Getting your fellow mentors on board

[Andrew Schreiber]

TLDR - different interaction methods are good, respect your fellow mentors enough to trust them to be decent people.

Why do all mentors have to have similar philosophies in mentoring?

As a student on RUSH I was lucky enough to be exposed to a variety of mentors with a variety of styles and philosophies when it comes to mentoring. Some were more hands on, others were more sarcastic, yet others had other styles. I naturally gravitated towards working with mentors that worked with my personal style of learning.

To me, I have a style of mentoring in line with my personality, asking (or telling me) to do something very different than that is going to be a very unpleasant experience and, in my experience, counter productive. Sure, your fellow mentors could all try to be nurturing, kind, and hands off (if that's what you want) but that may be counter to their personality which increases stress on them. Couple that with the fact that some students may learn better with other approaches and it stops making sense to mandate mentoring styles.


On 79 and 125 I respected (most of) my fellow mentors. I assumed if they were interacting with a student a certain way they either knew the student reacted well to that sort of interaction OR that the student would ask someone else for help if it bothered them. Really I think what you're missing isn't knowing your mentors but respecting them as adults and professionals and trusting them to do what they think is in the best interest of the students and the team.