Mentoring Skills (Awareness, listening and showing understanding) Mary Gordon NEPS

Awareness Mentoring is about raising the learner’s awareness  To themselves  To others around them  To the world You mostly raise their awareness by listening to the their story with your full attention

Mentoring can help their awareness of what they feel and think their awareness of how they behave their awareness of what is going on in their body and the information they are receiving through their senses their awareness of how they make contact with other people their awareness of their impact on their environment and the environment’s impact on them

Inner zone Awareness of Our visceral sensations Our muscular tension or relaxation Our heartbeat Our bodily sensation and feeling Our breathing (most of all)

Outer zone Awareness of Our behaviour Our speech Our actions Our contact functions – how we make contact with the world (seeing, hearing, speaking, tasting, touching, smelling and moving) Focusing on the outer zone allows us to become more aware of what we are doing and its effects on others and on ourselves and to notice what is going on around us.

Middle zone Awareness of Our thinking Our memories Our fantasies Our anticipations This zones mediates between our inner and outer zones. It organises our experiences so that we come to some kind of cognitive and emotional understanding of them. It also allows us to predict, plan, imagine, create and make choices.

Challenging Challenging is only possible when the mentoring relationship is good Challenging takes place in the middle zone where the learner is making sense of their experiences You challenge their beliefs and thoughts if they are based on  inaccurate information (she doesn’t like me)  illogical reasoning (he didn’t ring me because he doesn’t care about me)  unhelpful thinking (I need to get drunk before I can enjoy myself here) The reason for challenging a young person’s beliefs and thoughts is that they are getting in the way of  their sense of agency  their happiness or wellbeing

Attending and listening  Showing we are attending by  Our posture  Our gestures  Our facial expression  Our voice  SOLER

SOLER O – Adopt an OPEN posture This says you are open to the learner and do not want to be defensive

SOLER L – LEAN slightly towards the learner without intruding on their personal space This underscores your attentiveness and lets learners know that you are with them

SOLER E – Maintain good EYE contact, without staring This tells the learner you are interested in them and in what they have to say

SOLER R – Remain RELAXED This indicates your confidence in what you are doing and helps the learner to relax

Showing understanding Listening with empathy “To sense the client’s inner world of private personal meanings as if it were your own, but without ever losing the ‘as if’ quality, this is empathy” (Rogers)

Paraphrasing A good paraphrase provides a mirror or reflection that is clearer and more succinct than the learner’s original statement A simple tip for paraphrasing is to start your responses with the personal pronoun ‘you’ to indicate that you are reflecting the learner’s internal viewpoints, for example ‘you feel terrible’. Another tip is to allow your speech rate to slow down to give you more time to think.

Reflecting feelings Skilled helpers are good at picking up learners feelings. Reflecting back a learner’s feelings shows that you are tuned in to them Reflecting feelings rather than thoughts establishes a climate where learners can share rather than bury their feelings. Reflecting feelings involves both receiver and sender skills.

Receiver skills Understanding the learner’s face and body messages Understanding the learner’s voice messages Understanding their verbal messages Tuning into the flow of your own emotional reactions Taking into account the context of the learner’s messages and sensing the surface and underlying meanings of what they are saying

Sender skills Using learners feelings, words and phrases Rewording feelings appropriately Using voice and body messages that significantly neither add to nor subtract from the emotions conveyed Checking the accuracy of your understanding

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