Читать книгу Better Health & Wellbeing Professionals Ask Better Questions - Lindsay Tighe - Страница 13

Whilst we acknowledge that there are many more hats that we wear, the final one we’d like to consider here is that of the mentor. There are many ways to describe what a mentor does, but over the years we’ve settled on there being two clear components to this important role. The first is that the mentor is there to support another person in their development, and to do this there is an expectation that they will share their wisdom from their journey so far. The other feature that defines a mentor is that they have ‘been there and done that’; their role is to enable others to successfully deal with the challenges that confront them.

The mentor is a role model and generally someone to whom you aspire. Certainly, when we have utilised mentors in the past, we’ve had huge respect and admiration for them. There has been a desire that, one day and in some way, we’d be like them, and our expectations were that they’d show us how to reach our goals – or at least help us along the way.

To reiterate, the role of a mentor is a very valuable one that can have a profound impact on people, particularly in their learning, development and growth. We frequently act as informal mentors to others, often without even realising it, and we may also take on more formal recognised mentoring roles with staff or people in more structured settings. Again, it should be emphasised that there is a prerequisite to wearing the mentoring hat in that you will be expected to bring your ideas, expertise and knowledge/wisdom to the table, which means there is a large ‘telling’ component to the approach.

We have explored, then, a number of roles that sit traditionally at the ‘teller’ end of our line, and we trust that you can see that in some form or another, the role of a professional takes on all of these aspects. Whilst we absolutely accept that Health & Wellbeing Professionals who fulfil their roles well won’t operate entirely from the ‘teller’ space, we ask you to bear with us as we continue to approach these explanations from a purely ‘black and white’ perspective.