Trust and interdependence

Trust relationships in the world of the mentor seem to feature a marked interdependence. I'll consider this with respect to the relationships between mentor-student, mentor-university link, mentor-colleague and mentor-patient.

In the mentor-student relationship, the interdependence is concerned with the mentor depending on the student to practise in a responsible and reliable way (do no harm to patients) and to report back to peers and university staff in a way that is fairly representative of the experience they have had on placement, and that is respectful of some of the difficulties and subtleties of professional practice. The student depends on the mentor to show them good practice, open doors to learning experiences (make them available, e.g. access to patients and other professionals), and to assess their performance fairly.

In the relationship between the mentor and the university link person, the mentor depends on the university link person/people to provide the right information and training/updating when needed, and support and back-up in cases of difficult student-related issues. They also depend on the university sending students in manageable numbers and appropriately, in terms of matching learning needs to the practice area. Mentors rely on the university to prepare students appropriately for their forthcoming practice experiences. The university depends on mentors to provide the appropriate practice experience, communicate with them as necessary, and assess students appropriately.

In the relationship between the mentor and their immediate colleagues, the mentor depends on colleagues to show goodwill, cooperation and support towards the student, and to deputise in their absence. Mentors often depend on the opinions of and evidence provided by colleagues in assessing the capabilities of students. As having a student may be seen as competing or interfering with day-to-day practice, the mentor also relies on colleagues to be tolerant and accepting of their position and responsibility. There is probably less dependence in the other direction, unless colleagues are also mentors, in which case giving support can be reciprocated mentor-to-mentor. In some senses, then, the relationship between mentors and close colleagues could be unbalanced or unidirectional in terms of dependence.

With patients, mentors depend on patients allowing students to take part in their care. Patients depend on the mentors to delgate and supervise appropriately to deflect risk of harm.

Where there is obvious interdependence, this must be different to situations where the mentor is more dependent, for example, on colleagues to provide support. Where does trust come into this? Is it easier to make yourself vulnerable, knowing that the other can also be vulnerable?

How do nurses negotiate multiple trust relationships in their mentoring roles?

Trust exists in relationships with patients, colleagues, managers, and relevant professional bodies. Indeed, the first item in the Nursing professional code of conduct is that “The people in your care must be able to trust you with their health and wellbeing” (Nursing and Midwifery Council, 2008). The code further stipulates that nurses have an obligation to work collaboratively in teams and behave in such a way as to uphold the reputation of the profession.

Trust is thought to be important for cooperative behaviour. Workers are said to trust others when they have optimistic expectations of them and are willing to be vulnerable and take a risk with regard to the other fulfilling their expectations (Rousseau, Sitkin, Burt, & Camerer, 1998; Whitener, 1997). The relationships between mentors and students and with their work colleagues seem to call for a consideration of collegial trust. Collegial trust operates on an interpersonal level and carries an expectation of the other person working with professional integrity and doing what is expected (Jackson, 2008; Sullivan, Francis, & Hegney, 2008).

The data in my study reveals a complex web of relationships that mentors negotiate. With their work colleagues, they sometimes need to advocate for their mentoring activities and the presence of students in the workplace, or they may need to confide in colleagues about aspects of their mentoring practice, or delegate to them for supervision of and judgements about their student. With the partner university, it is important to them that their judgements and concerns about students are taken seriously, but also that their goodwill in taking students and making the effort to support students is recognised and not taken for granted. With students, they make efforts at befriending in order to put students at ease, and to foster a sense of trust that enables disclosure by the student. Such disclosures can be seen as essential for supporting reflection on practice. However, this befriending must be tempered by the requirement of mentors to assess students' practice, determining their eligibilty to progress in their training, or even to progress onto the professional register. With regard to patients, mentors are protective, seeking to reduce any risk associated with students providing care. They also require patients to cooperate with the student, and accept that some patients will refuse care by a student.

A development of mentoring styles

Mentoring styles could be seen as approaches to mentoring that can be fluid and adaptable according to characteristics of the mentee or the demands of any particular work situation. They can also be seen as more stable aspects of a mentor’s practice that relate, for example, to their own personality, values and preferences for learning. In reality, there is good reason to suspect that there is a combination of forces at work. Hence, one would expect to see mentors adjusting their repertoire according to any situation, while constrained to an extent by their own preferred style of being with students. I'm adopting the term “mentoring style” to denote a more personal attribute, and “mentoring approach” as a behaviour that can be adapted. I have also tried to attach an interpretation of the relationship style based on what I know about transactional analysis (TA).

In the following list, I’ve ordered the latest style classiifications roughly in a hierarchy of passive-active intervention.

1) Providing a link between the learner and the practice

chef with menu TA Adult-Adult)

co-worker to an apprentice (TA Adult-Adult)

taxi driver (TA Adult-Child)

2) Role model

Role model(TA Adult-Adult)

3) On a mission

Crusader

personal trainer or coach (TA Parent-Child)

4) Actively supporting, probing, monitoring and nurturing

nurturing parent or gardener (TA Parent-Child)

shepherd and trail guide (TA Parent-Child)

Probing parent or advocate/ mediator (TA Parent-Child)

responsible parent (TA Parent-Child)

5) Creative mentoring

scientist or pedagogue (TA Adult-Adult)

nurturing, intuitive parent (TA Parent-Child)

Mentoring styles

I've done some thinking recently on the different styles of mentoring that are coming out of the accounts of my participants. I think that probably they are adapting their styles according to the situation, but as time goes on I expect that there will be some consistency of style showing through. This list is just an initial run through, considering possible metaphors that could guide the thinking.

