August 2001

Manitoba Women’s Institute Educational Program

Mentorship A Strategy for Supporting Rural Women in Leadership Roles

By Gail Watson, PHEc, and
Wendy Bulloch, PHEc,

Mentoring / How can WI meet the challenge? /
The Empowering Mentor / Where to from here?

Mentoring:

The term mentor originated in classic Greek mythology when Mentor, a wise teacher, was asked be his friend, Odysseus, to watch over his precious son, Telemachus, as Odysseus embarked on a length voyage. As a surrogate parent, Mentor gave support, love, guidance, protection, and blessing to the young child until the return of his father.

Today, mentors, as we have come to know them, are those who gently guide and nurture others in various stages of development.

Mentoring is being recognized as an important leadership skill across Canada, as many organizations introduce the concept to enable others. The London Community Centre has a Small Business Mentoring Program. The Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce has introduced a mentoring program for university students. Manitoba Education and Training is encouraging students and business to participate in a work-experience project through business mentorships. Finally, Trimark Investment Funds, The Globe and Mail, and the YMCA of Canada is presenting and sponsoring Canadian Women’s Mentor Awards for women mentors who have inspired, advised, coached, guided, or aided other women.

Manitoba Women’s Institute has been very visionary in realizing the need for a mentorship program, Mentorship – A Strategy for Building Manitoba Women’s Institute for the Year 2000, across rural Manitoba. Why?

As we advance into the next millennium, women will be called upon to play a larger leadership role. The characteristics of women’s leadership skills will play significant roles in the coming millennium as women leaders strive to build bridges, not walls, in our communities and our country. These characteristics include the ability to:

• Empower
• Restructure
• Act as a role model
• Create a nourishing environment for growth
• Ask the right questions

In order for this leadership to grow and expand with rural women in Manitoba, it is important to have mentors who will aid women in igniting their visions, their hopes, and their self-respect and who will assist in creating an atmosphere of trust.

Informally, in the past, MWI members have acted as mentors. They have helped others with executive tasks; they have supported each other be listening and encouraging women to take on new roles, aiding in building self-confidence, and hearing personal issues.

As rural women encounter the many transitions that will face them, their families and their communities, a mentor relationship is especially important and effective in order to deal with these transitions. It is through the mentorship process, that leadership skills are developed, to help sustain the many transitions in agriculture and community roles that will face rural Manitoba women as they enter the 21^st century.

The WI regional seminars this past fall yielded some interesting comments from participants as to why women are not involved in community leadership roles. The two most frequent comments were the lack of time and energy, as well as working outside the home in full or part-time jobs. Further down the list, however, were comments that need to be addressed. These were a lack of self-confidence, a feeling of inadequency, a lack of knowledge/skills/experience, leading to lack of leadership skills.

These comments correspond to a national Rural Workshop hosted by Agriculture and Agrifood Minister and Minister Coordinating Rural Affairs, Lyle Van Clief, in October of 1998. The workshop was one step in the Rural Dialogue, a process that began in April 1998, when thoughts and ideas of Canadians from rural and remote areas were gathered. The participants in the workshop tackled a number of issues. A significant issue was the need for leadership and community capacity building.

Considering these comments from the WI regional seminars and the Rural Dialogue, mentoring would play a significant part in supporting rural women in leadership roles.

How can Women’s Institute meet the challenge?

Learning from others:

Over the years, many of us have had the opportunity to learn from others. Our learning could have been from a parent, a grandparent, a teacher, a friend, a 4-H leader, a co-worker, or a WI member.

We did not search these people out; in fact, they helped us by investing time, energy, and personal know-how in assisting us to grow as individuals and leaders in our communities. They helped us navigate the system through encouragement, perspective, or wisdom. They perhaps made important introduction for us as well as pointed us in the right direction.

A group discussion or a roll activity in you activity in your local could include:

• Identify someone who was your mentor (whether you realized it at the time or not).
• What characteristics did you admire in him or her?
• What did he or she do to assist you in your personal growth?

Becoming a Mentor:

Over the years, many of you have possibly shared the following skills with others:

• Listened,
• Created and atmosphere of trust,
• Inspired a vision,
• Helped someone to see the whole picture,
• Modeled the way

This sharing and giving was most likely done very unselfishly without realizing you were acting as a mentor to someone who needed your help and guidance.

