Hi Dianne, Jean and Everyone,

I am very interested in how the nature of mentoring (and coaching) relationships relate to values - I think that is a core issue that is sometimes overlooked when attempts are made to 'surface' match - right age, ethnic origin, religion etc etc rather than understanding what 'drives' people involved; what matters to them & why do they choose to behave as they do?

There's some useful literature relating to Markus' notion of Possible Selves that's useful too - and Geoff Plimmer (great guy!) from New Zealnad has developed a useful tool to help to match mentors and mentees too.  If you are interested in exploring mentoring with regard to the Possible Selves concept I'd recommend this journal: http://www.josseybass.com/WileyCDA/WileyTitle/productCd-0470183292.html  Thanks for the info about DR - useful!

Warm regards,

Sarah

PS How might one identify mentors' core values rather than their aspired values, Dianne - how far can one perceive their embodied values from asking what their values are and might it be better to combine asking with observing in action to see their embodied values in use?


Sarah Fletcher

Consultant Research Mentor

http://www.TeacherResearch.net
Convenor for BERA Mentoring and Coaching SIG
Details at http://www.bera.ac.uk

--- On Tue, 3/9/10, Dianne Allen <[log in to unmask]> wrote:

From: Dianne Allen <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: Re: mentoring and personality?
To: [log in to unmask]
Date: Tuesday, March 9, 2010, 5:38 PM

Jean and all,
 
I was first introduced, formally, to tools to deal with the idea of personality impacting on interpersonal relationships, while undertaking Dispute Resolution studies.
 
There are a variety of ways of 'perceiving'/ 'constructing' patterns of constellations of personality differences.  A fair number of them can be seen to have some explanation related to Jung's work.
 
Based on that introduction in DR studies, and what research-based support there is, as well as published material for non-psychologist users, I have continued to explore MBTI and to qualify as an MBTI practitioner.
 
I was interested to consider what might be involved in resolving personality clashes that occur in the workplace, and which can sometimes be 'clothed' as 'discrimination' and followed through in discrimination grievance management procedures.
 
I have also considered ways in which knowing my own personality type (self-awareness), and knowing the general distribution of personality preferences in the population at large (other-awareness), can work out in the classroom situation, and especially work for, or against, better learning, by being more strategic about learning experience design.
 
There seem to be some obvious hypotheses about differences in personality preferences and interpersonal relationships that can be explained by reference to too large a difference, and 'natural' miscommunication resulting, as well as difference being the spice of life, and the idea of necessary complementarity amongst team members to bring out the best results over all.
 
So far as Dispute Resolution is concerned, the most cogent explanation I have come across about unresolvable /intractable disputes relates to those disputes that comes from 'fundamental' differences in values ... though it can take some time for those values to become apparent as the source of the difference, and since values are 'deeper' than attitudes/beliefs/values (that's the scale), and articulating values-in-use, rather than espoused-values, is a difficult task.
 
If you are interested in any further elaboration of any of these points let me know/ ask me a more specific question.
 
Dianne Allen
Kiama NSW Australia
----- Original Message -----
From: [log in to unmask]" ymailto="mailto:[log in to unmask]" target="_blank" href="[log in to unmask]">Jean Rath
To: [log in to unmask]" ymailto="mailto:[log in to unmask]" target="_blank" href="[log in to unmask]">[log in to unmask]
Sent: Wednesday, March 10, 2010 2:16 AM
Subject: mentoring and personality?

Hi All

 

I would appreciate your input on a workplace debate about mentoring.

 

We focusing on mentoring women in leadership roles and the issue came up of the role of personality (especially personality clashes) in mentoring relationships. My understanding is that although people put huge effort into matching by personality there is little evidence to support this practice. I think that the most important factor is how people understand (and action) what mentoring means rather than whether people get on socially (although this may enhance the experience it doesn’t correlate to successful outcomes). How does this fit with other people’s understandings? And do you have any references to support your views?

 

One of my colleagues is interested in using MBTI personality profiling to help pairs form in productive ways … has anyone had experience or heard of it being used in developing mentoring pairs or groups?

 

Your input would be greatly appreciated.

 

Best wishes

 

Jean Rath