Using Questions in Mentoring Relationships

Using Questions in Mentoring Relationships

Recently, Connect Magazine published an article about using questions in mentoring relationships by Dr. Barry Sweeny. In his article, Dr. Sweeny talks about “high impact” questions which are used to help mentee’s grow and learn. The high impact question, according to Sweeny, “involves a response that demonstrates higher level, critical thinking, such as revealed by the verbs, compare, contrast, analyze, differentiate, or even evaluate or synthesize. Mentors KNOW they have asked a ‘high impact question’ when there is a pause and then the protégé answers, ‘I’m going to have to THINK about that a bit before I can answer it.’”

Asking your Mentee to analyze or evaluate something they have done in a CareerPassport Track Activity, or in their school work, or extra curricular activities will help them to use critical thinking skills, and if used often enough, your Mentee will expect you to use this type of question often, and thus they will start to think more critically about what they’re doing with their college education.

Another thing Dr. Sweeny talks about is the power of personal pronouns. If you use “We” or “Our” instead of “You” or “Your”, it completely changes the question and can bring about a different result. Look at the following questions Dr. Sweeny uses to see the difference between using “We” or “Our” verses “You” and “Your.”

·        What result do you want to achieve that would be the “best case scenario”?

•     What could you do that could lead to the best case?

•     What problems might occur for you that would prevent achieving the best result?

•     What can you do that might avoid problems or obstacles?

•     Are there any other alternative routes you could take to that same best case result?

•     Which of your alternatives is most likely to lead to that result?

•     How will you start the process?

“Although it seems so subtle, there is a powerful effect in using the pronoun ‘you’ this way. Here’s what it accomplishes:

• The ‘you’ assumes the protégé can figure out the problem and what would be the best solution (with the mentor’s questions as a guide).

• The ‘you’ keeps the ownership of the problem and the responsibility for that decision making and solution finding with the protégé.

• It allows the mentor to ask the kind of open-ended questions that the mentor knows a more experienced person would ask themselves. Done a number of times with different problems, the protégé will begin to anticipate the questions to be addressed. This shows that the protégé is starting to internalize those questions and learning to think that way as well, which is the goal.”

Now if you were to look at these same questions, using the pronouns “We” or “Our” instead of “You” or “Your” it changes the intent and purpose of the question. According to Dr. Sweeny,

“If the mentor is concerned that the protégé lacks sufficient experience to know some of the answers and can NOT analyze and solve the problem alone, what should the mentor do that is most helpful? The answer is that the mentor should change the personal pronouns in the questions from ‘you’, which excludes the mentor from participating in answering the questions, to more inclusive pronouns like ‘we’, ‘our’, and ‘us.’ Switching to inclusive personal pronouns has the effect of including the mentor in the ownership of the problem, and it keeps the mentor in the thinking, and decision making process. The net result of including the mentor in the process is that it allows the mentor to let the protégé do as much as possible, but… It also allows the mentor to reflect and wonder about things out loud and, thereby to model expert thinking and choice making, all of which would be invisible to the protégé unless the mentor is part of the process, ‘unpacking his or her own thinking.’”

Make sure to read the full article on Connect Magazine's website and learn how to use questions effectively in your mentoring relationship. Asking questions in the beginning of the mentoring relationship can be very effective in determining where you and your Mentee want to go in your Relationship.

References: Sweeny, Barry Dr. “Using Questioning in Mentoring Relationships.” Connect Magazine. N.p., 10 2013. Web 25 Sept. 2013 http://library.constantcontact.com/download/get/file/1108653809372-16/CONNECT+Volume+1.pdf.