The Pros and Cons of Mentoring

My mentor, or the closest relationship to a mentor I had, described a mentor/mentee relationship as the following:

“An older professional meets a younger professional who reminds him or her of themselves when they were younger and that age; simultaneously, the younger professional meets and sees the older professional and aspires to emulate that older professional; they both click via the acknowledgment of the mutuality and recognition of their relationship. A genuine friendship emerges.”

My mentor, Dr. Raymond Landis, was less my mentor than he was a father figure who was the theoretician and founder of the college program I was hired into and from which I retired. We were certainly friends, but too far removed in our professional credentials to reflect the ideal mentor/mentee relationship he described. He was a PhD-ed mechanical engineering professor and Dean; I was a M.Ed-ed (masters in education) minority engineering program (MEP) director with a specialization in college administration. I’d say 90% of the ongoing training and guidance I received as an MEP professional I received from Ray Landis, who provided ongoing updated training via workshops and publications for decades. I also taught introduction to engineering classes for 31 years as part of my MEP role. Ray was my mentor and friend.

His description of the ideal mentor/mentee relationship resonated well with me because that was exactly my experience…for a short while.

I was working as an orderly at Presbyterian Hospital in Newark, New Jersey when I met Everett Winston Jones, who came in as a patient. He was in his late 20s/early 30s; I was 20. I had flunked out of college. I didn’t want to return home to Houston, Texas. I didn’t want my parents to know I had flunked out. I wanted to stay back East in proximity to Debbie Carr, my college girlfriend. A college friend’s father who was a doctor got the job for me at Presbyterian. Dr. Sorett was one of the primary general practitioners at Presbyterian Hospital. He arranged the orderly position for me. His son, Howard, was my Middlebury college classmate. Somehow, they pulled strings to get me hired at Presbyterian. I am eternally grateful. In retrospect, it was like I had a guardian angel watching over me.

As an orderly I wheel-chaired patients back and forth, assisted the nurses and LPNs (lifting patients in and out of bed; turning them for bedsheet changes; fetching autoclave units and bedpans) and I transported deceased patients to the hospital morgue. There was little downtime between the hours of 7 AM and 3 PM. “Orderly needed, room X; orderly needed, nurse station X” was the constant refrain on the hospital intercom.

One day I wheeled a patient into a double room. The other patient in this room was an attractive, clear-eyed, young, Black man. He had an authority about him, and at the same time, a felt warmth. He looked like an adult. I looked and felt like a young adult to be. He looked like how I wanted to be: older, wiser, yet accessible; not detached as so many other adults were/are. He had arrived. He looked at me and smiled. I smiled back. He introduced himself. He was gentlemanly and well spoken. I had not met anyone like him before. My only role models were teachers and college administrators. He was a businessman, upper management. I was a college student gone awry. Nevertheless, I retained my collegiate aspirations in tone and bearing. Winston Everett Jones picked up on that immediately. He seemed to see me for who I was and to what I aspired. I aspired to be like him.

He had a sense of humor, which matched my own. We would quip back-and-forth readily, easily, connectedly. It was life-affirming, for me, to connect with someone at the intellectual and emotional level I could with Everett. I needed the validation I was OK as I was. I didn’t know I needed it, but here it was being offered to me, being presented to me. It was, as I say, life affirming.

Everett had an asthmatic condition. That’s what brought him to the hospital. I had suffered from asthma growing up. We connected around that. When I saw him, he never appeared ill. Most of the time he was in the hospital bed, being attended to by an LPN or a nurse. I never had that much time to spend with him because I was ongoingly busy throughout the hospital. But whenever I could, I would drop by and stick my head in, maybe chat and move on. When I left for the day, I would always stop by.

At some point, it became clear to him and me that when he returned to his work life, I would be a part of it. Everett would be my mentor, my guide to the world of work and business. I was on my way. I would finish school in the interim, with a strong connection to the business/corporate world of finance, money, and upward mobility comfort. It felt right. It felt given. I had never felt so certain about where my life was headed until then. It felt preordained, the missing link of my journey to self-actualization.

Then…

“Milton, Jones died last night!” Dr. Sorett told me forthrightly when I saw him.

“He died of a heart attack due to his asthma condition.”

Everett was his patient. Dr. Sorett knew about the friendship Everett and I had developed. He called him Jones.

I was speechless. I took in the information and moved on. The trajectory of my life changed at that moment. I was not very conscious of my feelings at that time. I didn’t inquire about a funeral or his family. Soon after, I caught myself whistling while I wheeled a deceased patient to the morgue one day. Whistling while I was doing so felt too emotionally detached even to someone not very emotionally oriented as I was. I recognized I didn’t want that level of emotional desensitization. I knew I needed to leave Presbyterian. One day I sprained my ankle badly, while back tracking playing basketball. My orderly-working days were done.

I returned to Middlebury with more resolve and graduated.

