by Chelsey Brophy, Ph.D., HSPP
“The delicate balance of mentoring someone is not creating them in your own image, but giving them the opportunity to create themselves.”
-Steven Spielberg
Mentoring is viewed as an important part of professional practice in various disciplines and settings. Its importance and value have always been emphasized at Children’s Resource Group (CRG). Mentoring serves various purposes and has numerous benefits. Professional mentoring arrangements can vary in terms of duration, relationship type, roles of mentors, and varying levels of mentorship. This issue of CRG’s newsletter will explore professional mentoring. What is it, what types of mentoring do CRG providers engage in, and how does this practice benefit patients and those who work to address their behavioral healthcare needs?
Mentoring: What Is It?
Because mentoring can take many forms, it can be difficult to define. The American Psychological Association has created a task force specifically targeted toward mentoring, which provides this definition:
A professional relationship with a focus on personal and professional development. It may occur through various communication venues including, but not limited to face-to-face interactions, phone, or e-mail. The duration and intensity of the relationship may vary depending on the dynamic of the match and the needs of the individuals involved.
More simply, a mentee may be seen as the learner; the mentor provides advice, guidance, support, and professional development and may be viewed in more of a teacher-like role. While the focus of mentoring is usually on career-related knowledge and skills, it may also include a social component that focuses on broader topics such as work/life balance and self-care.
Mentoring at CRG
Mentoring is often a teacher-student relationship or uni-directional model. At CRG, however, we often find that mentoring is more bi-directional where mentor and mentee can learn from one another. In this way, CRG mentoring is often more of a partnership.
Mentoring partnerships at CRG are ongoing and evolving. They are also diverse in terms of the professionals involved and the duration and purpose of mentoring. For example, while some mentoring relationships occur for only a few months or a semester, others occur for a year or more. For some, the purpose is meeting requirements for a course, license, or supervision experience. For others, mentoring is purely for the benefit of learning from one another to improve the level of care we can provide to our patients.
Within CRG, there are multiple levels of mentoring taking place on any given day. This includes diversity in the formality of relationships as well as the providers involved. Examples of mentoring partnerships at CRG include:
- Psychologist and graduate student
- Psychiatric medical provider and medical student
- Peer mentoring between colleagues within the same discipline
- Cross-disciplinary mentoring
- Established professional and early career professional
- Providers and consumers of professional development (i.e., bringing in varying professionals to provide professional development about a specific topic or service, providing professional development and presentations to those in our field and related professions)
Why Invest In Mentoring and the Mentoring Model?
Research supports CRG’s strong belief in the importance of mentoring. We have found that these relationships tend to be beneficial to all involved including the mentor, mentee, and our patients. Consequently, mentoring produces the proverbial “win-win” situation. Research has shown that mentees are more satisfied and committed to their profession compared to individuals who were not mentored. This finding predicts a possible decrease in turnover and burnout, which can be costly to a practice. Additionally, those who have been mentored tend to have higher performance evaluations due to providing better care for their patients. Mentees also usually have higher salaries and progress faster in their careers (Wanberg, Welsh, & Hezlett, 2003). For mentors, research indicates that the opportunity to directly shape future generations within one’s own profession often results in feelings of satisfaction, rejuvenation, and increased motivation to continue learning and developing skills. In relation to the benefit to our patients, increased collaboration between providers and continued growth and knowledge from our colleagues allows us to provide better care for our patients (Wanberg et al., 2003).
Mentoring is an important part of career development and professional practice. It is also is an opportunity to give back to our professional fields, inspire future generations, and enhance on our own professional growth and reflection. At CRG, we believe that mentoring partnerships are one of the foundational pieces to creating outstanding, well-trained professionals. In many cases, the investment of the time needed to mentor can pay off by shaping a new cadre of professionals to sustain the practice over many years. In the season of giving and reflecting, we are very proud and honored to have great mentors at CRG and are thankful to them for their rich contributions to our fulfilling and successful careers.
