On Mentoring

“Can a blind person lead another blind person? Surely both will fall into the ditch.”
Luke 6:39

Mentoring is one of the hottest issues in leadership today in fact Yahoo search engine posted more than 80,000 hits as of early April 2005. This fast brewing topic which conquered the foreign military and business arena since the early 1980s has started to invade the premises of PMA. As the Philippine Military Academy leadership is gearing towards formalizing its mentoring approach in training the cadets, it is just timely and proper to openly discuss and eventually define doctrinally the subject in order for the cadets, instructors and officers to have a common understanding of the concept. With this, we could also make a forecast on its consequences in the traditions and practices of the CCAFP. No doubt, the term “mentoring” brings with it a very agreeable undertone; however, in the absence of official doctrinal documentation, doubts and misconceptions would every now and then tarnish its lusciously palatable connotation.

Mentoring Defined
The Parameters, (Autumn 2002) has presented the beginnings of the word from the classical Greek Mythology. “The term “mentor” is actually derived from the character named Mentor, who was a faithful friend of the Greek hero Odysseus, in Homer’s epic story The Odyssey. When Odysseus went off to war against the Trojans, he left Mentor behind to serve as tutor to his son, Telemachus. Mentor served in this role, earning a reputation as being wise, sober, and loyal. It is from the relationship between these two characters that the classic understanding of the term “mentorship” has evolved.”[1] The parameters presented a very personal commitment of Mentor to oversee Telemachus because Odysseus was his close friend.

Encarta Dictionary Version 2005 defines a mentor as “an experienced adviser and supporter; somebody usually older and more experienced, who provides advice and support to, and watches over and fosters the progress of a younger and less experienced person. A Mentor is also an adviser, counselor, guide, tutor, teacher and guru.”[2] The dictionary touches the mentor’s role of fostering the progress of the mentee who suppose to be younger and less experienced.

In the absence of “Filipinized” leadership manual, we may also browse the US FM 22-100 on how it defines mentoring in the context of leadership. The following lines from the US field manual mentioned a wide array of sub-concepts about mentoring:
a. “You also assist them in developing the individual attributes, learning the skills, and mastering the actions required to become leaders of character and competence themselves. You do this through the action of mentoring.” [3]
b. “Mentoring is the proactive development of each subordinate through observing, assessing, coaching, teaching, developmental counseling, and evaluating that results in people being treated with fairness and equal opportunity.”[4]
c. Mentoring is “totally inclusive, real-life leader development for every subordinate” and a Mentor “strive to provide all their subordinates with the knowledge and skills necessary to become the best they can be—for the Army and for themselves.”[5]
d. “Mentoring begins with the leader setting the right example.”[6]
e. “When you mentor, you take the observing, assessing, and evaluating. Mentoring techniques include teaching, counseling, and coaching.”[7]

FM22-100 actually reemphasizes the principles of leadership, roles and traits of a good leader and associates them to the word mentor. But one thing is indeed common; mentoring implies that a mentor knows better, more mature, more experienced, more patient and better in almost all aspect than the mentee. It includes a wide array of sub-concepts that aim at making the mentee grow and progress into a better person and a leader _ even better than the mentor. In summary, a mentor is a symbol of a good leader adorned with an icing of loyalty, unblemished integrity, care, personal concern and friendly attitude.
Informal Mentoring
Informal mentoring relationships have long existed in the Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP). For decades, Company Commanders practiced the informal teaching, training, coaching and giving extra instructions to their newly reported 2nd Lieutenants before they are sent to lead a platoon in combat. A young Army 2nd Lieutenant find himself being repeatedly reminded of the SOPs for the surgical precision of insurgency fighting by his Company Commander who has learned (Usually the hard way) a lot of lessons in unconventional warfare. An inexperienced UH1H co-pilot is being trained by the main pilot on the unwritten techniques, tactics and procedures (TTPs) of flying the Huey over a hostile flying zone. A newly reported ensign received brotherly tips from his upperclassmen on the informal “DOs and DON’Ts” in his job as mess officer of the ship. Although Philippine manuals have not yet formally imported the term, Filipino soldiers have long been practicing this mentoring concept in the field as part of best practices in good leadership and as an informal way of passing the lessons learned and unwritten TTPs in the different field of soldiery.

Some negative facets of mentoring
While it is true that majority of the leadership aficionados concur that mentoring is a positive leadership concept, a number of critical minds still ventured on thinking otherwise as they established deeper consequences of the concept. With the inclusion of personal care, loyalty and attachment in mentoring, the concept may insinuate that it would sponsor and encourage favouritism—causing it to destabilize the desired leadership environment.

Others claim that we Filipinos just tend to confuse things and are fond of adopting highly technical terms to replace simple and easily understandable concept. Why introduce that weird Greek sounding term when what you need to project is simply good leadership?

Furthermore, mentoring is not conducive in a big group because mentoring requires a one on one coaching, monitoring and caring relationship. A course director therefore can not claim that he is capable mentoring a class of three hundred different students because it is simply not possible.

CCAFP parallelism on mentoring
Infusing the mentoring concept in PMA, specifically to the Cadet Corps down to the squad level where the squad leaders become the primary mentors to the plebes, it is imperative that we must go back to literature and revive the original and classical role of Mentor who was appointed by Odysseus to oversee his son Telemachus in Homer’s Odyssey. Mentor was carefully selected by Odysseus because of his wisdom, maturity, experience, trustworthiness and his being good counselor and teacher. Leaving his son behind, Odysseus knew and undoubtedly very confident that Telemachus would learn, mature and earn for himself wisdom under the stewardship of Mentor. Definitely, Odysseus knew that Telemachus would never be hurt under Mentor.

Similarly, the President of the Republic of the Philippines who appointed the plebes to be cadets of PMA is actually the Filipinized Odysseus who gave her trust to the Upperclass Corps to oversee the young, inexperienced plebes.

Bluntly, if Odysseus knew that Mentor would hurt Telemachus, never would he allow Mentor to even set foot at his household. In the same manner, if the President knew that any upperclassman would hurt any of the Plebes, never would she allow that upperclassman to stay in PMA. To put it positively, the president allows the upperclass corps to oversee the training, progress and learning of the plebes to include their emotional, mental, spiritual and physical progress because the upperclass corps is perceived to be more mature, knowledgeable, experienced, understanding and professional.

As I foresee the CCAFP adopting the mentoring concept in the future, where the upperclass corps religiously internalized their mentoring responsibilities to the plebes parallel to Mentor’s responsibility to Telemachus, I strongly believe that maltreatment would soon become an extinct terminology in the PMA lexicon. It might be an illusion, a fantasy or a daydream….. I’m just thinking aloud on the long term implication of mentoring to maltreatment.

[1] GREGG F. MARTIN, GEORGE E. REED, RUTH B. COLLINS, and CORTEZ K. DIAL, “Mentoring” Parameters, Autumn 2002, pp. 115-27.
[2] Encarta Dictionay, Version 2005, Mentor and Mentoring.
[3] US Army, Field Manual 22-100, Army Leadership (Washington: Department of the Army, 31 August 1999), p. 5-15, para. 5-82.
[4] Ibid., p. 5-16
[5] Ibid., p. 5-16, para. 5-83.
[6] Ibid., p. 5-16, para. 5-84.
[7] Ibid