys, and a mentor is asking probing or provoking questions. What we want mindful mentoring to look like is this concept that’s in a lot of the literature or pieces about sponsorship.
So what’s the difference between advising and sponsorship? Well again, giving advice is someone projecting their own thoughts, experiences, opinions about the things that you’re doing or asking those guiding questions. Whereas in my mind, sponsorship looks a little bit different. Sponsorship is an active event in which a mentor is working with you to help advocate in spaces and places that perhaps you are not in or looking to open doors for you that maybe you see already but maybe haven’t been able to open or even identifying the hallways and the doors where you can go and move forward into. So in this mindset, I believe that mentoring really is a more active task for both the mentor and the mentee in that place as well too. And playing off that theme we talked about a little, mentors like effective teachers are seeking to motivate by also combining that concept of high standards or clear expectations for growth with high support, which is that genuine care and resources.
And again, I mentioned the book that I’m pulling some of this information from. It’s a really nice read that is an optional summer read on campus right now for the University of Iowa. It’s by David Yeager. It’s called 10 to 25: The Science of Motivating Young People. And while this book I don’t think is necessarily specifically written for mentoring, he spends a lot of time talking about this concept of mindful mentoring as a positive tool for folks that fall in that 10 to 25 age range. Now this book is written for folks that are of my generation and above, which is a little older than that 10 to 25 timeframe. So it’s meant to be a way to help folks that maybe are working with some generational differences in the workplace, conceptualize what younger people are looking for in terms of the value that they want from their workspace, but also the opportunities they want from leaders and mentors along the way as well too.
So an example of this in the housing context is you could have a mentor who you go to that’s perhaps a senior housing director that can give you really good advice about how to shape your resume, what career experiences look good for you to go along. That can be an advise or in some ways to what your career is going to look like. But if you have someone that’s a little more entrenched in the mindful mentoring mindset, they might be someone that does that piece but also then is someone that nominates you for a leadership role that works with the division on campus or other folks on your campus and says, “You know what? Kwaku is really skilled in this area and I think he’d be a great addition to this committee. Or perhaps he could chair this work group that’s happening.” They’re actively looking, they’re actively helping along the way for you to find opportunities.
And so part of the rationale in this book of why that mindful mentoring matters is again, we talk about this piece of you need to find mentors and we want to be the kind of mentors that find this mentoring mindset in the work that we do. That’s the high standards and the high support pieces combined together as one. So Yeager’s research just really says that again, these high standards, high support are what give us a mentoring mindset. If you are off kilter in one of these areas, there are different ways that you show up as well too. And some of you have probably had supervisors, advisors, even mentors that fall into these alternative pieces. A lot of what we see sometimes, especially I think with younger professionals are folks that have that high level of support but then sometimes are falling in the ability to hold the standard high in some ways. That’s that protector mindset where we really care about you as a person, we care about you as a human and if there are things that are happening in your personal or professional life that perhaps are making it harder for you to do the work, we lower the standard for where you want the work to be. That’s that protector mindset.
Conversely, you may work or have worked in some places where you see that enforcer mindset where your ability to show up as a human and all the complexities that are going on in your personal and professional life fall to the wayside. And all that’s accounted for is that high standard. That’s that enforcer mindset as well too. So finding the right balance and finding folks that can see that right balance is good too. It’s nice to have somebody in your mentorship role that understands and can support your life, but if they’re not pushing you towards your standards or higher goals or opportunities, you’re missing a piece that will help along in your development as a professional as well too. And likewise, if you have somebody that’s just constantly pushing you without understanding who you are as a human, what your values are, what identities you bring into the workspace and your personal space, that’s not going to be somebody that’s going to deliver the mentorship that you’re looking for along the way.
So why does this matter in housing? Like I said earlier, all of you are already doing mentorship and we don’t always call it mentorship. But the things that we do in student housing are very much geared toward the work of mentoring whether that’s the resilience you build with your RAs, the ongoing weekly one-on-ones, those staff meetings, the ongoing development opportunities. That’s an opportunity for mentorship. That’s an opportunity for you to lean into that high standard with that high support as well too. You’re teaching 18, 19, 20 year olds and up about how to be resilient in a workspace, how they can show up in positive ways, how they can check in with each other. That is mentorship. You’re also doing that inspiring agency with students and student groups as well too. It may not always feel like it when you’re doing those hall association or hall council meetings on a Sunday night or trying to plan that program and only three residents are showing up, but you’re working with students to help give them the opportunity to find their own voice, to find the way that they can contribute. You’re giving them ownership over the finances that they might have as well too. You are inspiring agency with students and student groups and that’s another skill that mentors do. They’re finding out what’s important to them. They’re holding that high standard.
