Mentoring in Advising: Engaging with a Fellow Colleague in an Advising Session

Prateek Sharma, Kanda University of International Studies

Sharma, P. (2023). Mentoring in Advising: Engaging with a Fellow Colleague in an Advising Session. Relay Journal, 6(1), 86-94. https://doi.org/10.37237/relay/060106

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Abstract

This paper examines a one-on-one mentoring session with a colleague at a Japanese university as part of the final assignment for the 4th course on “Mentoring in Advising” offered by RILAE. The session elaborates on various aspects of Stephen’s professional and personal life. The primary purpose of this session was to help the mentee experience some positive emotions (Ackerman, 2018). Two conversation extracts in the advising session were analysed, and the author’s self-reflection on conducting this session has been written at the end. This paper may benefit new advisors, mentors or anyone seeking to learn more about how reflection can lead to experiencing positive emotions.  

Keywords: mentoring, reflective dialogue, positive emotions, professional well-being

Background, Context and Purpose

I work as a lecturer at the English Language Institute (ELI) department of Kanda University of International Studies (KUIS), Japan. I took the 4th course called “Mentoring in Advising” offered by the Research Institute of Learner Autonomy Education (RILAE), which helps transform learning advisors and teachers into mentors. I had never experienced mentoring before this course, however, I learnt that a mentoring session helps both partiesーmentor and the menteeーexperience mutual and relational learning (Kato & Mynard, 2016). Additionally, as part of the course, I was introduced to the field of positive psychology and its significance in one’s life (Fredrickson, 2001). There were numerous opportunities to learn more about positive psychology and its positive impact, so I decided to explore it further and focus on it as an outcome for my final assignment of the course.

Positive psychology is defined as the study of the conditions and processes that contribute to the flourishing of people, groups (Gable & Haidt, 2005) and “can help repair the worst things in life to building the best qualities in life” (Seligman, 2002, p.3). Fredrickson (2001, 2003) further asserts that positive emotions serve as markers of flourishing and well-being, leading to the improvement of individual and collective functioning, psychological well-being and physical health. It is important to note that positive emotions are not simply “happy feelings” that we chase to feel momentary pleasure; they play a significant role in everyday life. They often provide the foundation for those fleeting but meaningful moments that make life worth living (Ackerman, 2018).

In the field of education, Johnson et al. (2016) observed that advisors developed their own wellness achieving initiatives, which included taking advising walks and practicing Yoga together to ensure advisor and advisee’s well-being. In language education, mentoring for professional development has also incorporated aspects of positive psychology into its practice. For example, Karaaslan (2019) conducted a mentoring session with a junior colleague in order to help her reflect on her professional wellbeing. One of the key takeaways from the session was the role of positive emotions in helping the mentee experience professional well-being. 

In light of the above, this reflective article explores the role of mentoring in fostering professional well-being in a teacher’s professional trajectory. Specifically, it aims to document the positive emotions that emerged in a mentoring session conducted with Stephen (pseudonym), a teacher of English working three years in tertiary education in Japan. To this end, this article firstly presents the background of my professional relationship with Stephen and how the mentoring session was conducted. After that, two extracts are presented and discussed in the light of positive psychology framework. Finally, a self-reflection underlining what worked in the session, feelings I experienced and potential areas of self- development is reported.

From the Mentoring Session to the Observation of Positive Emotions 

Stephen and I share a friendly bond as we have been working together for a couple of years. Therefore, I took this opportunity to help Stephen reflect on his life and experience positive emotions in order to promote well-being. Stephen was not sure what he wanted to reflect on, so we began from the time of his graduate studies. I know him personally, and he has often shared how stressed he feels because of too many personal and work-related commitments. So, in my mind, I thought that reflecting on his life, especially toward the end of a busy semester, thereby practising my own advising and mentoring skills, would be ideal. Hereon, I will label myself as “A,” and Stephen will be labelled as “S.”

The dialogue with Stephen lasted 47 minutes. The entire conversation was audiotaped and on carefully listening to the recording, I decided to focus on two extracts where Stephen experienced some positive emotions. As a budding mentor, through intentional reflective dialogue (Kato & Mynard, 2016), my goal was to help Stephen feel positive emotions concerning his profession. These two extracts closely elaborate on Stephen’s personal and professional life. In total, Stephen experienced three positive emotions, altruism in both extracts,  contentment in the first, and happiness in the second. 

Extract 1: Contentment and Altruism

According to Daltzman (2021), contentment is experienced based on personal achievement, appreciating finer things in life and its need affects our choice of careers. He asserts that contentment is a state where one is able to decide on a path and experiences positive outcomes or do their best as a result of choosing that path. This extracts indicates how Stephen chose his career path, and is now content as a result of choosing his preferred career.

