In fall of 2020, I took the HONR 401 Developing Your Mentor Philosophy course. Much of this class revolved around identifying your own personal values as a mentor, identifying values you’ve observed in other mentors, and thinking of ways that one can implement these mentoring values in practice, fitting in with the development level of leadership. The main goal of this course was to form a mentor philosophy. For mine, I heavily emphasized my beliefs that mentoring relationships should involve development and growth for both the mentor and mentee, while also maintaining certain interpersonal boundaries. I came to these ideas after several class discussions regarding personal mentoring values and reading which explore various mentoring styles. I found this course very useful, as it gave me the space to articulate some of my ideas about leadership and the leader-like qualities that come with being a mentor. This was good for someone like me, who was not typically used to taking the initiative and who needs some time to really think before putting ideas into motion.

 

I’ve found that elements of my mentor philosophy align with my leadership philosophy, such as establishing boundaries while also remaining somewhat casual. I try to maintain a friendly image so that coworkers at my job are comfortable approaching me for help, but socializing can be difficult due to my social anxiety. Therefore, I try to push myself to ask my coworkers about their day, how their classes are going, etc. Although I know I’m a bit awkward, I feel it’s been working for me, and I can picture utilizing this in a variety of situations and environments in the future.

I've managed to utilize my mentorship philosophy, along with my leadership philosophy, when assisting with the training of new employees at my job. While I may not exactly be a mentor to these people, my beliefs in what makes a good mentor sometimes prove useful even in short term instances. For example, a core part of my mentorship philosophy is the idea that a mentor-mentee relationship should have reciprocal elements. Recently when I was helping a new employee at my job adjust and learn the usual responsibilities, I would teach him new skills and in return, he would take care of small tasks for me using what I taught him. This isn’t exactly what I meant when I wrote about wanting a reciprocal mentoring relationship, but it’s good small-scale practice that could prepare myself for something more large-scale in the future. The relationship between myself and my coworkers isn’t quite a mentoring one, as we feel closer to equals than might be expected in a mentoring relationship, but nonetheless I know that these people look to me for guidance and leadership on a daily basis. As I take on more leadership roles, I would like to continue implementing my key mentor philosophy ideas even in situations that may seem unrelated at first.

 

Attached below is an essay I wrote for this course, detailing my personal mentoring philosophy.