The 7 Gifts of Mentoring

I graphically facilitated the conversation led by Laurent A. Daloz at DePaul's Center to Advance Education for Adults.

This is part of an ongoing series of events CAEA is hosting around the question, "What if every encounter was a learning encounter?"

Exploring mentoring, advising and informal learning, the power of these events have been the open and rich conversation.

My favorite part of this talk was when Laurent talked about the balance of Support and Challenge and wanted to draw a grid.

He said, "If I had a whiteboard, I'd draw it."

I waved him over to my chart.

As he came off of the stage, I asked, "Two by two matrix?"
 

"Yes."

I love a two by two matrix.

I drew the model on the chart as he described it. Along the vertical axis is Challenge. The horizontal axis is Support.

In the bottom left quadrant is low support and low challenge resulting in STASIS. In the upper left quadrant is RETREAT, when there's high challenge and low support. In the lower right quadrant is low challenge and high support: CONFIRMATION. And the final quadrant of high challenge and high support is GROWTH.

The complete graphic facilitation:

A mentor needs to know where the protege is and where they need to go. I personally love this model, because I was just thinking about the mix of support and challenge in designing my 3-day Lab. 

In my invitation video, posted last week, I talk about critique.

Critique terrifies most people. But well facilitated, constructive critique is the fastest way to grow.

As I say in the video, I don't want critique to make anyone cry, 100% Challenge, but I also don't want to foster an environment where everyone say "YAY US!" to everything we do. 100% Support doesn't make us better, stronger.

Daloz's 2x2 matrix as a way to see the flow between these four states.