‘Be kind to each other.’ We hear that often — but what do we mean by it? Tread gently. So what do kindness and treading gently have to do with mentoring?
Heaps! Mentoring can have a huge impact on the wellbeing of both mentor and mentee in a relationship. In the present COVID situation, we could all use a bit of kindness. We all need to take care how we treat other people and how we’re treated ourselves. We need to ‘tread gently’. Mentors do their mentoring out of a spirit of kindness — friendliness, helpfulness, guidance, building confidence and hope for the future.
Mentors of fellow editors know about career struggles, know how they got over them and can pass that experience on to mentees. Mentees, particularly now, often feel lonely — cut off from friends, family and workmates by isolation. They can be anxious about making a living from editing when networking is not happening. A good mentor recognises this and is prepared to listen to a mentee’s problems and work together to find solutions.
Mentees are often unsure of their abilities as editors, or need to learn new angles on their craft and don’t know where to turn. They need personalised guidance that only comes from a good mentor. And they need the confidence-building that an experienced editor can provide.
Both mentor and mentee come to the relationship with high ideals, with aspirations for success in getting over hurdles and with the hope that the end of the mentorship will leave them both satisfied: the mentee will have developed skills by taking the advice of an experienced fellow editor; the mentor will have made a new friend, learned new angles on editing through research and through gently walking the mentee through new ideas. They will have been kind to each other.
We often say that mentoring is two-way learning. True. It’s quite different from other forms of professional development, but has elements of teaching, coaching, training and consulting in it. The mentor learns at least as much as the mentee in a relationship, so both feel fulfilled at the end of it. It is one of the most rewarding things an editor can do, both for themselves and for the profession. The experienced editor becomes an even better editor, and the less experienced partner becomes more professional and better informed about the profession.
The pandemic is teaching us all a lot about general wellbeing, mental health, isolation, working in strained circumstances and extending our knowledge and skills online rather than in person. It’s also influencing an upsurge in mentoring in all professions because only such a one-on-one relationship can help at a close, personal level, when we all need a little kindness and we all need to tread gently in our conversations with our editing colleagues.
To register to mentor or be mentored in any aspect of editing, contact mentorship@iped-editors.org.
Elizabeth Manning Murphy DE and Ted Briggs AE, Joint Chairs, Mentoring Standing Committee