When helping becomes hindering: how to actually empower those you mentor

Whether you’re a manager of a team, a mentor or a teacher, one of the greatest challenges is knowing how best to help those you’re meant to be guiding.

Knowing when to do, when to show and when to let students explore on their own is as challenging as navigating your way through a maze of toys strewn across the floor by a 5 year old.

The context for how this topic came to light was a discussion between two mentors who took very different approaches to helping their students. One of them suggested that intervening in a student’s learning was only ever harmful while the other wanted to adopt a more hands-on, nurturing approach. Having myself acted as a tutor, teacher or trainer in some capacity for almost 20 years, I knew intuitively what my response would be, but I wanted to step back and apply my knowledge of human behaviour to the situation as well.

The below therefore examines:

• The ways in which bad mentoring/leadership can hinder both yourself and your team/students
• How to work out the best ways to help those asking you for help
• The common hinderances you’ll face with different types of students

Hindering your students

If you’re too impatient or untrusting, your natural response will be to do the work for them as in the moment it will consume less of your time. But this simple action single-handedly undoes all the hard work teachers attempt in order to empower their students. This is because it deprives the student of the opportunity to practice, learn and improve on the relevant skill.

This leaves everyone worse off in the long run because the dynamic becomes something like groundhog day. The student won’t have the opportunity to improve, so they’ll keep making the same mistakes. You’ll see the same mistakes and in the moment decide that it’s faster for you to do the work. Over time, you’ll become less and less inclined to delegate to them. This causes a number of problems for both of you:

• You’ll end up doing more of the things that aren’t an efficient use of your time
• The dynamic will likely sour and trust will diminish making it harder to collaborate and work together
• They’ll stop putting in effort as they start to feel incompetent or don’t see the point in trying.
• If there aren’t other reasons to stay, will likely look for opportunities elsewhere.

Helping your students

If you want to genuinely help your students, you almost need to blend the techniques of the two mentors described above. You want to come across as supportive, especially in case the student doesn’t understand or is struggling with something. However, you also don’t want to do everything for them or they’ll become lazy or invest little to no effort.

For this reason, you want to ask yourself questions like the following:

• Are you giving the student the opportunity to learn and practice what you’re teaching them?
• Are you promoting trust so that they feel safe to voice their concerns and tell you when they don’t understand something?
• Are you offering them encouragement and a way to hold themselves accountable?

Common problems

To work out the type of student you’re dealing with, look for clues in their behaviour such as the following:

• Are they asking the same question over and over?
• Are they making the same mistake repeatedly?
• Are they asking you to do the work for them?
• Are they engaged when you try and explain something?

The above can all point to whether you’re likely dealing with a student who is indifferent/lazy or one whose actions are driven by fear.

Fear of looking silly

Whether the fear relates to them asking a simple question or the same question several times or for making mistakes, the solution here is to create a safe space where they feel comfortable to explore.

• Give them opportunities to practice (ie homework)
• Review and discuss homework tasks together
• Ask the student to repeat back what they’ve understood

Lack of incentive to try

• Incentivise them with rewards. This could be something as simple as praising them for doing a good job or could be a physical incentive such as a prize. This is a shorter term strategy (think carrot and stick) to encourage them to be more open to acting in the desired way. One thing to be mindful of here is that unless you add variability (surprise, different rewards etc), the ability of an extrinsic motivator or incentive quickly diminishes.
• Give them homework. Not only does this give them the opportunity to become intrinsically motivated as they develop their skills but it also backs them into a corner so that they have to explain themselves if they avoid doing homework. This could shed light on whether the tasks are too easy or difficult or if there may be an unknown fear at play.
• Turn yourself into a commitment device or accountability point so that they want to impress you or avoid the shame/guilt associated with not doing what’s been asked of them. One thing to be mindful of here is that this is a longer term strategy usually used to overcome apprehension where there is already a desire to change.