A mentor:

• Is one that becomes a special kind of leader, one that can both be a guide and be guided.
• Is open, compassionate, caring, and exudes passion and inspiration for personal growth.
• Is accessible and open, but is not necessarily a friend. Friendship is not a prerequisite for successful mentoring.
• Is someone who has a mentor. She or he walks the talk. The best mentors are students of other mentors.
• Is someone who has a sense of humour and has the ability to laugh at himself or herself. The ability to laugh at his or her failures and mistakes and not take themselves too seriously is an important characteristic of an ideal mentor.
• Possesses an inner sanctum or can find sanetuary from the business of life. He or she has a "hermit spot" and uses if to maintain perspective and energy.
• Stands up for the "mentee" in both good and bad situations. He or she demonstrates a strong commitment to the "mentee".

Would you like to be a mentor to others?

A task for would-be mentors is to set clear standards as to how they will use their time. Some questions, they could ask themselves are:

1. What (or who) has taught me lessons that I would like to pass onto others
2. What legacy might I like to leave?
3. What losses or hardships have I endured and what have I gained from these?
4. What sort of persons would I like to mentor?
5. What burning issues or ideas drive my life?
6. How might I enhance the lives of future generations or develop in them the potential to experience peace, beauty, and the heart of their own truths?
7. What are five lessons I would like to share with others?(adapted from the mentor’s spirit)

Answering these questions will help set standards for you as a potential mentor.

The Empowering Mentor:

• An effective mentor empowers the person he/she is helping – the "mentee". The mentor focuses on what the mentee does an opposed to how she or he does it. The mentor needs to focus on the positive rather than the negative.

• It is important that the mentee be allowed to try things on his or her own. This gives the mentee ownership of his or her actions approach to the situation, and discovery of her or his own talents.

• As mentors, we may not realize how effective our mentoring has been upon another person. An effective mentor lets go or, more importantly, creates a freeing relationship for the mentee.

These three approaches are non-directive methods of mentoring that assist one to empower others. Listed below are some questions that will help you to identify ways a mentor can empower others.

List 3 situations where you have served or could served as an effective role model. (For example, experience as a program convenor for a meeting setting up an agenda, acting as treasurer of an organization)

1. _____________________________________
2. _____________________________________
3. _____________________________________

Identify two positive attitude you display, and two ways you help others to overcome negative feeling about themselves.

Positive attitudes: (for example, We can make a difference or together we can do it)

1. _____________________________________
2. _____________________________________

Helping others: (for example, encouragement and trust in abilities of others. "I can help you.") 

1. _____________________________________
2. _____________________________________

Listening can help mentees let go of their negative feelings. How comfortable do you feel just listening to people with problems?

_______ Very Comfortable

_______  Not comfortable at all

People seldom want to be told what they should do or how they should do it, but an idea or a bit of information offered in a neutral/non-directive way becomes something they can identify and use. Assess your own ability to share ideas and information in a neutral/non-directive way. (For example, "Here are a couple of ideas for planning a meeting. You choose the parts that will work best for your meeting.")

__________________________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________________________
(Adapted from mentoring revised)

Where to from here?

As we move forward into the next millennium, the opportunity to learn from others and to be productive mentors will aid us in creating harmony and in learning within our families, our communities, and our world.

Productive mentors affirm life and further its potential. They are authentic, genuine, and emotionally available. They set clear boundaries for themselves and others. They "walk the talk". They stabilize people in a continuity of effort because they themselves are grounded.

Productive mentors are important and vital members of any organization. The more vitality each member brings to an organization, the more vital will be the whole organization.

Manitoba Women’s Institute, and its members have always contributed in significant ways to each other and to their communities. The Mentorship Initiative will formalize, strengthen, and extend a practice that has always just naturally happened within the WI organization.

Through the Mentorship Initiative, experienced WI members who choose to act in the capacity of mentors will have the opportunity to receive training to add to their existing skills and knowledge in order to support other women in their communities.

It is anticipated that women who are just getting involved in leadership roles, who are interested in eventually assuming community tasks, will take advantage of opportunity for assistance and support. These women may or may not be WI members at this time; nevertheless, this positive connection with the Women’s Institute organization has the potential for ultimately increasing membership.

Mentorship – A Strategy for Supporting Rural Women in Leadership Roles

Program sequence:

1. Present information session re: Mentorship Initiative at all regional fall seminars
2. Develop a Planned Program on Mentorship and its role in taking community leadership/action for use in early 1999
3. Introduce this Mentorship Package at a workshop session at MWI’s Personal Development day in January
4. Identify and conduct six focus groups with young farm and rural women to discuss leadership training needs, family concerns, and potential initiatives on these issues
5. Work with selected mentors to develop workshops for at least 12 communities
6. Evaluate this community-based program on Mentorship