MENTORING: SOME PSYCHOLOGICAL PERSPECTIVES


                                                By


Professor Elegbeleye, O. S.
Department of Psychology
Obafemi Awolowo University
Email: tobae1@oauife.edu.ng
                                     tobae2@yahoo.com
           

Abstract: Five psychological perspectives by which mentoring as a conscious engagement between the mentor and the mentee can be modelled have been highlighted in this paper to guide discussion about what constitutes robust and productive mentoring enterprise. These are Personological, experiential, environmental, socio-economic and religio-cultural perspectives. The perspectives were presented in a way that all hitherto overlooked rudiments germane to the understanding and rational delivery of mentorship are revisited and reappraised.




Introduction:

Mentoring is undertaken when the mentor initiates a deliberate, but somewhat empathic, chain of activities directed at providing for the mentee solid guidance and pathways that will be required to navigate  the confusing  maze that characterizes today’s social responsibility mandates,  effective educational delivery and  sustainable manpower development for both the present and future needs of the Nigerian nation.

It is unfortunately the norm to experience deficit value outcomes at all cadres of the Nigerian national life, which spans governance, educational vision, mission and social reality, public conduct measured on the time tested tradition of best practices, positive futuristic dreams that are fibred to sustain hope, hard work and pro-social inclinations and other sundry facets of human engagements. This occurrences aggregate the probabilistic harvest of several years of substandard mentoring regimen passed down the line and has become today’s monster. A monster that scares people from visiting designated parts of the country for reasons bordering on armed banditry, kidnapping, terrorism (Boko Haram), mob demolition etc. The above mentioned monsters out of several of their kind come with violence in its physicality, while other variants come in form of software but with equally ferocious negative consequences on their victims. What comes to mind here are exampled by the debilitating effects of being a victim of fake drugs dispensers, financial fraud a.k.a. 419, being a victim of stock market crash, being subjected to devastating revelations of mind boggling corrupt practices in both high and low places, suffering job insecurity and a discrepant alienation between the elite and the governed.

Rational minds know that all of the above are outcomes that are predicated on a process that took a long time to mature; hence they brook no hasty solution but rather a painstaking assessment, evaluation and paradigmatic application of antidotes. This is therefore expected to be foreshadowed by the need to provide answers to so many questions that are pertinent, part of which are the following; why would a university graduate show no compunction being counted among caught armed robbers and his female counterpart found working in brothels as prostitutes?, how is any given youth expected to psychologically reconcile publicly declared embezzlement that runs into billions of Naira with the value of public accountability that featured in his mentoring repertoire?, what convincing argument can situate a public perception that has come to recognize as a truism the believe in and practice of ‘African time’, ‘politicians are liars’ ‘you call it corruption when you do not benefit from it’, ‘life is a struggle and therefore encourages the survival of the fittest’ etc. In this paper, these questions have been compartmentalized into the following five perspectives through which unbiased answers can be arrived at and by which discussion in the paper is guided; Personological, experiential, environmental, socio-economic and religio-cultural perspectives.

Personological perspective: Mentoring endeavour in this connexion focuses attention on the three essential domains that psychologically profiles the person. These are the cognitive domain, the affective domain and the behavioural domain. All productive mentoring activities direct attention at the cognitive health of the mentee. A mentee is subtly led to establish a connection between logical reasoning and decision making process both of which form the foundation of the building block of a responsible persona. Far less mistakes are made when decisions are based on logical sequencing that are capable of initiating a pathway to finding solutions to sundry problems thrown up by the various environments which define our present day world. For this reason, the mentor seizes all available opportunity to deliberately highlight to the consciousness of the mentee what is logical and illogical thinking. In normal pedagogical tradition, the nerves responsible for excellent cognitive functioning are best stimulated when the mentee is made to have a first-hand encounter with the workings of the task he is billed to master.  Therefore a pragmatic understanding of the workings of a given machine would require that the mentee is guaranteed uncluttered exposure to a model machine that parades similar physical features with the target learning object. If a mentee must be made to grow into a mature personality, debates or academic discourses involving him or presented to him as a learning simulation need be fact-based, he must be exposed to prototype situations when the mentor engages in a fact laden discourse/s.