Also, those times where you’re working with your peers to tackle a problem, to think about how to approach the work that you’re doing. That’s another form a very mindful mentorship as well too. When you show up, when you have the conversations, when you listen to somebody vent about what they’re frustrated with, but then challenge them to follow up to find a solution to that problem. All of those are mentoring skills that can help you along the way as well too. And so I put that out there just because I think it’s important to have some efficacy about the work that you’re doing and remembering that the work that you do do is mentoring as well too. What you’re doing is curating mentoring relationships without the formality of a mutual agreement. And remember when I talked about how I was accultured into mentorship was that you can’t necessarily just keep it very basic. It needs to be formalized. You need to tell somebody that you’re mentoring them or they need to request from you that you are a mentor. And yes, to get to a broader sense of things, that’s good, but recognize the work that you’re doing, the relationships that you have, the conversations that you’re engaged in are already curating a lot of those mentoring relationships.
So some other examples that I think in terms of what this looks like in housing, I mentioned UMR and leadership pieces. I don’t think I would’ve gotten … So when I was a hall coordinator back in the early 2000s, I got involved in UMR and I went to the conferences and I participated in committee work. And then after four or five years I decided that UMR was not for me anymore. That I needed something more broad, more advanced, more interesting for someone at my level as well too. And I had a mentor along the way that really challenged that perspective and invited me to think differently about the ways that we give back to our regional housing associations, to our national housing associations and engaged me in some really good dialogues about the types of things that I was passionate about.
And at that time it was a lot of DEI issues, it was a lot of social justice pieces, it was how we support staff of varying representation and how we create welcoming communities on campus. And they really challenged me to think about what that looks like for UMR. And at that time I said, “I think there’s really some gaps with UMR.” And they said, “Well, if you’re passionate about it and you see that there are some gaps and that UMR is a place where our younger professionals are entering into, why aren’t you in the middle of UMR helping to engage or think about those sorts of things?” And so it was that mental push that I needed. And then the next cycle when leadership elections were happening at the time, they were very intentional about putting my name into the rotation so the folks at UMR could recruit in some of those pieces. And then that led to a really fulfilling journey along the way of being able to work in UMR and to exercise some of those personal values into some professional goals and accomplishments as well too.
The other example I like to share as well, I call this happy trails and new adventures. Those mentoring relationships that we have along the way with folks that we’ve worked with. I could probably count on both sets of hands and feet the number of staff that I have worked with either here at Iowa or other opportunities or folks that I have worked with in UMR and different spaces that you have connections with and you can’t necessarily find a promotion opportunity or an advanced position for them, but they go down the road and they eventually pop back into your life as well too.
And one of the examples I like to share of that is someone that I met along the way who was working at another institution here in the state of Iowa up at UNI in Cedar Falls, and I had gotten to know a little bit, but we just didn’t have any opportunities for jobs or anything along those lines. And they were an undergrad and then they moved on and went to graduate school and ended up coming back to UNI as a full-time professional. And during that course of time, by that point we had had some things open up at Iowa and we’d had a nice relationship of just friendly conversation but also checking in on events of the world and doing some of those mindful mentoring tasks. And sure enough, when I had an opening for an assistant director at the time, they were one of the first people that I sent that job to. They ended up applying and we worked together for a long time here at the institution as well. So those connections we make along the way with housing. And neither of those relationships that I had were necessarily formal mentoring where I had asked for something but people had taken a moment to be mindful.
In the first example, someone had been mindful with me about pointing me toward leadership opportunities and the second time I had tried to be mindful with an up and coming younger professional that I saw some promise in that then eventually led to some opportunities for work along those. So that mindful mentoring piece, that intentionality, that thinking about how you can have a high standard with high support at the same time, you can apply that to any number of specific instances or folks that you’re working with as well too. All right. So that works very much in terms of how we go about doing mentoring with the folks that perhaps we’re supervising. But all of you as well as myself are also probably looking for mentors to help support you along the way as well. And so when we talk about what we need for ourselves, we’re going to spend a little bit of time talking about this constellation of champions or we’ll call it board of directors if you like that as well too. I’ve also used analogies of a crew of a sailboat as well. Different folks that help you. All of this are useful metaphors to think about who are the folks that are helping drive you forward? Those are the folks that are your mentors or your constellation of champions, that board of directors that you’re using as well too.
