CPD23 Thing 11 – Listening to the world around you for things that mean something to you

Mentoring can be official around a goal…

I probably have an incredibly wide definition of mentoring

There is structured official mentoring to do with a specific programme of work e.g. a CILIP Chartership Mentor.

But it can also be more unconventional

Mentoring doesn’t need to be intentional or even focused is what I’m arguing.

There’s things like –

Advice given kindly from strangers (a long time ago a Branch Librarian said ‘horses  for courses’ to me when not giving me a library assistant post, it was incredibly wise and it took me years to realise it)

Snatches of conversation overhead by accident (e.g. I was on a train last year and overheard a really good example of coaching re exam and job interview from one stranger to another, the technique was superb, I asked the lady about it afterwards, turned out she was a very senior business consultant)

Conversations I’m part of and the dialogue that arises in that (a good friend said I’m diffuse last year, do everything instead of focusing on one thing and pushing it forward, which is all true and I’m still thinking that through)

Things that stick in my mind from presentations or things that I read (e.g. one of the CPD23 blog entries is coming to mind as the latest I’m adding onto my list).

There’s the personal examples of people you meet… (I was listening to a non-LIS person take me through his career path last week, all really clearly mapped out what he intended to do at what point and why and where he was relative to it all – it was fascinating)

Thing is we don’t know what impacts we have on a lot of people, sometimes yes it’s on purpose, but a lot of the time we positively help each other without even knowing it.

Official  / Unofficial is maybe a context specific choice at its most flexible

I technically mentor ‘officially’, but to be honest I’m utterly avoiding it just now. Because I know I lack the time to do it the way I would normally choose and saying ‘yes’ just because I want to is unfair, a miracle doesn’t then happen to clear time in result, I wish it would. I think official mentoring is important, and it can be a lot of fun and it feels really good when folk get through. I probably do it in odd ways, very rare for it to be in the same sector or organisation as me, I like variety, I like hearing about different places and contexts.

But there’s a lot of unofficial mentoring out there too. It just works in a different way. It’s about listening to the world around you and picking up on the things that feel relevant to you and thinking them through. And perhaps that’ll have an obvious application or result at the end of it, perhaps not.

People are good for each other

If you’ve ever been influenced by anyone in a positive way or one that really made you think, then I’d argue that’s a very specific instance of mentoring whether you’d recognise them in the street or not and whether you ‘know’ them or not, or whether they ever say anything again that has that impact on you or whether they realise that they did at all.