Models of Mentorship In Guiding Talented People

Mentorship of talented persons

In the pedagogical studies it has been repeatedly stated that the “mentorship has the most important role for talent development” (Worrell at al., 2019, p.557). “Mentorship is a vehicle by which students who are bored with or tuned out of the school environment can be “caught” in the act of living a true passion and practicing a related talent”, – describes the process of mentoring talents Schatz (1999, p. 74). Though Sibgatullina (2018) highlights the ambiguity of system management of talents, especially the ability of a mentor “to help “arrange” or re-arrange the life goal-setting of a talented person” (p. 119). Sometimes mentorship is considered as one of the crucial competences for teaching career (Alexandrache, 2017). Not surprisingly, many papers proposed the universal list of recommendations for the successful mentorship (Alred & Garvey, 2019; Axelrod, 2019). But the majority of scientific papers include the description of the experience of specific mentor programs. They were defined a lot by the organizational culture, strategy and values, though it is stated that 71 percent of the Fortune 500 have adopted formal mentorship programmes (Holt et al., 2016). Some of such programmes, especially in academia filed, are based on the physiological models, like the American Psychological Association Catalyst Program (Subotnik et al., 2010), which was derived from Bloom (1985) model of talent development in six domains. The main focus of the mentioned study is the optimal instruction for talent development.

Mentorship models and styles

Mentorship itself is a rather complex process. The cooperation between a mentor and an instructed person should not be considered one-dimensional. There are different forms and roles of mentorship, for example an educational, personal development or an entrepreneurial development mentor. The profound review study (Hennissen et al., 2008) shows that the most popular aspects for the purpose of classification different styles of mentorship are ‘input’ and ‘directiveness’. And thus, the two-dimensional model MERIDA from the field of teacher education (Crasborn et al., 2011) has shown to be one of the useful analytical frameworks for how mentorship styles could be described and distinguished. For example, Kubberoed and Hagen (2015) made an adaptation of the model to present different mentorship styles in the field of entrepreneurial mentorship. The model was used to explore the quality of mentoring dialogues (Beek et al., 2019; Mena et al., 2016). Some studies provide empirical proofs that the particular mentoring styles are preferable. They allow for better deployment of mentors’ functions and facilitate the development of protégé outcomes (St-Jean & Audet, 2013).

Situational modelling of mentorship

In the course of previous empirical investigations (Prokhorova et al., 2018; Prokhorova et al., 2019) it was elicited, that there were two aims of activity of mentors of youth business projects. They could to train by motivating and guiding their project job or by involving and assisting in it. Depending on these goals, their mentoring dialogue could be described as project-oriented and process-oriented. Based on these conclusions and other concepts (Crasborn et al, 2011) we design a model, which connects two aspects of situations when the mentoring dialogue is being held (Figure 1 ). The dimensions ‘directiveness’ and ‘goal’ are assumed to be independent of each other.

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The model highlights four different positions of a mentor, including those of encourager, tutor, administrator and expert. While experts and administrators are highly interested in achieving the project goals, tutors and encouragers are more process-oriented, they aim at coaching the person (leader) or the whole project team.

Mentorship styles

In Russian psychology, a great deal of attention is paid to the investigation of styles. The methodologist of the theory of styles Tolochek (2018) highlights their diversity (cognitive styles, individual styles of activity, emotional styles, styles of leadership and management, communicative styles, etc.). In the structure of a style the scientist distinguishes between three hierarchical levels: subjectively convenient conditions of activity, operational structures, type of organization of activity. This approach was used when distinguishing the mentoring models in the survey.

Behavioural strategies of gifted persons

During the preliminary studies of the research team, based on data analysis of 288 biographies of gifted famous persons, the four different strategies were found. They were named after the most known by their behaviour myths representatives of clusters. The results were presented in the same two-dimensional concept field (Figure 2 ), though the aspects of the personal behaviour styles were defined by the situational descriptors.

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The so-called “Mozart” and “Columbus” express themselves in their professional activities, aims at professional self-fulfilment and self-excellence. But while “Mozart” type is not ready to change the specialization, “Columbus” type is more flexible and is in the permanent search of professional self-expression. The “Korolev” type was named after the lead Soviet rocket engineer and spacecraft designer. His life path was determined by the dream of space and spacecrafts from the very beginning. And Serge Diaghilev was the founder of the Ballets Russes. Like “Korolev”, the “Diaghilev” type is in the process of developing a product, but it is not initially defined. A dream product can be determined by a public request or a market situation.

The first level. Personal qualities

In early researches (Frey & Noller, 1983), when the phenomenon of mentorship was rather new, it was concluded that the success of mentoring relationship, both informal and formal, was largely dependent upon characteristics of the mentor him(her)self. The results of our survey showed that there was a clear diversification of key personal qualities of mentors of different types (Table 2 ). While some personal qualities were common to all respondents (for example, such as a tendency to change activities), for some of them one could directly distinguish the owners of different models of mentorship.

The second level. The competence profile

All types of mentors highly value such competencies as communication skills, analytical thinking and goal setting. At the same time, the following competency differences can be noted: for the Encourager type, a significant excess of such competencies as creativity and professional competencies in a specific field is characterized by an average level; Tutor type is characterized by a high level of critical thinking and manifestation of empathy, while technical and digital skills are manifested to a lesser extent; for type Expert leadership qualities are least manifested; for the type of Administrator, technical and digital skills can be distinguished among strong competencies, while competencies associated with empathy and professional skills in a particular area are significantly reduced.

The third level. Factors to single out models of mentorship

According to the results of the survey the specific manifestation of the style of activity for each model of mentorship can be described by the most significant group factors (Table 3 ). It is important to note that project-oriented and personality-oriented models of mentorship are found to have the same group of factors. They are determined by the characteristics of the project or an instructed person, respectively.

Combinations of mentorship models and behavioural strategies of gifted persons

According to Schatz, “mentoring is a reciprocal relationship - mentors give of their time and expertise, and in return are rewarded by the satisfaction of helping to nurture and develop young talent” (Schatz, 1999, p. 77). A harmonious combination of the mentor’s and mentee’s (protégé’s) goals helps to achieve a synergistic effect in their joint activities. Based on the results of our research these combinations were distributed as follows (Table 4 ). It was found out, that two best match-up of mentor and protégé model could be got (index = 1), while other two proved no effects at all (index = 0) or would have been even negative for both sides (index = - 1). These results were proved both by logical combination of behavioral models and by the results of the questioning, when the representatives of each mentorship models had chosen the person for mentoring by personal goals and strategies of the gifted individuals.