Module 1: Pre - Module Tasks (1) LMA Article - Personal reflections
LMA Mentor Training - Mentoring in a Football Context
Introduction
The function of mentoring has long been established across a wide range of industry and business settings. In the modern day sporting world this has become an increasingly used support function to maximise learning and performance for players, coaches, managers, chief executives and indeed, business owners. Mentoring works because it creates a safe place for people to feel both supported and challenged, increases their self-confidence, confirms and clarifies their immediate issues and required actions and most importantly creates an environment which enables growth, development and learning to take place. The focus on learning helps people to become better decision makers, helps them to listen and hear more clearly and helps them to commit to clear and achievable outcomes.
Q1. When looking to others for support and advice, it’s tempting to look just to your immediate circle of peers or confidants. Do you think that’s sensible or is there a risk we will simply hear what we want to hear? Is there more to be gained in casting the net wider? It is clear that effective mentoring is a careful and skilful balance between support and challenge. Individuals need to feel supported but also need to be challenged with accurate and honest feedback, new perspectives and different ways of thinking. It is sensible to have some mentors that are part of your immediate environment as they may know you very well and can detect small behavioural changes or personal preferences. However, it has become increasingly common to create a wider support network and develop multiple mentors that can operate in slightly different domains and specialisms. Most top executives have a range of people that support them in a number of different ways. Sport is also moving to a position where multiple mentors are now very common. This provides for constant challenge and support across the range of performance enhancement functions. The top people employ the best people they can and expect to be challenged on a daily basis. Yes, it is about receiving good advice and support but it is also about listening and hearing to the feedback that is sometimes difficult to receive.
Q2. We think of mentors as being managers who are older and wiser than us, but is there value also in reaching out to our peers, younger professionals and, equally, others outside of the industry?
The function of mentoring is to help people learn and make good decisions. When we are early in our different careers, it is often that this support comes from older and more experienced people. However, this is not the only mechanism or provider of good learning. Most of our learning comes from our peers, comes from observing and discussion, comes from listening and questioning. It is obvious that we can learn from a range of people across a wide range of settings. As professionals become a little older, a key skill is to create environments where we can learn from lots of different places and different people. Peer mentoring and reverse mentoring allows people of all ages and backgrounds to help each other grow and develop. The mentors and mentees can grow together in different ways. The modern world surrounds us with vast amounts of information, we need a range of people to help us make sense of this new information and link it to our professional work environments. However, whilst we can potentially learn from many different people and environments, remember that we must make sense of this information and bring it back to our own context. Whilst learning from outside our industry or outside our sport can be invaluable, the new ideas and principles may also not always fit with our context and our specific sport settings.
Q3. It’s important to remember that we are each in control and that someone else’s opinion and advice is just that. Can that be a risk for some coaches and managers in periods of vulnerability and insecurity - that they may jump on suggestions too quickly or not think carefully enough about translating them to their own context?
One of the reasons why mentoring works is that it places the mentee at the centre of the learning and performance environment. It is the mentee that drives this relationship. It is the mentee that processes the conversations and clarifies key issues and actions. It is the mentee that must commit to action and behavioural change. These principles all derive from the motivational concept of Self Determination Theory. In this simple but powerful theory, it is the individual who takes control and is centre of change. Autonomy, Belonging and Competence become the key factors of intrinsic motivation. Mentors must be aware and be careful that the mentee remains in charge of all decisions and actions, especially in difficult times and times of potential stress. In this way, the mentee grows their own skill set, grows their own confidence and becomes more resilient and self-sufficient. It is a big risk if the mentee becomes too dependent upon a mentor and that this external source drives change and action. Ideally, the drive stays internal, comes from the mentee and it is the mentee that processes all the information and decides on their own course of action. In this way, the mentee has control and makes decisions that are linked to their own specific context and environments.
Q4. Mentors have a really big responsibility here to help boost the self-esteem and confidence of the mentee, and to offer their experience without pushing them or steering them in a particular direction. Is that one of the key characteristics of a great mentor?
