Mentoring Skills(Kennedy & Charles, 2001)

Mary Gordon

NEPS

Helpers

“help by simply being human with the troubled others, by marshalling their own resources of the spirit and …their common sense …It is also important for helpers to listen to themselves … to manage the stress that arises from dealing with the stress of others. Helpers must monitor and identify their own reactions … Helping yourself goes apace with helping others.”

Content of presentation

1. What a helper can do

2. Helping through emotional involvement

3. Listening to the learner

4. Listening to the learner by listening to yourself

5. Helping styles

6. Being human, being imperfect

1. What a helper can do Use your common sense

Remain practical Maintain your own identity You are a teacher not a counsellor Stay out of their unconscious Focus on their current life situation Support rather than uncover

Do not try to dig beneath the surface Strengthen their best defences

Identify and bolster their psychological resources

Some supportive tactics Ventilation – inviting them to tell their story Exploration – encouraging them to describe their

problems Clarification – catching the feelings beneath what

they are saying Reassurance – helping them feel they are on the

right track Empathy – understanding what they are feeling Practicality – identifying what helps them

2. Helping through emotional involvement

We help by making an emotional connection with them

We must touch at some level or we cannot make any difference

But we must learn to manage our emotional involvement if we are help the other and not to damage ourselves

The helping relationship

a. To be in a relationship demands that we give up our own thoughts and interests for a while so that we may give our complete attention to the other person

b. We recognise that whatever stirs in that shared life-space – whatever feelings others express toward us and whatever we experience in feelings towards them – is never just accidental or incidental

c. What occurs between ourselves and others provides us with codes to understand what is going on

Transference and countertransference

o Transference refers to the feelings the person seems to have toward their helper. They belong to previous, significant persons in their lives (such as parents) and get transferred to us. They may be either positive or negative in tone.

o Countertransference refers to the feelings (again, positive or negative) that we have toward those we are assisting, which grow from our own past history and needs

Being aware of our own reactions We need

to be able to recognise transference and countertransference to understand our own reactions so we can deal with them to distinguish between our feelings and their feelings

We learn to be separate to allow them to be separate from us

We believe in ourselves in our ability to be close and helpful without being overwhelmed

3. Listening to the person

Listen to the person It’s the person who suffers, not the

problem Don’t try to do good Don’t try to do well

Listen to the person

They want to tell you about themselves and what is bothering them

They will give you hints They will correct you But they will give up if you won’t hear them

Forget about problems

Focus on the person It is not our job to solve the problem The problem can only be understood in the

context of the person anyway The less you feel that it is your responsibility to

solve their problem the more freely you can help them to find solutions for themselves

Don’t try to do good

Do-gooders are people who act on others in response to their own needs

The good can only ever be a by-product of our interest in and understanding of the other person

We can never know what is best for another Wanting to do good may be a sign that we

should examine our own emotional needs

Don’t try to do well

The urge to do well treats the other simply as an opportunity for our own achievement

It indicates an excessive focus on our performance rather than on the relationship

4. Listening to the other person by listening to yourself

People communicate through means other than words

Helpers can use how they are feeling as information about how the other is feeling

Helpers who listen to the other through their own reactions feel more competent and perform more effectively

The problem of emotional involvement is not solved by placing an embargo on our feelings but by becoming more aware of them

The problem of emotional involvement is not solved by placing an embargo on our feelings but by becoming more aware of them so that we can better understand what is happening to us – and between us and the other person – during mentoring.

5. Helping styles

The analyser The neutraliser The doer

Working for others or working with others?

6. Being human, being imperfect

The more we perceive and accept ourselves as imperfect persons the more we can let go of falseness and self-consciousness

We can sometimes be very harsh on ourselves out of motives that are a mixture of fearfulness and a need never to be found wanting

Healthy professionals consult supervisors not to punish themselves for their imperfections but to understand and eliminate them for the future

Questions to ask ourselves

Do we want others to like us? Do we judge others? Do we ask too many questions? Do we rush to interpret? Do we like to reassure people? Do we try to be understanding?

Things we need to realise Every therapist, helper and mentor is

limited Nobody can succeed all the time If we cannot accept limitations and

defeats, we are in the wrong work We need to be helpers to ourselves There will be people we won’t be able to

help