Mentoring according to the “win-win” strategy: what to prepare for and how not to become a ballast

Publication date: July 12, 2023

Author: Halyna Kolesnyk, communications manager of the Legal Development Network

Anna Uvarova, an expert in education and team potential development, facilitator, and mentor, has more than 10 years of experience in managing organizations and initiatives. She is one of the first to introduce mentoring in the Ukrainian civil sector. She studied, built understanding, taught others, and continues to share her knowledge. For example, as part of the project “Capacity development of local NGOs – legal aid providers in Ukraine”, which is implemented by the Legal Development Network (LDN) with the support of the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) in Ukraine and the Government of Canada. For 10 months, Anna shared her mentoring experience with nine representatives of the LDN member organizations. For seven of them, Anna was also a mentor and helped them achieve their goals.

So we asked Anna Uvarova about the mentoring component of the project, practices, success stories, and challenges that mentors and their mentees had to overcome.

LDN: Anna, please tell us about what mentoring is and what prospects it provides directly to the mentee (organization) and the mentor.

Anna Uvarova: A little about concepts. There is internal mentoring: when someone in the team who is more experienced in a certain area takes on the role of mentoring others. And if we talk about mentoring within the project, which is implemented by the LDN, this is an example of external mentoring, when the mentor is not part of the team. He or she helps the team in organizational development.

Mentees are organizations at different levels of organizational development (from newly established to fairly experienced) that need external assistance in organizational development. After all, very often we have a biased view and cannot see obvious things. It is very important that this pair of mentor and mentee matches. 

A mentor has several roles in his/her arsenal, and he/she changes them depending on the situation.

The role of an expert is, in fact, basic. In our case, the mentors are experts in the development of the organization, because many of them hold management positions. They have a lot of experience and can help other organizations to develop, and share their experience, contacts, etc.

The role of a “coach” is very important for a mentor, too, because he/she asks questions without giving ready answers. In this way, he/she encourages the mentee to find his/her own way depending on needs, circumstances, and opportunities, because other experience is not always suitable. Managers of especially small organizations usually do not have time to stop and think about more strategic things. Therefore, this is another opportunity for the mentee: to stop and analyze – where we are now and what to do next.

Another, no less important, task for a mentor is support. I call it the “friend” role. Sometimes mentees know what to do and how to do it, but they lack confidence and support.

Another role that resonates a bit with coaching is the “listener”. Such a person can listen carefully and provide feedback. Mentoring is often not entirely clear to the mentee. There are situations when the mentee expects the mentor to develop documents, strategies, etc. But the mentor’s role is auxiliary, and the main development work should be done by the mentee, because only he/she knows better what his/her organization needs.

Mentoring is an educational format, basically “learning in action.” Between meetings with the mentor, the mentee should set aside time for additional work, approximately 5-6 hours. Of course, you have to be ready for such painstaking work both on yourself and on the organization.

In conclusion, I can say that for a mentee, mentoring is a great way to develop and learn, and it does not require an educational institution. Next to you is an experienced professional who will share his/her experience, provide feedback, support, share contacts, help find solutions to challenges and possibly become your partner in future projects.

LDN: And what about the mentor?

Anna Uvarova: As for the mentor, it’s really a “win-win” strategy. Both sides win. In interaction with a mentee who is just starting his/her journey, the mentor can look at the same situation from different perspectives. This is especially useful given his/рук expertise in a specific field. So this is an opportunity to find insights, discoveries, and a fresh look.

Another advantage is the development of skills. This is one of the reasons why mentoring programs in companies, business, especially in Western countries, are used as one of the steps on the way to higher management positions. When you are mentoring someone, you need to demonstrate skills that are often needed by a manager: to be able to listen, to establish communication, to build trust in the team, to help form a plan, and to support the person or team in implementing the plan. It’s the same, if we really want to have proactive people in the team who drive the process, we use a coaching format. Thanks to the right questions, we make the mentee think and form a certain plan. It is very useful to gain this experience, develop skills and then use them, especially if the mentor plans to hold a management position in the future.

LDN: It seems that all the mentioned roles were involved in our project. Is this a classic example, or can there be cases where only some of these roles work?