The key characteristics of a great mentors include the ability to really listen, process the information and ask for clarity by using great questions. By using these simple but effective skills the great mentor allows the mentee to grow, learn and develop. The great mentor acts as a Thinking Partner and creates the environment for the mentee to work things out for themselves. Once the mentee starts to understand situations more clearly, they become more confident in their thoughts and actions and consequently, their own self esteem grows. Mentees report that one of the biggest outcomes of being involved in a mentoring programme is that they feel more supported, feel more confident and believe that they are getting better. The great mentor always keeps the mentee as the focus, always allows them to make the decisions and always empowers. It is all about the mentee not the mentor. Top class mentors help people to help themselves, they help people to learn and think for themselves, they hold up that mirror and ask the great questions about what the mentee sees.
Q5. Just how valuable is it to bounce your ideas off someone else, especially when embarking on a programme of change?
Change is all around us. The successful performers embrace change every day. The successful managers anticipate change and are proactive, not reactive. In order to always anticipate and look forward, a key skill set is the ability to involve others and be constantly striving to make things better. Performance planning is crucial to top level performance and multidisciplinary teams of support must continually communicate across their interlinked environments. The top class manager and their support teams anticipate change, discuss change every day, plan for change and are always ready for the unexpected. They have communicated so well that the players and teams of people can effectively function in times of change. Of course, change can happen very quickly in modern sporting environments. Club owners can change, Chief Executives can change, Directors of football can change, Managers and Coaching staff can change. The top performers at all these levels can operate in times of change with really effective communication. This is not always easy but the ability to communicate effectively through change is a key skill and vital in the modern game.
Q6. There will be managers with a certain amount of experience who might feel reluctant to reach out to their peers, thinking perhaps that they should know it all by now or that seeking validation somehow shows a lack of self-assuredness. Why do you think it’s valuable for people of all ages and experiences? The top class managers and elite performance directors are always learning, they are always reaching out to others, they are always searching for new knowledge or insights and checking their own understanding. To do all these things, top managers find time to talk with others and ask for help when needed. The best leaders are humble, they know that they do not know everything and develop the ability to reach out to a range of people when they need support. The best leaders know themselves and know their limitations. They know that creating extensive support networks and having great communication skills will allow them to compete at the highest levels of their given industry. Showing vulnerability is a great strength, one which the great mentors and managers use to their advantage. Reaching out to others for support, information or feedback is not always easy but this is a skill that top managers have cultivated and developed. It is a strength to ask for help not a weakness. Being highly self-aware is a key skill linked to high levels of emotional intelligence. Top managers know themselves and their teams of people.
Q7. As well as providing a boost to professional development, mentoring and sharing thoughts and emotions with others can help to reduce feelings of isolation and loneliness. It's not always an easy thing to do though. How would you convince someone to open up and look for that peer-to-peer support?
Being a leader is not easy and not everyone can do it. Often it is a lonely position but it does not have to be. The best leaders accept the role and responsibility but also create sustainable and effective working environments for both themselves and their staff. Top class performance environments are highly supportive ones where all individuals, including the leaders have somebody or somewhere to turn when they need to. The skill of the top class leader is to accept the help and support and build networks of care around themselves and their team. Elite sport is competitive, not everyone can win all the time. In fact, more often than not there is only one winner of a league or cup competition. That does not mean that everyone else has not been successful. Maximising performances with the different teams and budgets that are available across all leagues is a real art. Success can be staying in the division, can be growing a fan base, can be balancing the books. Every club manager knows what success looks like for their particular circumstances. The challenge is agreeing this picture of success with the owners, the board and fans. Keeping this picture of success and remembering what performance outcomes have been agreed is crucial to avoid the feeling of isolation and loneliness. Celebrating the small successes can be crucial in a long season. Celebrating with your team and those around you is important. Recognising that a job well done will not guarantee a win on the pitch is difficult to take sometimes and not what everyone wants to hear. Just being able to talk through your week, articulate some of your thoughts and share some concerns are part of this caring support network. This can be both formal and informal and the top managers have both types of these mechanisms with people they trust and value.