Now hopefully for you as you start to develop this, depending on where you’re at in your professional career, the number of folks that you have on this board of directors is really going to vary from time to time. And it’s really up to you to decide what you want that to look like or how many folks are important for you on that as well too. So here I talk about your board of directors really should be a diverse group of humans. Ideally if you’re in a great role, you’ve got a supervisor that could potentially be on that board of directors or a mentor. But I do want to make sure that folks know your direct supervisors, your direct leaders do not have to be mentors for you as well too. And sometimes it’s a fallacy that we fall into that our supervisors are meant to or are capable of being the kinds of mentors we need. There’s a big difference between supervision and mentorship as well too. I think there can be a lot of overlaps and if you have somebody that you feel like can also be invested in you opening doors for you, helping advocate for you, consider yourself lucky. That’s a great relationship to have. If you don’t have that with a supervisor, I don’t want you to feel that sense of panic or dread either though, because for a lot of folks, the supervisor can’t be a mentor.
It’s been a long time for me to get to a space where I felt like I had a supervisor that could also provide mentorship. For a number of years it was important for me to find folks that weren’t my supervisor to be able to do some of that mentorship. And part of that was because part of my professional journey was I also needed to process about the relationships that I was having with a supervisor as well too. So if you work in a bigger department, sometimes you have the benefit of multiple folks in upper level roles that you can have as well too. And we talk about this diverse group. You may want to have someone like a senior housing director or an associate type level director that’s on your board of directors. Somebody that you can touch point with to get an understanding of how you want to advance in the field or what the politics look like on campus that you need to be successful in navigating through as well too. It doesn’t mean that you have to have that, and it doesn’t mean that it has to be somebody at your institution as well. But having somebody that’s in the field.
And if housing is the field you’re pursuing, or if it’s a different portion of student affairs or something outside of higher education, it’s important to have somebody that can help guide you and shepherd you on some of that pieces as well too. I also think another set of folks to really consider about who you want to have are peers that are in roles or areas you aspire to. So maybe you’re working in housing, but you really want to get into student conduct or you want to get into academic advising. Finding folks that can be in a mentorship role being mindful with you that are in those areas is really important. There’s a really good field of career coaches that are out there as well too. Sometimes that’s not as accessible for folks that maybe don’t have the financial resource or the time resource to do that, but think about your career service centers on your campuses as well too. There could be folks there.
I like to think about outside of the box folks that are on our boards as well too. For me, my therapist was somebody that was on my board of directors for a long, long time. Because just how life goes, the work that we do, the things that are happening personally and professionally, my therapist was someone that then I felt like I could go and vent the heavy or the tough stuff too, so that when I met with my professional mentors, I could talk in a more honest and I want to say more collected frame about some of the things that I was struggling with at times. And I have struggled in the past and I’m sure will struggle again at different times in the future. So it’s important for me to know that when I have mentors, they can understand some of those things, but I don’t want my mentor that’s helping coach me toward my career goals necessarily to feel like they have to also wade into some of those therapy pieces. So it could be therapists, it could be family members, it could be really close friends, those folks that you can help vent to, work through some of those bigger things so that the other folks around the table can help you toward those career goals.
Now, please don’t hear me say that you have to keep your personal, professional, the struggles, your successes completely separate from one another. That’s not what I’m saying here. But to think about the different folks that can help you with the different skill sets that you need as well too.
So David Yeager in this book really says that this concept of wise feedback is very important, especially to folks in this 10 to 25 generation that we’re talking about here as well too. That what we are seeking when we look for mentorship is this three tiered piece of wise feedback. And that’s it really has to be constructive. It also has to be very affirming. It dials into who we are, our values, our identities, and it also has to build on their potential. So as you are looking for mentorship or you have folks approaching you for mentorship, these are some of those pieces to really keep in mind as you’re thinking about your board. Who are folks that can be constructive, affirming, build on that potential and can see the influence that you bring as well too? I think that’s the other key piece. And when you’re asking or talking to potential mentors, these are some questions that I really think you could ask them. How can you show up constructively for me? What’s it going to look like when I’m struggling or succeeding? How can you be affirming? And then what’s the ways that we can build on our potential a little bit as well too?