I think of Everett ever so often when I encounter circumstances of synergy, which bring people together in the business world and the entertainment/art world. I had that synergy with Everett…for a moment.

So, yes, I know what the ideal mentor/mentee relationship is. It is as much a feeling and acknowledgment from the participants as much as anything else.

A mentoring program can bring people together, even like-minded people together. But it can’t make them click. The click, the synergy, the camaraderie, the mutuality…derives from the personalities of the mentor and mentee.

I tend to refer to Steve Jobs and Wozniak as the ideal merging of two minds — the click of two individuals being able to be on the same page and operate from the same page. As the ideal mentor/mentee relationship, as described by Dr. Raymond Landis, I refer to Duke Ellington and Billy Strayhorn.

Billy Strayhorn saw Duke Ellington play in Pittsburgh in 1933, then met him in December 1938 after Ellington performed there again. After the show Strayhorn brazenly showed Ellington how he would have arranged one of Duke’s compositions. Strayhorn went to the other piano behind the stage sat down and played for the Duke. As the Duke listened, he slowly walked up behind Strayhorn, and gently put his hands on Billy’s shoulders affectionately while Billy played. The missing link in his compositions was being played and demonstrated to Ellington right then and there. Ellington invited other band members to hear Strayhorn. At the end of the visit, he arranged for Strayhorn to meet him when the band returned to New York. Strayhorn worked for Ellington for the next 25 years as an arranger, composer, occasional pianist and collaborator. As Ellington described him, “Billy Strayhorn was my right arm, my left arm, all the eyes in the back of my head, my brain waves in his head, and his in mine.”

The classic mentor/mentee relationship is a an inter-generational womance or bromance. Ray Landis’ definition confirmed for me what I thought was a mentor/mentor relationship and what I experienced. That definition was my only understanding of what a mentor/mentee relationship was. That definition was the sum total of what I thought a mentor/mentee relationship was….until mentoring became a buzz word.

So, what is mentoring, if it is not the classic relationship? I’m having trouble grasping how it is mentoring when the mentor and mentee do not progress to a relationship. If mentoring is more than the classic relationship, what is it?

According to the Cambridge dictionary, mentoring is the act or process of helping and giving advice to a younger or less experienced person, especially in a job or at school.

The book, Bridging Differences for Better Mentoring: Lean Forward, Learn, Leverage” by Lisa Z. Fain defines mentoring as

“a reciprocal learning relationship in which a mentor and mentee agree to a partnership where they work collaboratively toward achievement of mutually defined goals that will develop a mentee’s skills, abilities, knowledge and/or thinking.” A 299 page eBook on mentoring seems, to me, to be overly thoughtful, “overthinking,” as a young civil engineer referred to the actions of another engineer.

The classic mentor/mentee relationship is like a good marriage in contrast to an oh-so marriage or a bad marriage. Again, what is mentoring if mentoring is not the classic partnership as described? How is it determined to be successful if it is not the classic?

The classic mentoring relationship is met when two individuals agree to work together, and a genuine relationship develops given their older/younger statuses. Nowadays, mentoring is referred to as an almost commonplace business practice. Older and younger colleagues are brought together via a featured mentoring program or organizational mandate. The voluntary versus programmatic structure of such programs is my concern here.

I am reminded of the book, Minority Education and Caste (1978) by John Ogbu. Ogbu made a clear distinction between voluntary immigration and involuntary immigration when it came to the behavior of Black people in America. This is another subject altogether, but I think there’s a relationship between the two. The difference is qualitative. I contend there is a qualitative difference when the mentor/mentee relationship is not the classic relationship. Mentor/mentee denotes a relationship. I contend that supervision is the more appropriate term when the classic mentor/mentor relationship is not achieved. Or coaching, if you will.

I further contend mentoring of college students requires a different approach altogether than mentoring of professionals.

It is not just my opinion for such a contention. It has been my experience not only as a mentee, but as a program Director.

I first became aware of MentorNet when they started in 1997. I immediately recognized MentorNet’s value for students on campuses that did not have minority engineering programs such as mine. I also recognized that MentorNet was tapping a market for students which hadn’t been tapped before the unmentored college student. MentorNet positioned itself as a provider of services to unmentored students. They did so markedly. They appeared to have considerable support from numerous companies. More support than I had for my campus program and more support than from the MESA collaborative from which my program derived. I was, nevertheless, on their listserv and privy to the growth and development of the program. Interestingly, MentorNet wanted access to my students, not me or my program. My program was based upon the methodology of inculcating within my students values and skills for collaborative learning and career development starting in their freshman and sophomore years. With those values and skills instilled early, the students were no longer dependent upon my program for their eventual successful graduation. Nevertheless, we relied upon the upper division students to serve as ambassadors, role models, and mentors to the lower division students. The methodology worked. It worked well, although we needed resources from the campus as well as from corporate and businesses to sustain and interests and invest in the program.

