In the latest series on Models of Mentoring, I’d like to explore co-mentoring. Mentoring, by it’s very nature is a process of development for both parties involved in the process, we can’t help but learn from each other – not only about how our insight and attitudes affect another person, but also how their’s impacts on us in return. However, this is rarely verbalised in a traditional mentoring relationship – where one person assumes a position of almost ‘leadership’ as mentor and the other assumes a position of ‘learner’, as in mentee.
There is though a way in which the balance of power in the mentoring relationship can be shared and this is in a co-mentoring situation. According to Marina Tsipenyuk, writing on Alex Sharman’s blog
“the co’ makes the mentoring reciprocal and mutual. This reciprocity means that over time the mentee and mentor roles may shift; no one is stuck in one or the other for the duration of the relationship” .
In other words the normally heirarchical nature of mentoring, with a teacher and a student, becomes a shared experience where both strive to learn from and to teach the other. Perhaps even the word ‘teach’ might be inappropriate too as teach also assumes hierarchy and this could be an exchange of ideas, values, culture.
As we know a mentor can assume many roles (Many Roles of the Mentor) throughout the course of many, or even a single, mentoring relationship and that there are a number of areas that do need to be challenged (5 M’s of Mentoring). It would be foolish, in this day and age, and particularly with business mentoring, which is the focus of say The Mowgli Foundation; that a mentor has nothing to learn from a mentee.
It may be that the co-mentees/co-mentors each bring complimentary skills or knowledge to the table, they may swap ‘work’ with each other (rather like bartering) or there may be some other value exchange that is taking place. The key though, with co-mentoring, is that it is not a pedagogic approach, with one person assuming the lead and the other following, this is one where the value of each is recognised as equal.
Perhaps the classic co-mentoring experience could be found in friendship or in informal networking settings, where there is no established or agreed formality to the relationship; rather people come together for a brief period of time to solve a particular problem.
