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Week 9

Understand resiliency

Children must be taught how to think, not what to think.

—Margaret Mead

Day 1: Resiliency and mentoring

A significant outcome of a positive mentoring relationship is the development of a resilient young person.

Resilience is a process of “connectedness,” as competent and emotionally stable mentors link to their mentees, their interests, and ultimately to life itself.

When you connect with your mentees, as you do when you nurture resiliency, you meet their emotional safety needs. While you cannot remove stress and adversity from their lives, you can provide them with the emotional safety which puts them in a position to develop problem solving and social skills. As the mentees develop these skills, along with competence in an area of their choice, they strengthen their self-confidence and sense of self-worth, identify and develop personal strengths, and gather the resources they need to stay strong when adversity threatens to overwhelm.

Research has found that mentees who connect with their mentor:

•are in a mutually caring, respectful mentoring relationship, in which the mentor encourages and nurtures the mentee’s resilient qualities;

•have opportunities for meaningful involvement:

•they get along better with their parents, or caregivers, and teachers (authority figures);

•they develop a more positive attitude to life;

•they achieve more at school;

•they reduce their drug usage, alcohol abuse, truancy, and inappropriate sexual activities.

Mentoring tip: Seek to establish an emotional bond with your mentee and your relationship will soar.

Day 2: Identify a mentee’s strengths

Personal resiliency builders are individual qualities that help people to cope with stress and adversity in their lives. One or more of these qualities can be identified in every adult and adolescent mentee. I think of them as strengths. Resiliency experts Nan Henderson and Sybil Wolin20 have highlighted some of the most important personal resiliency builders.

Personal resiliency builder	Definition
Perceptiveness	Ask tough questions and give honest answers; have a perceptive understanding of people, and situations; display an insightful approach.
Relationships	Make fulfilling connections to other people; be sociable; able to be a friend, and form positive relationships.
Independence	Distance emotionally and physically from the sources of trouble in one’s life; adaptive distancing from unhealthy people and situations; be autonomous, or self-sufficient.
Creativity	Use imagination and express oneself in art forms.
Humor	Have a good sense of humor; able to laugh at oneself.
Competence	Be personally “good at something”; have personal ability and skill in some area.
Initiative	Take charge of problems; base choices and decisions on internal evaluation (inner direction).
Perseverance	Keep on keeping on despite difficulty; never give up.
Flexibility	Able to adjust, or adapt to change; bend as necessary to cope positively with situations.
Love of learning	Have the capacity for and connection to learn; a desire to learn more.
Optimistic	Have a positive view of one’s personal future; expect a positive future, or a positive outcome; be hopeful.
Self-worth	Feel self-confident; believe in oneself, and one’s capabilities, even personal potential, and abilities.
Spirituality	Have a personal faith in something, or someone greater.

Mentoring tip: Turn every mentoring experience into a learning opportunity.

Day 3: Strategies to develop resilient mentees

Effective mentors have the responsible role to develop resilient mentees.

Here are some proven strategies to consider during the mentoring journey, all of which I have used at different times with a variety of adolescent mentees.

•Encourage your mentees to have diverse friendship groups and, wherever possible, to have at least one circle of friends outside of their school, workplace, or training institution.

•Encourage your mentees to join a youth club, sports club, or another club that caters for their interests.

•Encourage your mentees to link up with another caring, trustworthy adult from outside the immediate family, or extended family who they respect—a teacher, youth leader, work colleague, or sports coach.

•Encourage and coach your mentees to appreciate how thoughts influence feelings and behavior. In other words, nurture problem solving skills. Your mentees recognize that their conditional thinking—You’re stupid, or too thin, or a loser—is a lie. They remove blocks to their innate resilience as they learn how to build their sense of competency in this way.

•Encourage your mentees to read, as cognitive competence has been identified as a hallmark of resiliency.

•Encourage your mentees to develop a close relationship with at least one parent (preferably both) where there is tension between parents—divorce, or separation.

•Encourage your mentees to contribute to daily life at home, for example by doing household chores, babysitting, or helping siblings.

•Encourage your mentees to be accountable for their choices. Demonstrate the importance of responsibility, and include your mentees in decision making, goal getting, and boundary setting.

Nourish your own resilience and wellbeing, so you can be an exemplary role model at all times.

Mentoring tip: A reliable and consistent mentor commits for the long haul.

Day 4: The universal capacity for resiliency

Resiliency expert Tony Newman21 wrote: “A resilient young person can resist adversity, cope with uncertainty, and recover more successfully from traumatic events or episodes.”

Everyone has strengths and an inborn capacity for self-righting, for transformation and change.

Bonnie Benard22, one of the foremost authorities on resiliency in the world, has pointed out that all people are born with innate resiliency. That is, everyone has the capacity to develop four traits which are common among resilient survivors.

1.Social competence—the ability to form relationships, which includes responsiveness, cultural flexibility, empathy, caring, communication skills, and a sense of humor.

2.Metacognition—the ability to solve problems, which includes planning, help-seeking, and critical and creative thinking.

3.Autonomy—the ability to develop a sense of identity, self-efficacy, self-awareness, task mastery, and adaptive distancing from negative messages and conditions.

4.A sense of purpose and belief in a bright future—the ability to plan and hope, which includes goal direction, educational aspirations, optimism, faith, and spiritual connectedness.

Resilience is unlikely where a young person faces continuous and extreme adversity, which is not moderated by external factors. Conversely, the presence of a nurturing climate draws out the above traits and encourages their expression.

The link to nurturing is good news for mentors. It allows you to enter a mentoring relationship with the knowledge that, when you connect with your mentee, the two of you journey forward together with an optimistic and motivating attitude. “You” have the power to tip the scales from risk to resilience.

Mentoring tip: Effective mentors are encouragers and non-judgmental cheerleaders, not critics.

Mentoring moments

Pieter van der Bijl was my junior school principal. He was a former international cricketer who was highly respected by the students. He was a tall, imposing man who walked with a limp as a result of an injury he sustained in the North African campaign during the second World War.

Pieter wrote to my father before one of my major cancer operations to let him know that our family was in his thoughts and prayers. During my recovery, I missed a few months of school, yet Pieter continued to check up on my wellbeing.

One Saturday morning he arrived at our home to collect me and take me to watch school sport. Two of my peers accompanied him. We remained in the car to watch the sport, as it was a cold, wet and overcast day, and Pieter knew I was self-conscious as a result of my surgery.

Pieter was caring, compassionate, empathetic, and a wonderful encouragement. For a young boy recovering from major operations, it was comforting to know that my school principal watched over me, not only at that time, but also in the years that followed.

When I was appointed school captain (head student) for my final year of school, I received a letter from Pieter congratulating me on my achievements. He had retired by then and, sadly died a year later. Pieter’s letter remains a treasured memoir from a man I respected and admired, and who sowed the seeds of mentoring in my life at a young age. I suspected, too, that he continually spoke to the potential he saw in me, which I did not see for quite some time after my surgery.

Mentoring tip: Always strive to build up youth with whom you connect. Encourage, correct, stretch, and sustain them every step of your mentoring journey.

20. Henderson, Resiliency in Action, 12.

21. Newman, Promoting Resilience.

22. Benard, Fostering Resiliency.