A poor delivery of mentorship schema at the cognitive level is epitomized by the secrecy that characterized practice of medicine by our forefathers. Important information about the reasons behind the efficacy of the plant-based drugs that worked well for curing sundry ailments by our forebears were hoarded and allowed to die with them. This singular development robbed succeeding generation of the birth of a scientific culture which would have accommodated healthy discourse about alternatives and offer ample opportunity for comparison of the efficacious value of drugs as they emerge. Streaming from this would have been the possibility of nurturable culture of documentation, the absence of which has made generations of African people a pariah, forever dependent on medical discoveries from foreign lands.

The person at the behavioural level, no doubt, attracted the pedagogical attention of our African progenitors as they lay strong emphasis on the nurturing of the individual in a manner that would allow for the development of personality profiles that could be found reliable in war times, for community services  and the running of a strong family system. All African cultures subscribed to this ideal, and several of the norm-induced taboos, rituals, belief systems and witty sayings come handy as tools to enhance its achievability. The realities of the pre-technological age gave fillip to these methods of building a person’s personality profile and significant success attended the practice. This manifested in the law abiding, culture preserving and cultivated élan that describe the average person who had the privilege of being exposed to the culture while it lasted. However the advent of exponential technological advancement has demystified all mysteries and made hidden things rudely exposed. The rules that keep the family system in check have been violated by migration to the cities, acquisition of training through formal education and escape from the ever vigilant extended family system to far flung cultures that are alien to the tenets. This development over the years encouraged loose adherence to the cultural dictates as they were primordially designed, hence allowing for a watered down version of what used to be holistic and undiluted.  

Arising from the above was a deluge of hybrid, polluted and utterly distorted contemporaneous ideas that are not recognizable to beneficiaries of the original cultural ideals. The distortions became so pervading that all known major institutions built around people’s way of doing things were affected; marriage, language, dressing, sexual practices, family etc. Even though it is often bandied that culture is dynamic, but the dynamism brought about by the new ideas went viral. With this background, mentoring activities need pay more than a cursory attention to the person and the state of confusion he has been sucked into as a result of the inexorable transformation, through technological advancement, of the known cultures.

Mentoring activities require a subtle but realistic effort directed at character grooming. Something quite close to what is popularly referred to in psychology as Emotional intelligence (sometimes, also referred to as EQ.) This is the ability to perceive, understand, express, and control emotions. The concept was popularized in a 1995 book by Daniel Goleman, in which he argues that emotional intelligence counts more for success in life than IQ does. The book was specifically driven by the observation that people with high IQ scores sometimes fail to accomplish much, while people with less impressive intellectual gifts prosper. Goleman argues that one of the reasons IQ tests fail to predict success is that they do not measure emotional competence. The term emotional intelligence was coined by Peter Salovey and John Mayer (1990), who described it as consisting of five traits: • Emotional Self-Awareness: The ability to monitor your own feelings and recognize emotional states as they occur. • Self-Management: The ability to control impulses, ensure that emotional reactions are appropriate, and understand what underlies those feelings. • Self-Motivation: The ability to channel emotions towards the achievement of personal goals. This includes the ability to delay gratifi cation and stifl e impulses. • Empathy: The ability to read other people’s emotional cues and to take their perspective, being sensitive to how their feelings may be different. • Managing Relationships: The ability to react appropriately to the emotions of others as well as manage one’s own. Grooming encompasses the right behaviour and the appropriate tempo that ought to attend delivery or enactment of such behaviours. In the age when unmitigated violence is encountered in all facets of the polity, conscious efforts need be focused on the need for tempered contribution to discourses even when the subject matter is contrary to one’s highly cherished values. The affective disposition of the mentee need to be worked upon in a manner that will predispose him to recognizing the rights of other people to air their opinion on issues no matter how unpopular. The temperamental threshold of the Nigerian person appears to operate on a very short fuse owing to the way his psyche is daily affronted by the sheer inequality in wealth distribution, rabid corruption that is advertised with impunity, policy summersaults, wanton killings by gunmen, state sponsored murders, corrupt justice system, unemployment etc. It appeals to common logic that when there is nobody (government or institutions) to look up to for help and succour, one settles for self help. This explains why it looks like labour has lost its dignity as things to do for a living are bountifully available in the Nigerian environment but they are not structured to create jobs. The standard ‘self help’ alternative now manifests as ‘419’, ‘yahoo’, ‘yahoo plus’ criminal inventions which are directed at substantiating the schema that ‘the end justifies the means’. These are developments that are usually the forte of the youths who have all but lost hope in the forlorn believe that the polity lacks the capacity to reward merit. The mentor therefore needs to reinvent a strategy that will engender hope building models that can sustain a motivation for future compensations for hard work.