Anna Uvarova: From my experience, since we have several roles, it is possible to change them depending on the situation. Although I recommend being mostly a coach and sharing your experience moderately.

For example, approximately the same thing that I did in your project, I implemented in one of the BUT (Building Ukraine Together) programs, which began last summer during a full-scale war. There is a slightly different format, more about individual development, not team development. And I gave psychological practices.

In mentoring, especially if it is individual development, it is important that the mentor is in a resourceful state. Therefore, in the mentoring programs that I conducted already during the full-scale invasion, we additionally studied resource practices.

LDN: We have nine mentors in our project. In terms of perspective, what are they now?

Anna Uvarova: Actually, it is difficult to generalize it, because all mentors are different. But most of them have worked out their own algorithm of how to provide mentoring. I also work with some of them as mentees, and they have made it their goal to gain an understanding of what they are like as mentors.

They gained more courage and confidence in their expertise, and they tried to work in different roles. It’s great that many of them managed to win the trust of their mentees. With some mentors, we experimented with approaches. So there are different options in their pipeline for the future, how they can build trust.

I also noted that some of the mentors stopped being saviors. According to Karpman’s Triangle theory, there are three roles: rescuer, attacker, and victim. Mentors can often be saviors in this situation.

I noticed two things. The first one is that, on the one hand, mentors want mentees to take the initiative and contact mentors on their own. But, unfortunately, it does not work in the Ukrainian context, because we are not used to mentoring as a culture of interaction. There should be more understanding of this phenomenon for future changes. For example, in the USA there is something like mentoring from school. I currently work in Dutch schools, where the homeroom teacher mentors in a coach format. He/she comes every quarter and asks the child a question: “Do you have any difficulties, and can I help you with them?” It works is different in Ukraine. I directed our mentors to the fact that it is necessary to build cooperation, to show its importance. For example, through problem solving.

And the secon one is: having lived this Karpman triangle, realizing that mentees are not motivated to work with them from the beginning, mentors asked themselves the question, do they need mentoring in the future? This is also a result. I encountered this not only in this mentoring and training program, but also in others. Therefore, I conclude that this is such a feature.

LDN: Mentors worked together with their mentees to achieve certain goals. Did they succeed?

Anna Uvarova: There is a part of those who achieved what they had planned. There are those who planned one thing, but life turned out differently, and very often some external factors were at play. There are also those who did not achieve anything but received a completely different experience. And there are those who realized in the process that they are not ready to go further, because it is quite a long and intensive program, and mentoring is only one of its parts. They realized that they can’t do it, or they have completely different goals, and they will not be achieved here.

LDN: You once noted that in Ukraine we really like to talk about challenges. When it comes to mentors who want to develop leadership skills, for them one of the mentioned challenges is time management: allocating time for mentoring, having different tools to engage the mentee in the work, and keeping them interested. What other challenges can you mention? What should potential mentors be prepared for?

Anna Uvarova: I would say that it is very important to have a sufficient level of energy. You won’t build credibility if you don’t really care about what you’re talking about. Time. Involvement. The ability to share.

At the start of work, it was a lesson for many mentors that they did not develop the rules of interaction and did not communicate expectations from the mentee and from the mentor. It would be great if they worked out a document at the first meeting, and ideally, everyone signed it. When the mentor hears what is expected from him/her, and clearly says: from the position of my role, I cannot give it, but I will help with this and that. And when it is also written down, it is a fixed agreement.

A lot depends on the attitude, because a mentee is a new person who can give you so many insights, you just need to be able to accept them. It’s about flexibility. 

For reference

The project “Capacity development of local NGOs – legal aid providers in Ukraine” is implemented by the Legal Development Network with the support of UNDP within the framework of the UN Peacebuilding and Reconstruction Program with the financial support of the Government of Canada.

The UN Reconstruction and Peacebuilding Program (UN RPP) is implemented by four UN agencies: the United Nations Development Program (UNDP), the United Nations Framework for Gender Equality and the Empowerment of Women (UN Women), the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) and the Food and the United Nations Agricultural Organization (FAO).

The program is supported by twelve international partners: the European Union (EU), the European Investment Bank (EIB), the US Embassy in Ukraine, as well as the governments of Canada, Denmark, Germany, Japan, the Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Sweden and Switzerland.

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