Who mentors the mentors?

I often get asked to mentor people and yet I’ve never been formally mentored myself. I’ve been asked to mentor students, musicians, budding arts administrators, and young promoters, and have felt honoured to do so. In some cases I’ve been sent a briefing pack about how to approach the job, but in many cases I’ve been expected to dive right in and get on with it. But how do I know whether I’m doing a good job when I’ve never been on the receiving end? As someone said to me recently, ‘who mentors the mentors?’.

I had my first mentoring session as part of BOOM last week, and it was brilliant. It’s an great feeling having someone experienced sit down to help you solve problems that you may have been struggling to address for months, even years. It made me wonder why I have never found a mentor before. I suspect it was the fear of asking someone to give up their time to listen and provide advice for little old me. Of course speaking to friends can be beneficial, but often they are of a similar age and experience level to you so their advice is limited.

Fortunately, thanks to OCM, I have money available to allow me to find the right mentor, and the formality of the arrangement means conversations are structured and focussed, so it feels like it will have real benefit.

So the next time I’m putting together a talent development project which involves mentoring, I’m going to budget a little extra to provide some proper training (mentoring, even) for the mentors. Of course some people take to mentoring like a duck to water, but most of us working in the arts are so busy fighting for survival, trying to better our work on limited budgets, that we rarely dedicate any time for our own development. But I now realise that is short-sighted: it’s a ‘trickle down’ scenario. If you provide top quality mentoring to help someone reach their goals, they will be better equipped to do the same for someone else.

In a sector such as jazz where infrastructure and ‘professionalisation’ is desperately needed, it’s even more vital that we offer good advice and set a benchmark for people management so those practices can continue for years to come. Next time you’re asked to be a mentor, ask yourself ‘do I definitely know how to do this?’, and if an opportunity arises to be mentored, grab it with both hands!