"Probing parent"

"Team and menu approach" or "chef" (try it and see)

"Crusader"

"nurturing parent" or "gardener"

"personal trainer" or "coach"

"Role model"

"Expedition leader"

"Taxi-driver" (service on demand only)

"Pedagogue"

"Advocate, mediator"

"Lone ranger" (independent, in control but rather exposed personally)

"Goosegrass" (stick to my side)

The will to be a professional or to be a mentor?

Ron Barnett gave a keynote speech at the 2009 SCEPTrE conference, unpacking the notion of the will to be a professional. He posed the challenge that the basis of the formation of the professional will is unclear and that this creates opportunities to re-think how we as educators can help students develop the necessary dispositions and qualities that maintain the professional will. He drew parallels with themes from his book "A Will to Learn", which has provided me with extra insights into what it means to be a student in the journey through processes of learning.

I’d like to be able to add something to this knowledge. My PhD research is partly driven by the desire to discover the will to be a mentor for students on placement. It's a role that isn't enjoyed by all nurses and some seem to have a greater propensity than others for supporting and educating students in the workplace. Also, I wonder if there is a relationship between the strength of their professional will and their will to be mentors.

As Barnett pointed out, there can be tensions in the doctor-patient repationship when the doctor has the ideal patient in mind and the patient has the ideal doctor in mind and between them the relationship is worked out. I can see parallels here with the mentor-student relationship. Some of the mentors in my research have described characteristics of their "ideal student", and there is plenty reported in the literature from the student viewpoint of ideal characeristics of mentors. According to Barnett, the will has to be continually nurtured and re-nurtured (possibly because of these tensions?), but we don’t have a theory of what professionals do to maintain the will to be or become professional in the present, in the here and now. The educational challenge is of helping to form this professional will in such a way it will be durable. For nurse mentors, this nurturing of a professional will needs to take place at different levels:

the mentor as a nurse has to sustain a professional will to be a nurse and also to be a mentor.

Not only that, but they also need to find a way to nurture a professional will in the students.

Occasionally, they see that there is no professional will in a student

The will exists in knowing, acting and being. Mentors are challenged to devise a space or spaces in which the acting and the knowing and the being relate to each other, both for themselves and their students.

Teasing out the relationship between what it means to be a professional and the life around the professional, it's clear that the professional is part of a wider community, but you have to question whether their own interior spaces provide resources for going on, amongst turbulence and uncertainty. Because, according to Barnett, the professional is able to critique the profession and move it forward, standing apart from the profession as well as part of it, it isn't sufficient to rely only on a community of practice to nurture the professional will. It will be useful to look out for signs of critiquing the profession in the themes and accounts that emerge in my data, and as I'm delving into thoughts and feelings, I may have some insight into the interior spaces of the mentors in my study.

To end this entry, I'd like to share this list of sources of the professional will that Barnett presented:

Delight – something keeps us going, we look into a classroom, we see a little event that students put on in an evening, all by themselves

The language, the poetry of the moment – something happens, something is said, something is done with care

Recognition – a moment of affirmation

Humour

Graciousness

Perceived value – we have to perceive value in what we’re doing in order that that will be nurtured

Perceived effect – a sense that what we’re doing has some kind of valuable effect

Faith? Hope? (I’ve already identified hope as something that features in the mentor experience)

I think there is a lot of this coming through in my data from the mentors, so it will be exciting to see the parallels.

Learning to be professional

I'm preparing a paper for a conference organised by the University of Surrey's Centre for Excellence in Professional Training and Education (SCEPTrE). The main theme is 'learning to be professional' and I think my research has a lot to contribute, in that it provides the part of the story that depicts the experiences of the professionals who directly support learners in the workplace. They have their own idea of what it is to be professional and go to some length to instill professional skills and behaviour in their students.

Although it feels like early days yet (last data was collected at the end of January), interrogating the data with both the research question and the conference theme in mind has brought out some intriguing themes: working with fragments of experience; being aware of high stakes; having hope for the profession. Both mentors and students work with fragments of experience. The mentor sees a fragment of a student’s learning journey and has to imagine where and how it fits with their image of a professional nurse, in addition to helping the students connect their experiences. The stakes are high for mentors and their students. There is urgency about learning, and mentors can be subject to persistent questioning or find themselves striving to ‘unlock’ a quiet student. The accounts reveal how when a relationship is under tension, there is a range of emotional responses. Underlying a decision about a student’s aptitude to become a nurse is a poignant reality-check: would I want this person caring for me or my family? Hope for the profession extended to concern and optimism for the future and recognition of the importance of the mentor role.

I'm looking forward to the conference and to having some fruitful discussions about how what I'm doing complements some of the excellent work already done in the field of work-based and professional learning, such as by Stephen Billet and Michael Eraut.