Experiential Perspective: Experience is a vital ingredient required for learning to take place. Without experience and the opportunity for a repeat performance of what was previously learnt, no learning can take place. Hence the concept of experience in mentoring finds meaning in the fact that the mentor must have to his credit ample repertoire of experiences from which he can draw to sustain a robust engagement between himself and his mentee. When an experience sounds factual and credible, it makes quite a bunch of an impact on the mentee. Not the kind that super rich Nigerian politicians in Government would give to the suffering masses to endure austerity and poverty when they themselves lack for nothing. Such experiences as are alluded to here can be acquired from three important sources; first, is a first-hand personal experience in which the mentor is an active participant, where he would have been required to take vital decisions precedent to desirable outcomes. Second, is the experience vicariously acquired through anecdotes dropped by elders who have seen it before, by friends who have been personally involved activities remarkable enough to leave a long term impression on the mind, and situation-relevant maxims whose creators are not known but have been with us for time immemorial and usually deployed to teach moral or coded to predict outcomes. The third sources are the ones acquired as a product of involvement in school based formal learning, training or induction. These kinds of experiences are occupation-tailored.

However, while it is expedient for the mentor to have a huge command of experiences at his disposal, the mentee is consciously made to contend with the impactful relevance of each unit of experience as it is dished out by the mentor. The essence of paying particular attention to the method of delivery is the need to leave behind in the mind of the mentee a lasting impression that would permit him an easy recall when time is ripe for him to draw from the experience. The method can involve a specific schedule designed to occur at prearranged intervals. Also the content of what is delivered must be made to be consistent with the expected knowledge to be gained. Mentees also positively subscribe to the idea of being subtly reinforced in a manner that would not advertise itself.

Environmental Perspective: The environment produces all the stimuli that both the mentor and the mentee respond to; however the motivation to respond, what to respond to and the quality of response are determined by a range of factors which need be paid good attention in order to prevent a miscarriage of mentorship endeavour. The mentor at all times must impact on the mind of the mentee the need to be economical with what is responded to. This is the ability to sift the chaff from the whit. When a mentee is driven to respond to too many environmental stimuli, he is ungainfully distracted with a possible loss of concentration and inability to focus thought on issues relevant to his intellectual and overall personality development. In the age of information technology, very many unsolicited information are made available at the click of a button, on the internet, via mobile telephony, and cable network television. The mentor, therefore need to work subtly with the mentee to choose relevant sets of information that would meet the interest need of the mentee. Of relevance here will be educative and enlightening information directed at achieving strategically laid out curricular, the outcome of which can help enhance professionalism and thoroughly baked elitism. Complementing efforts in this direction would be a conscious target setting exercises that are equally goal directed.

To initiate a remarkable mentoring at this level, the mentor himself must be able to navigate the various available environments so as to have first-hand knowledge of what they contain. It is not until he is able to accomplish a faultless charting of the environment that he can lead the mentee safely through its labyrinthine pathways. For example, a mentor who is unable to operate a computer, not to talk of regularly making use of the internet cannot successfully protect his mentee from the danger zones that come with internet use.

