The ‘Magic’ in Mentoring?

Mentoring as a vehicle for social change has been at the forefront of government intervention initiatives for many years especially for young people involved in the criminal justice system and those deemed to be academically at risk.

Despite its widespread usage, the evidence remains patchy as to its effectiveness especially in relation to young people’s development. Existing models are, in the words of one study, ‘poorly theorised’, and there are few empirical messages to be derived which point clearly to where the ‘magic’ lies in mentoring – in other words, what are the factors that maximise the likelihood of positive change arising from the relationship?

As the Mayor's mentoring champion my role is to 'join some of the dots’ through pointing to established areas of theory which lend mentoring some validity as a development concept, and show how these might affect the design of and expectations placed on our mentoring programme.

Mentoring as ‘social learning’

In theoretical terms, mentoring is perhaps best seen as evolving out of the social learning school of thought, popularised by the eminent psychologist Albert Bandura. In simple terms, social learning theory holds that learning occurs through four main stages of imitation – close contact, imitation of superiors, understanding of concepts and role model behaviour. This way of looking at learning expands upon the truism expressed through statements such as ‘people are people through other people’. The theory places equal emphasis on environmental factors – the effect that the surroundings one grows up in can have – as it does on cognitive factors, specifically the capacity of the individual to pay attention to, retain, reproduce, and be motivated by factors in their environment – most importantly the behaviour of significant people in that individual’s life, especially in childhood.

Whilst social learning could be identified as a credible methodological source for mentoring, this basic explanation of the theory also points to the importance of background and socialisation. The dislocation and trauma often present in working with disadvantaged and disaffected young people is well-known.

What do we expect of mentoring?

Rather than seeing this as a rejection of any possible value to be gained from mentoring, a different question might be to think about the expectations placed on mentoring schemes and how they operate. Lessons from the field of executive development teach that mentoring is best suited to developing capability and potential, rather than to the immediate performance of skills and behaviour. Transposing this perspective into the context of mentoring for disadvantaged young people raises the possibility that the problem with mentoring is not that it ‘doesn’t work’, but that we expect it to work in particular ways – often to produce

tangible and relatively short-term behaviour change – that it is perhaps not best suited to achieve.

Placing mentoring in context

The Mayor's mentoring programme takes a broader focus that encompasses the one-to-one relationship between mentor and mentee and also the broader life circumstances, including family background, relationships with school and peer groups. This is clearly most difficult with the ‘hardcore’ of young people already caught up in the extremes of criminal and anti-social behaviour; those who are less exposed to extremes may arguably make better candidates.

The available studies into mentoring schemes tend to report that young people perceive some immediate benefit from the contact they have with mentors in terms of widening their perceptions of ‘who people like them can be’. Many people – particularly but not exclusively the most privileged in society – have those expectations, and a network of relationships to support them, embedded into their lives through their socialisation and upbringing. Mentoring offers one small way in which an element of that process can be transplanted into the lives of those whose circumstances might otherwise limit their exposure to different opportunities, and there is evidence to suggest that young people themselves value that exposure. There is little doubt that when done well youth mentoring can be beneficial to young people.

So where is the magic?

Ultimately, the magic resides in the same place as it does for any relationship between two people where learning is created – through a human connection that inspires. Whilst it is important to acknowledge questions about the effectiveness of mentoring and what it can achieve, it is equally important to acknowledge that a considerable amount is already known about the factors that make mentoring most likely to succeed. There is a wealth of material available to inform the delivery of mentoring programmes, in terms of participant selection, mentor training, the ‘rules of engagement’ governing mentoring relationships, and recognition of accomplishments achieved. Robust attention to these factors will load any initiative in favour of success and maximise the possibility of ‘inspirational connections’.

A process that has demonstrably been shown to have positively contributed to the career of many of Britain’s most successful business leaders can surely offer a meaningful contribution to the development challenges facing young people at risk of marginalisation and alienation in today’s society. The opportunity exists to learn from the best of existing practice (in young people’s development and elsewhere), and there is sufficient know-how available to make this happen.

Ray Lewis