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.