Okay. So we are going to take a brief moment here to do a quick break out and chat with each other about what this looks like for yourself right now. Who are your mentors? And we’re going to take just maybe five to seven minutes here to share a couple of the mentors that you have in your life. What roles do they play? And to talk about maybe a gap as we’ve talked about here or that you’ve thought about before coming to this presentation of who’s not around that table for you. Maybe you feel like you’ve got somebody that can really help you with career coaching, but maybe you don’t have somebody that really can see your personal value or recognizes how you have to navigate through this field based on some of your identities. Maybe you don’t have that upper level person to help drive your career goals, that piece. So we’re just going to take a couple minutes so you can stop listening to the lull of my voice and hear each other’s for a couple beats and talk just a little bit about who are some of those mentors, what roles do they play? And we will pause the sharing here. And I’m just going to pop you into some quick breakout rooms and then we’ll come back here in just a few minutes and close out the rest of the presentation.
I should have invited you to a room if you want to jump in there.
All right. I think everybody’s back here. If it’s anything like our normal UMR times, we probably didn’t have enough time for the conversation pieces because we all dive into some great conversations as well. So I hope that was useful. Please continue to jot down for yourself those notes about who’s with you and who you want to invite along for the journey as well too. I want to give some practical tips and tools for mindful mentoring. Just some of this is going to be a reminder of the things we’ve already talked about, but a couple other pieces as well too. So we talked a little bit about these strategies for mentoring relationships.
One, it’s that concept of making sure that you’re seeking out sponsors, not just advisors. And remember a way to differentiate or to explain to somebody what you’re looking for from a mentoring relationship is can they be somebody that recommends you for projects, leadership opportunities that can help you get involved on campus in the region in whatever piece you’re looking for, some additional guidance or opportunity for? Talk to your mentor and ask them if there are opportunities or possibilities for them to be able to do that. The folks that can introduce you to networks. We were just talking earlier that not a lot of folks are still on the Facebooks and so what other ways do the professionals that you look for, look up to or aspire to want to be? How are they connecting with folks? Do they have email listservs? Are there other opportunities that they’re engaging with? Are there professional conferences, newsletters, things that could be pieces that are important for you? Start asking those questions of folks that you’re mentoring with. And can they send you the opportunities that align with your work and trajectory or even your personal life as well too.
Again, some of those mentors around your table of board of directors are going to be folks that help inspire you. Are they folks that are involved in a faith community? If that’s important to you, are they folks that are engaged in some volunteer opportunity that are politically out there doing some work as well too? How can they get you involved? Remember when you’re talking to folks about mentorship opportunities, that’s advocating for yourself about wanting someone that’s going to be an advocate for you as well.
We want to think about applying these, the principles from Yeager. So first of all, remembering that we want mentors that can adhere to that high standards and high support piece. Ask mentors to help you develop or to give you some clear ambitious goals, but also some that are paired with resources. So for example, if you’re wanting to submit a conference program proposal or a journal article, having them know that they can give you feedback on that or help provide some guidance or be an editor along the way. What does that look like for you? Making sure that they know you’re seeking that wise feedback piece. Requesting feedback that affirms your potential while pushing your growth.
So somebody that’s doing that might, for example, say, “I see you leading this initiative. Here’s how to strengthen your approach.” Folks that can find value in what you’re doing, but help push you, generate that next level of opportunity for you as well too. And then again, choosing mentors who can foster agency. So the folks that encourage you to make decisions and takes risk as Yeager points out in his book that mentors that are encouraging young people in the places where it’s good to take risks are helping to build extra motivation in this younger generation of folks as well too. And a good mentor will help you understand that notion of political capital. And by political capital, I mean the ability that you have through doing the good work that you do on campus that then take some risks to make some pushes, to put your voice out there, to use your agency in ways on campus that either advocate for yourself or for others, especially for student populations as well too.
So find those folks that are going to be able to tell you when a good time is to take a risk, what it looks like to take that risk, how to navigate on campus in a department or where you’re involved in ways that help make sure that you’re safe when you take those risks. And also the folks that can tell you, this isn’t the spot, this is not the way to do it. This isn’t the time. And that can be really hard, especially considering some of the political context that we’re all in right now as well too. There’s been several times on my own campus where we’ve had some really difficult decisions happening and I have staff that very much want to advocate, that want to push, that want to make sure that we’re carving out spaces for students. And there’s some times where I have to say, “It’s not going to be successful right now. We’re just going to burn ourselves up. Let’s hold back. Let’s wait for the right moment. This isn’t the spot to take the risks.”