Socio-economic Perspective: This is a perspective in mentoring that takes cognizance of existential issues which are reflective of Abram Maslow’s physiological needs. These are needs which if not satisfied will not allow for other higher needs to be satisfied. A wholesome mentoring enterprise would not shy away from rendering career counselling advice when the need arises. Nothing stamps an identity on the individual than his chosen occupation, and a rewarding occupation has a strong norm compliant motivating value, hence the mentor must help the mentee identify an occupation that can sustain a lifelong aspiration of attaining set goals. Once identified, the mentor needs to design sustainability models that would keep the mentee constantly focused and interested in the goal of mastering the occupation, particularly when the rigors of overcoming the challenging complexity of the occupation, as is characteristic of all occupations, arises. Part of mentoring is sponsoring a mentee to local and international conferences where the mentee lacks the financial capacity to sponsor self but needs such conference as an opportunity to empower self. Other circumstances may even require that the mentor sponsors the mentee for further education without considering his financial involvement as poor investment. Other similar sacrifices required of the mentor to make on behalf of the mentee may include but not limited to providing helpful information about job openings, giving reference letters when such is demanded by prospective employers and giving the mentee quality feedback about his general conducts whether as they pertain to behaviour at work or other life dispositions.

A mentor who pretends that the welfare of his mentee is of little concern to him lacks commitment and adequate ability to deliver. Even where the mentees are many in number, the mentor can still take significant interest in the welfare of everyone without compromising his own financial wellbeing.

Religio-Cultural Perspective: This perspective looks at mentoring from the background of the pervasive psychological influence that both the culture and the religious persuasions of both the mentor and the mentee can wield on how mentorship enterprise is delivered and received. Religion is a component of culture in as much as a group of people predicate their world view and their intrinsic understanding of the cosmic dynamics on profound experiences thrown up by their peculiar environments. Hence, a world enmeshed in strife and turmoil will look beyond man for answer, particularly when the elements come with their fury, such as earthquakes, tornadoes, typhoons, pestilences etc. thus necessitating that a way of pacifying elemental forces are devised. The obverse of this come tied to the apron string of man’s grandiose belief in his infallibility and indispensability. Therefore he refuses to belief that dying necessarily symbolizes his absolute end as an individual, therefore he must carve for himself the hereafter where death cannot occur. All of this weave into existence all of the religious practices as we know them today. This is not losing sight of the fact that religion when fully accepted in all its doctrinal ramifications also aspires to galvanize its own culture even if it has to castigate or make a lie of an earlier cultural believes and perspectives. The underlying thread in all of this is that man is much a victim of his religion as he is of other environmental imperatives that rule his life. The mentor needs to understand that mentoring is not and should not be seen strictly through the prism of religion but rather as a social imperative that is required to spawn pro-social conducts and legacies. Though no crime will be committed if religious verve and tenacity is employed to drive the commitment to see the mentee through, but care must be taken to avoid insinuations that will make the mentee believe he is been religiously indoctrinated.

The reason why both religious and cultural issues are sensitive to mentoring methodologies and delivery is hinged on the fact that mentoring enterprises if not made to be blind to the religious affiliations and cultural background of the mentee will necessarily pursue narrow, selfish and myopic goals that would be too selective for the good of everyone within the care zone of the mentor. This opinion may appear to reflect what obtains within the academic environment where the central objective is to free the mind of all hindrances that may have been woven by sundry environmental stimulations capable of circumventing deep thoughts about possibilities. The liberal question to ask is; can’t there be religious, political, military, entrepreneurial mentoring enterprises etc.? Yes, there can be. But mentorship of whatever hue must be kept strictly within the view sight of the goal it is out to achieve. Sentimental tools must not be adopted to drive a goal that is expected to be logically arrived at, and the mentee must not at any point in time during his engagement with the mentor be bogged down by the appeal to a sense in which he sees himself as a beneficiary of a sympathy laden engagement but rather an empathic one.

Conclusion: In conclusion, when engaged in the enterprise of mentoring, the mentor must strictly observe the rules that govern objectivity and allow self to be driven by the goal of moulding behaviour to fashion out a personality whose orientations and productive yearnings will be pro-social and not antisocial, pro-people and not anti-people, objective and not subjective, organic and not synthetic, reflective and not abrasive, etc. If the five perspectives laid out above are adopted as a guide in mentorship engagements, positive outcomes will be bountifully harvested.


References
Goleman, D. (1995) Emotional Intelligence: Why It Can Matter More than IQ. New York: Bantam,  Goleman, D. (1998) Working with Emotional Intelligence. New York: Bantam,
 Sternberg, R. J. (1999) “Review of Working with Emotional Intelligence.” Personnel Psychology, 52(3) : 780.

 

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