A: Do you enjoy teaching?
S: I do, in fact, that’s something I always wanted to do.
A: Huh? Tell me more about it.
S: I remember when I was in college, even high school, I was doing Business admin and entrepreneurship, and I signed up for business class. So, I studied accounting, and economics, and as I did it, it kinda made me feel that I don’t want to take advantage of people. It seems that’s what most businesses do. You know, exploit people, extract money from people, or trying to sell something no matter how useless it is. I didn’t agree with all those principles that you employ to make money. My English teachers thought my English writing was good, and I enjoyed reading too. So I tried to take more literature classes, British, American and I had so many of them by my 3rd or 4th year, and I thought to pursue a a degree in English teaching. 
A: So, if I understand correctly, you didn’t want to associate with the exploitation part of Business, and you wanted to give something of value to society. 
S: Yeah I guess. (Altruism)
A: So, you see teaching as a moral profession, right?
S: Yeah, you could so say.
A: How often do you think about that now? 
S: Well, you know I think we always joke about that if you don’t like it go back to school, or do something else. But I am content with my work coz at least I don’t harm anyone. That’s one reason I stayed away from the military. You don’t seek to damage anyone! (Contentment)
A: Maybe that’s why I have never seen you complain about work ever. Interesting! 
S: (smiled) Hmmm…I don’t know, man! I guess I like this job. (Contentment)
(Laughter)

As can be noticed, I asked a question, “How often do you think about that now?”  My idea here was to help Stephen look back at his primary purpose of teaching, to promote introspection, and lead to greater insight (Whitworth et al., 2007). This question seemed to be powerful as it enabled him take a walk down memory lane and not just express contentment but also gratitude for his profession. 

When Stephen said, “I guess I like this job,” this could be interpreted as an expression of contentment considering Stephen was able to choose his profession of choice. In fact, there was a brief “aha” moment that I could see Stephen experiencing, right at the end of this dialogue. My reminding him “maybe that’s why I have never seen you complain about work ever” instantly changed his reflective tone, into a smiling one. The laughter with which this conversation ended seemed to indicate that Stephen feels content with his profession of teaching. He even remarked later, “Man, our chat was fun.” 

In addition to contentment, this extract also shows an example of altruism. Acts of altruism involve not just promoting others’ wellbeing but also reduce their chance of being harmed. Stephen’s rejection of exploiting people for personal gains, thus, was an example of him tapping into his altruistic side. More about altruism will be discussed below, as it also appears in extract 2.

Extract 2: Altruism and Happiness 

Sutton (2020) asserts that altruism concerns itself with the sole aim of helping and improving others’ well-being with no personal interest. However, in certain situation self-benefit or rewards may serve as the motivation for altruistic behavior. In this extract, Stephen shares how driving people around and helping them makes him happy. Furthermore, he draws on his childhood experience of serving lemonades to people to make them happy.

Apart from altruism, this extract includes happiness, which is one of the positive emotions defined as the feeling we derive by participating in daily pleasurable activities. It is linked to a healthy functioning of bodily systems, strengthens immunity and improves life satisfaction (Celestine, 2017): 

P: So, if you had a free pass what would you rather do?
S: Oh this is interesting! I joke around with my wife sometimes that if I had no responsibilities, I would just be a taxi driver.
P: Interesting! Tell me more about that.
S: You know if I retire I wanna go be a bus or a taxi driver. Just talk to people, drive people around right, just have a good time, turn up the radio (laughter).
P: You seem so happy.
S: (smiles) Man, I am thinking about it. (Happiness)
P: I can totally imagine you doing that! What do you enjoy about that?
S: Yeah I think driving’s easy. You know just to have a good time. (Happiness)
P: Is there anything that interests you specifically?
S: Man, Japan’s socially isolated. It’s hard to talk to people. If you can find a community where you can land any kind of jokes, you know like culture-related puns. But if you can’t, it can be very tough.
P: Yeah, I think I know what you mean. That’s one reason I like to spend time with my Indian friends. It’s easy to laugh at the same stupid things.
P: Have you observed any similarities between the fun taxi driver job and teaching? 
S: I don’t think there are any similarities between the two.
P: It doesn’t have to be anything too technical.
S: Mmmm I don’t know when I was a kid I had a lemonade stand. So. I’d approach different people, sell my lemonade to them and make them happy. Yeah, people stopped by, I poured a drink and they were like, “thanks man!” (Altruism)
P: Wow! You do like helping people, isn’t it?
S: I think most job satisfaction comes from serving people, isn’t it? (Altruism)
P: There you go!
S: (Laughter)

This part of the conversation happened toward the end of the mentoring session. By this time, Stephen had expressed his doubts about the future and not finding teaching a lucrative profession given the condition of the tanking Japanese yen. He also shared how his children kept him motivated to do his best; however, he did feel obligated to live a certain way due to his responsibilities. Through our interaction, I tried to unveil how he would rather live if not for his responsibilities. The two emotions observed in this extract were, therefore, altruism and happiness. In addition, the extract seems to show that he was able to visualize his happy state of being. 