But there have been times in my career as a director as well too, where the converse of that has been true. Where I’ve been able to say, “Now’s the time. Now’s the space. Let’s push really hard and let’s make some big changes possible because we’ve got the wind at our back as well.” The other piece that I want to make sure that you take forward as you’re seeking out these mentoring relationships or that you are providing in the mentoring relationships that you’re giving is this concept of reciprocity. Remember, if we want to move away from thinking about mentorship as this formal contractual obligation, it’s important that we give back to each other. We want to offer value back to the mentors that we’re working with. So never feeling afraid to share your own insights from the work that you’re doing, figuring out what they’re passionate about, how you can support their projects and opportunities. That just builds better collaborative partnerships along the way. It helps us see valuing each other as humans as an important piece of the work that we do, that it’s not just a take, that it’s really a give and take piece as well too.
Some of those practical tips I think that are important for mentoring, mentorship works when you’re doing it at regular intervals. When you’re working to build or set up a mentoring relationship, I think that is a piece that you want to negotiate a little bit. How frequently are you going to meet? Is it going to be weekly? Is it going to be a couple of times a semester? Is it going to be a yearly check-in? Depending on what role you’re asking that mentor to play or what role you’re playing in mentorship really determines how much time you might want to spend on that as well too.
Okay. Before we jump into any question times, I just want to give you a quick minute and if you want to throw into the chat section of the Zoom right now, just in our conversation that’s been quick today, what’s one thing that you’re going to take away that maybe you want to do in the next 30 days to either build or enhance your mentoring constellation, something that you want to reach out to, check in some specific piece of feedback? What’s one action item that you can take as a result of just listening here and thinking about some of these mentoring pieces? So go ahead and drop it in the chat so folks can do a quick read.
Yeah. That’s great, Aaron. Thanks for that. Finally asking someone to be a mentor by working with them on a project. That’s a great way to do some of that piece as well too. Whether you’re looking to get some experience by asking someone to put you on a project or give someone an opportunity to work on a project that you may oversight as well too. So thanks for sharing that. Anyone else? Something that you want to throw in that chat about a step you can take or something you want to do? Yeah. Perfect. Thanks on that one. Former supervisors great to reach out to as well too. Some of my strongest mentors have been folks that I used to work with in some capacity as well too. I think you’ll be pleasantly surprised. If you’ve had a great supervisor in the past, they’re going to be a great mentor potentially moving forward as well too. Yep. Asking a boss. Yep. Yep. Someone that can be very honest with you about pieces. Excellent. Excellent.
You’re really hitting on some of these pieces and some of the key takeaways that I want you to take out of this presentation as well too. These are really the three big takeaways that mindful mentoring involves that intentional, reciprocal relationship with sponsors. Remember not just an advisor, but someone who’s a sponsor who opened doors, helps provide opportunities as well too. That notion that you build a diverse constellation of folks who have that high standard, high support and then just remembering as housing professionals that you can apply these skills to mentor your students, your peers. What we really want to do is create a ripple effect of how we show up for the humans that we work with on a day-to-day basis on campus and beyond as well too.
So by thinking about what you want from a mentoring relationship, I think it can really help drive how we show up, whether that’s in a formal mentoring capacity, a supervisory capacity or an advisory capacity, these principles still apply. And how can we make sure that we are holding that high standard, high support, but also being able to have a reciprocal piece with others as well too. And with that, our time has quickly come to an end, but I do want to take an opportunity if you have any questions, thoughts, reflections, quickly that you want to ask or throw out, I would be happy to entertain those. So this time you can just shout it out or you can throw it in the chat either.
And of course, by silence, I take it to mean that I have perfectly mastered the entire presentation on all fronts, which is of course delightful and satisfactory to me. My contact information is … It was just up on the screen, but I’ll put it into the piece as well too. Feel free to reach out at any time. If you have a question, if you have a thought, a reaction, any of that is always welcome for me. And I’m always happy to talk with folks about things in the field or pieces that they’re curious about as well. So don’t ever hesitate to let me know as well too. And again, just thanks to UMR, thanks to Roompact for helping sponsor. I really appreciate the opportunity to have this dialogue.
Kwaku Abinaba:
Awesome. A big round of applause to our wonderful presenter. Dr. G, thank you so much for this wonderful and powerful insight and for guiding us through a meaningful reflection on mentorship. I know we are walking away with something new and new ideas on how to build our own board of directors. We are going to build our own board and directors. So thank you for your time. Thank you for this wonderful insight. And also thank you all for being here and contributing to today’s learning space. Your presence and engagement makes all the difference. Thank you for your time.
