What is mentoring: According to EMCC (European Mentoring and Coaching Council), mentoring is “A learning relationship, involving the sharing of skills, knowledge, and expertise between a mentor and mentee through developmental conversations, experience sharing, and role modelling. The relationship may cover a wide variety of contexts and is an inclusive two-way partnership for mutual learning that values differences.” In a mentoring relationship, the mentor is an expert in their field and has the answers ready for the mentee. Because of that, mentor can be more prescriptive in the questioning than f.e. a coach. After initial enquiring ‘What have you tried before?’ they will have a full picture and be able to suggest ‘Have you tried (…) yet?’ or ‘What about this solution?’ or give advice ‘This is what you need to do’.
Written by Anna Cotter, MPSI
IIOP mentoring programme
I stumbled upon the concept of mentoring by receiving an email from IIOP about enrolment in 2022/2023 edition of the IIOP peer mentoring programme. Having worked as a supervising pharmacist mostly in community pharmacies where there is only ever one pharmacist on duty, I had a sense of ‘loneliness’ in a profession. And so, to see what another pharmacist might think about my experiences with managing the pharmacy, contacts with Head Office, etc. I decided to enrol as a mentee.
Kingstown College Diploma in Coaching and Mentoring
During the IIOP mentoring programme, I got really interested in the power of mentoring in a context of advancing Staff abilities. Having recently taken on a supervising/managing role in a pharmacy with mostly new and/ or untrained Staff, I could see that a huge part of my role is to build a team of Staff confident in their duties. I decided to undergo Kingstown College Diploma in order to get the theoretical basis and learn practical strategies to implement in the workplace.
Diploma vs IIOP programme
Getting familiar with stages of a mentoring relationship, mentoring activities, its consequences, and reasons for mentoring was particularly interesting to me as a reflection on the 2022 edition of IIOP Mentoring Programme. This programme was actually prepared by IIOP in partnership with the Kingstown College. It was very encouraging to see all the bricks of creating a good mentoring relationship from the article being reflected in the IIOP programme, such as:
• providing a manual and training for mentees and also mentors before the launch of the programme,
• encouraging to establish frequency and length of meeting in a form of contract during the first meeting,
• checking in by IIOP during the programme (via email),
• informing about a possibility to get paired with another person if there is some sort of conflict between the mentor and the mentee or there is any misconduct.
The IIOP mentoring programme was designed for any Irish registered pharmacists and so it definitely facilitated the feeling of ‘similarity’ between the participants – which helped to create relationships where both mentor and mentee can learn from one another and there is equality and respect between the participating pharmacists.
Informal mentoring in the workplace
However, mentoring doesn’t always have to be formal – and this more informal approach is what I would like to suggest for any managing or supervising pharmacist to start utilizing in their daily practice. When I was set before a task of building and training a team in my most recent workplace, I decided to always have the time for my Staff to answer any doubts or questions they have. A good mentor should be able to set the boundaries (f.e. I don’t want to be disturbed while checking a prescription), but also to get the point ‘I am here to help you always’ across. I think we can all agree that working any job in a community pharmacy requires high levels of precision and knowledge of many many processes, specific to the pharmacy group we work for (‘the way we do things here’) or even individual pharmacies within the group. It can be very challenging for a new Staff member to take it all in at once. Knowing that they have a safe space to ask questions, can greatly decrease anxiety in the initial period of employment. Personally, I found having a nurturing and patient approach to my Staff very rewarding – they weren’t afraid to come and ask again if in doubt, which ensured good communication outcome. Once trained, they were more prone to take charge. Many a time, due to a good relationship with Staff, I was able to learn from them as well – they weren’t afraid to share their opinions on how to improve processes in the pharmacy. That openness flowing both ways is very refreshing as it can be beneficial to question the ‘status quo’ in the workplace.
Conclusions
Mentoring outcomes can be sometimes hard to quantify (higher work confidence – how much higher? Better future leadership outcomes – how can you know you would not get there anyway without your mentor or how much quicker did you get there thanks to the mentor?), as they are to an extent subjective. What is absolutely paramount is that at it’s core lie confidentiality, trust between participants, setting goals and commitment to create mutually respectful relationships, where both mentor and mentee can help each other grow and gain perspective. Staff who are more confident in their duties that have a good, trusting and nurturing relationship with their supervising pharmacist, could potentially be more open to take on more tasks and thus develop themselves further. This is also beneficial for the pharmacist, freeing up their time to perform tasks only they can do (i.e. checking prescriptions). Creating mentoring relationships requires changing the priorities in the initial team-building stage and always having time to listen to Staff members learning needs. This can be challenging for the pharmacist in the initial months in a new workplace/working with a new Staff member. However, it pays off tremendously in the long-run.
Bibliography
IPU pharmacist mentoring course materials 2022/2023 edition
Kingstown College course materials – Professional Diploma in Coaching and Mentoring 2022/2023 edition
Mentoring Research and Best Practices White Paper; The Plank Center for Leadership in Public Relations
Anna Cotter – Kingstown College Professional Diploma in Coaching and Mentoring course submissions
EMCC Global website – definition of mentoring