Socrates for Mentors
This is the second of my series of articles relating concepts from two of my top passions: Business and Philosophy. In this post, we’ll explore the oh-so-ancient dialectic method of Socrates, we’ll see what it means to use such a method, and we’ll discover how the ancient Greeks held the key to developing your mentoring skills. Let’s get philosophical.
There’s an excellent solution that organisations can implement when trying to combat negative behaviours in the workplace and reinforce a more productive and engaging culture. It can lead to the development of staff without incurring enormous training costs, and it can be carried out by leaders within the firm so that it is consistent with overarching strategies. No, this is not magic; we are referring to a tool at the disposal of the focused manager and the inspiring business leader; we are referring to mentoring.
Mentoring is a powerful option for organisations seeking to drive change. And in an economic environment where change is the only constant, it is no wonder 71% of Fortune 500 companies already run a mentoring programme. But mentoring can quickly prove more troublesome than helpful due to its many possible variations and the confusion between mentoring and coaching, so it is key to begin the design of a mentoring programme by clearly defining what mentoring means — so let’s start there.
Coaching and mentoring overlap; this is clear and explains the often-interchangeable use of the terms. But a simple distinction is coaching’s focus on a time-bound development plan in a particular area (e.g.: a career coach who helps you score your dream job), versus mentoring’s broader scope and lesser dependence on the mentor’s own experience and knowledge, as the mentor’s role is to facilitate the self-reflection of the mentee to discover their own capabilities and draw out their own development plan, as described by Megginson and Clutterbuck (2004). This definition of mentoring therefore places the mentee at the centre of the relationship. It is the mentee’s own capability that is being tapped into during the mentoring relationship. Beyond the need for a supervisory structure for a mentoring scheme to succeed (and mentors to develop and find support), as well as a clear set of boundaries defined at the start of the relationship, the mentor’s role is to question the mentee’s assumptions, actions and views in a constructive manner. The process for the mentee can be difficult, as it should bring them out of their comfort zone, but only this way can one discover oneself, identify opportunities for improvement and grow. This is part of the mentor’s challenge, to keep the spark alight during and between meetings; a skill the mentor develops through training and practice. Ultimately, the spirit of mentoring can be embodied by any team member with a genuine interest in the development of others; the spirit of wanting to understand and support others by challenging them and steering them towards an aspirational version of themselves. That spirit, one may say, was first found in the Ancient Greek philosopher Socrates (c. 470–399 BC).
Socrates was quite the character, to say the least. He has even earned himself an entry in the Stanford Encyclopaedia of Philosophy called “Socrates’s strangeness”. It is said he would roam the streets of Athens with below-standards hygiene (even for that era) and a poor fashion-sense, accosting passers-by to ask odd questions, the answers to which he would probe relentlessly, not to find an ultimate answer, but to either destroy what fallacy the poor pedestrian held to be true or to discover gaps in a reality that requires further scrutiny. Captured by Plato’s and Xenophon’s ancient works, the Socratic method is just that: questioning and enabling your counterpart to reflect on themselves, their beliefs and the world through dialogue. The goal of this method was to empower reflective thought about the status quo and the information fed from those in power. More specifically, Socrates sought to apply critical thinking against a social class that existed in Ancient Greece called the sophists, paid educators who, from Plato’s writings, offered opinions rather than knowledge and employed mere rhetoric to drive their own views and agenda (can you think of any leaders who meet these criteria?).
Beyond the fact that Socrates never wrote a word and that everything we know about him is second-hand information at best, it is fascinating how relevant the Socratic method, a form of dialectic, is so relevant to us today. Take the line manager who sets aside goal targets and bonuses for a moment to speak with a team member about their own professional goals, or the mentor who wishes to support their mentee through a career transition or to grow within their role. What is the approach the good line manager and mentor will take if not a form of dialogue — of the Socratic method? To understand those who we support and wish to influence positively, we must first be capable of standing in their shoes, learn their language and see the world from their angle. Our agenda as managers, coaches, facilitators, mentors, thought leaders; it is to guide our followers out of their comfort zones and into a place where they are better prepared to continue developing as individuals, professionals, thinkers. This is, of course, a process that requires practice and perfecting, but one that can clearly have great outcomes when employed correctly.
Taking the Socratic method to a slightly different realm, let’s consider the example of the salesperson who spends hours on end studying their product and creating the perfect pitch. Sure, some prospects will bite, but what problem is the product solving? In other words, how does the product help any one specific client? The answer to that is held by the actual prospective customer and reveals itself during questioning, a somewhat unnatural but entirely necessary part of a meeting with that person. In understanding their situation, you can discover “pressure points” that your product could alleviate, then question further for details and finally pitch the relevant solutions your product has to offer. That is your value proposition: what the customer needs; and pricing is irrelevant if you pitch it right.
What Socrates offers us is, thus, a tool with which to push others beyond their usual assumptions, so that they learn to question their own thought processes, to become more logical, to evolve and, eventually, to want to lead others through the same Socratic method. Deconstruct unquestioned beliefs; then prepare a solid foundation on which the mentee can slowly build themselves up to become the best version of themselves. It just takes time and an ancient philosopher’s approach to get mentoring right.
This post was originally published on the Philosophy for Business blog
For the first of this series of articles, have a read of Ockham’s Razor for Business Analysts
And if you made it this far, stick around a moment more to comment with any thoughts below and click the “clap” button!
