Ailsa Turrell wrote on: Tuesday, 1 December 1998 21:05
Subject: Re: Is there such a word as "mentee"?
>Protege definitely did not seem correct to us - we were not setting senior
>people up as role models to be emulated.
... or immolated? I agree with an earlier posting that it appears equally
appropriate in many cases -- and the fact that immolate and emulate were
both appropriate solutions to the original 'immulate' (thanks Adrian)
demonstrates the problem that comes when people start playing with the
language, particularly when a word, its meaning, its context and the
underlying concepts are misused, misunderstood or ignored.
For example:
>Our aim was to get people in different divisions of the
>organisation and at different levels of the organisation talking to each
>other, to open up opportunities for people to move between divisions on a
>temporary or permanent basis, and to give some of the less experienced or
>more junior staff access to a bigger picture of the organisation ...
> ... it broke down barriers and opened up new career paths for some
people.
Is the underlying concept here 'mentoring' or is this programme just an
attempt to formalise the internal networking and 'communication' which
should happen in a good company anyway (without a special programme). Is
mentor, therefore, even the right word in this context, because if it isn't,
mentee is even less appropriate!
>As I explained to someone, but perhaps not the group, there is an
Australian
>candy called "Minties" and that is what people actually ended up referring
>to themselves as.
That staff refer to themselves as Minties is intriguing -- grace under
pressure?, finding humour to relieve the stresses of the work place?,
perhaps they are happy referring to themselves as soft white lumps whose
only function is to have their taste and flavour crushed out of them by
their 'users' molars and then either swallowed or discarded, perhaps they
think that this is appropriate. But perhaps this choice of name by
participants should also cause the programme designers to think a little
about how people perceive the programme and its intent?
In this context, friend, colleague, associate or partner (and a thesaurus
could provide many alternatives) would be a better substitute for both
mentor and mentee -- after all, both senior and junior staff should probably
share the same roles and titles in this programme, IF true communication and
mutual trust and benefit is to flow. (Mentor, of course, assumes that the
information, support, encouragement, ideas, and so on flow from the top down
only, which does not sound like a sound model for a 'developing
organisation'.)
Does this organisation have an active, all-encompassing social club? Do all
staff share the same cafeteria? the same car park? Are there
cross-discipline project teams? Do all staff share similar office space?
These could all be more effective steps towards the objectives of the
'mentor' programme as stated.
Bevis England, New Zealand.