CPD 23: Thing 11

Thing 11: Mentoring

This will probably be a shorter blog post than Thing 10 (collective sigh of relief) as I have only had a mentor once so far, when I was chartering. I actually found my mentor through personal recommendation, which I think is a good thing to do. They were very helpful throughout the chartership process, supportive and gave a listening ear but also firm when I needed it about what I had to do. Although I have now chartered, I still keep in touch with my mentor through local networks and feel that I can go to them if I have any other concerns with my job.

After chartering, I did consider the prospect of being a mentor myself and did a PTEG course (they have one coming up in September if anyone is interested), these are actually quite good as they focus on other types of mentoring as well as mentoring for chartership purposes. I asked my mentor what she thought about this and she thought I would make a good mentor. I have decided though at the moment, not to pursue this, as I have other priorities that I want to concentrate on which would mean that I would not be able to give mentoring the commitment it deserved. I would like to go back to it at some point though. I think it is important, if you are going to be a mentor, that you give it a full commitment as you have a responsibility to the people that you mentor and it is not just for your own personal gain. Also, I think it is important if you would like to become a mentor that you get the full support of your workplace as this may impinge on your work time to varying degrees (I am extremely lucky in this respect that I work somewhere where this kind of development is actively encouraged). 

We don't really have workplace mentors where I currently work although there is a push towards a buddy system. I am on a university committee with a member of HR management and we are trying to push through a 'work buddy' scheme, someone who a new member of staff can turn to, maybe not neccessarily within their first couple of weeks but 3/6 months down the line if they have any problems. I guess it goes back to when you started a new school and had someone who showed you where the toilets were etc. I certainly think this would be a good idea in libraries. Quite often, library assistants are librarians in waiting and may be doing the job to get some experience so that they can then go on and do further training to be a librarian, so I think a 'buddy' would come in useful.