The visual of Stephen driving a cab around brought a smile to his face as he imagined what a “free” life entails for him. He seemed happy as he sought pleasure in activities such as serving lemonade and driving people around. In this situation, the core motivation for selling lemonade was to make others happy, as he remarked in the dialogue when he said, “most job satisfaction comes from serving people.” This visualization helped him connect to his feelings of altruism, where he derives joy by helping others, thereby, “increasing someone else’s welfare” (Sutton, 2020, p. 1). There is strong evidence that suggests that altruism leads to well-being and health benefits for self and others (Irani, 2018). Irani further states, “When I recall instances that I was at my best, I was serving and benefiting others.” (p. 42). Similarly, Stephen too drew on his childhood experiences to manifest his altruistic self. 

Self-Reflection: What I Have Learned From the Session

Before the session, I was a bit worried as I already shared a rapport with Stephen. However, with the  reflective dialogue, I could use it to my advantage. Through this experience, I could see how mentoring  can impact and deepen an individual’s reflection in different ways and how it can bring out numerous insights and experiences. There were certain times when I felt that I was dominating the conversation; however, I was able to make a conscious effort to take a step back and let Stephen lead the session. In fact, on the recommendation of my mentor in the advising course, after a couple of weeks of this interaction, I asked Stephen if he experienced any of those positive emotions. He agreed that he did feel happy by reflecting on his life.

This experience has strengthened my confidence in the field of mentoring and has helped me to learn more about myself as a mentor. At our workplace we wear different hats: teachers, facilitators, advisors, or mentors. As teachers, we may have that innate urge to drive a lesson or fix an issue arising in the class. I too experienced that feeling of leading our session in a specific direction drawing on my personal rapport with Stephen. However, jumping to conclusions too early or colouring the mentee’s view may be counter-productive, and ethically inappropriate. From this experience, I learnt that a mentee opens up when you provide them with a safe space and a patient, unbiased ear. In addition, I learnt to observe and absorb rather than react, thereby not allowing my teacher’s instinct to come into play. 

I must admit that positive psychology has piqued my interest and I have become more interested in reading about this subject in order to strike positive changes in my mentees’ and my life. As part of my future research, I’d be very interested to integrate elements of positive psychology into achieving mindfulness.

Conclusion

This paper examines two short extracts of a mentoring session. Stephen, the mentee in this session, reflected on his personal and professional life with me. As he reflected, he experienced three positive emotions: contentment, altruism and happiness. It was interesting to see how these three emotions were closely intertwined that it was hard to distinguish one from the other. There is ample research to affirm that positive emotions result in well-being. Hence, these positive emotions enabled Stephen to experience professional wellbeing. At a later stage, Stephen confirmed that he felt happy after the session, thus, reaffirming the role of positive psychology. Overall, I hope I can use this experience and further my research in this magnificent world of mentoring, advising and reflection.

Acknowledgement

This paper is dedicated to my advising mentors Jo Mynard, Amelia Yarwood, and Satoko Kato without whom I would not have been motivated to write this paper and venture into the field of advising.

Note on the Contributor

Prateek Sharma is a lecturer at the ELI department of Kanda University of International Studies. He has had an experience of 8 years teaching English in India and Japan. He has a wide range of research interests which involve advising, reflection, intercultural communication and mindfulness. 

References

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Celestine, N. (2017, January 26). The Science of Happiness in Positive Psychology 101.
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Daltzman, R. J. (2021, October 1). Understanding Contentement Over the Life Cycle. Psychology Today. https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/magical-enlightenment/202110/understanding-contentment-over-the-life-cycle 

Fredrickson B. L. (2001). The role of positive emotions in positive psychology. The broaden-and-build theory of positive emotions. American Psychologist, 56(3), 218–226. https://doi.org/10.1037/0003-066X.56.3.218 

Gable, S. L., & Haidt, J. (2005). What (and why) is positive psychology? Review of General Psychology, 9(2), 103–110. https://doi.org/10.1037/1089-2680.9.2.103 

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Karaaslan, H. (2019). Mentoring to promote professional well-being. Relay Journal, 2(2), 306-318. https://doi.org/10.37237/relay/020206

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Sutton, J. (2020, Sep 3). What is Altruism in Psychology? 8 Inspiring Examples. Positive Psychology. https://positivepsychology.com/altruism/ 

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