As much as MentorNet wanted to work with my students, I kept my distance. I viewed MentorNet as competition. MentorNet was actively competing with me for the attention of my students. I was concerned about MentorNet taking my students’ focus away from building his/her networks on the campus and not being a part of the community of scholars network campuses can and should be. I know, from experience, my students’ greatest opportunities for success were through the various campus networks: via faculty, student organizations and the career center, and, maybe more importantly, my own industry advisory board. As much as MentorNet needed the support of the businesses and agencies it touted, I needed to make sure my students were viewed as potential employees by my industry advisory board representatives. I didn’t want or need an off campus agency vying for my students.

Nothing is wrong with mentoring programs, particularly for students who don’t have the connections on campus they need, but students need to initiate and develop their connections within the on-campus networks. Students of color, in particular, need to learn how to take advantage of and integrate the on-campus networks into their academic and professional development endeavors. They need to know and be assured they are part of the academic community. Off campus networks, no matter how successful, reaffirm to students of color the impression they do not belong. They do belong whether they think they do or not. It was my job to show them they did belong. I, we, my staff and I, did show them…

From one of my MEP students…

“In college I actually had issues with interviewing with older males because I was intimated and slightly scared (I felt like I was not good enough). MEP gave me a home to help support me when I failed interview after interview and I told Patty (do you remember her?) crying that I couldn’t interview and would never get a job. Patty encouraged me and actually helped me set up mock interviews with older male professors to help boost my courage, she helped me revamp my interview, and just gave me courage to keep trying. Over my career in construction in a very male dominated field I have had times where I felt inferior and not good enough but I always go back to the lesson I learned in MEP which is, it’s okay to feel frustrated or upset or to make mistakes or fail because all you can do is keep trying, have confidence, and keep going. MEP backed me up and gave me a family that I still am in contact with to this day (I married my husband that I met in MEP). My company is my MEP now and gives me a landing board to keep getting back and now I can give speeches to 100+ males and not waiver.”

MentorNet was an off-campus network, which was oriented to building a base of students to call its own. MentorNet was not oriented towards directing my students to become anchored into the robust academic community of their own campus. MentorNet needed my students to participate in a network apart from their campus network. It is interesting that MentorNet is now part of Great Minds in STEM which I referred to here…. https://milton-randle.medium.com/stem-diversity-at-the-crossroads-065b1d264273

The NSBE Professionals Los Angeles-sponsored mentoring program is an off-campus network. The program started in the summer of 2023. I volunteered to become a mentor and was paired with a mentee.

My mentee is a case in point.

I knew her job was limiting her. I alluded to it several times but not derisively when we talked and when we met. She understood. Still, her part time job was already integrally a part of her schedule and lifestyle. It is hard to divest yourself of that kind of commitment once it has begun — a lifestyle away from the campus. In MEP, I, we, emphasized regularly and emphatically to our students they were part of an academic community, which was reinforced by time spent on the campus. We made sure we anchored our students in on-campus experiences and programs, which reinforced their need to participate in the academic community of the campus. It is one thing to tell students what they should do. It is much more effective if it is demonstrated to the students what and how are the experiences from which they would most benefit. The Academic Excellence Workshops (AEW) were the key methodology of the MEP’s. The AEW taught MEP students how to study and work together. It taught them the efficacy and value of working collaboratively. The AEW’s and other MEP components ensured MEP students were actively engaged and welcomed into the academic community of the College of Engineering and the University.

I’m happy to say my mentee finally let the job go. Probably too late. We’ll see.

I found my mentee’s experience to be such a typical experience of students of color. They work because they have to. They get a job that has nothing to do with their major or career because it’s easier to get a job unrelated to one’s major than it is to get a job related to one’s major. Getting a job related to one’s major or career requires time and investment in the academic community, for which many students of color don’t have the time. They too often must work to be able to attend school.

The job becomes too much of a focus away from the academic community. Therefore, they have an excuse to not apply themselves academically as well as they should or could because they don’t really have the time. They, as a result, have lower GPA’s and nothing to truly show for it to a potential employer. Although sometimes…some employers appreciate students who simply have a work ethic. Nevertheless, many students of color come up short, as if they don’t have the requisite abilities, when it’s not a matter of ability but the time and resources needed to acquire the requisite abilities.

Again, I’m not opposed to mentoring at all but I think there are more fundamental anchors that need to be in place first to effectively orient students to succeed. Particularly, black students. I am convinced most Black students need a young Black professional as a mentor rather than an older professional. I would never argue that no older professional could not be an effective mentor to a Black student, but I will argue that most older professionals cannot adequately mentor Black students and that Black students will respond more positively to seeing young Black professionals as role models rather than older, Black professionals.

A mentoring program is a wonderful and laudable construct. Nevertheless, it is a construct. It’s like an arranged marriage. You can bring the partners to the table, but you really can’t make them click unless they themselves actualize the mutual potential between them. Right?

MR