Mentoring is the first of our hot topics for 2019 and we are delighted to have Professors David Clutterbuck and Bob Garvey and Doctor Paul Stokes debating the pros and cons for professionalising mentoring.
What will it Cover?
There are continuous and relentless attempts to professionalise coaching with varying degrees of success. There are now voices beginning to suggest that mentoring should go the same way. Indeed, The EMCC has made big strides in that direction. However, with professionalisation come issues of competency, standards and ethics. These all, like with coaching, present a conundrum and indeed contradictory positions. Standards, for example, seem to be a basis for a higher and higher proportion of qualifications and curricula throughout the Western world. These standards are increasingly based on competencies or learning outcomes and this approach seems to have become a dominant discourse and is rarely challenged. The consequence of these discourses is that they have become so loud and so embedded in professional associations, universities and other providers’ minds that alternatives become marginalized or worse, ignored and discounted and risk becoming wiped out by those who have the loudest voices.
This presents a problem for mentoring practice where, in the literature at least, values associated with voluntarism, individualism, variety, difference and complexity are celebrated as core. This debate focusses on the pros and cons of professionalising mentoring and considers:
voluntarism, individualism, variety, difference and complexity in relation to standards. competency and ethics in mentoring.
Presenter Profiles
Professor David Clutterbuck is one of the two original founders of what eventually became the EMCC, 25 years ago.
Author or co-author of nearly 70 books, he is visiting professor at three UK universities, including Sheffield Hallam, Oxford Brookes and York St John.
He is now the EMCC’s Special Ambassador, tasked with spreading evidenced good practice across the world.
His current projects include one aimed at creating 5 million school-kid mentors over a five year period.
Professor Bob Garvey is one of the world’s leading academic practitioners of coaching and mentoring. He is an experienced coach/mentor working with, for example, musicians, HR Managers, small business owners, young people, academics and executives.
Bob has great experience in a whole range of different types of organisations. These include large and small businesses, the public and private sector, voluntary organisation and NGOs. He has worked in many different industries including financial services, manufacturing, scientific, creative arts, education and health. Bob subscribes to the ‘repertoire’ approach to mentoring and coaching. He is in demand internationally as a keynote conference speaker where he is known for his lively and challenging approach.
Bob has a PhD from the University of Durham in the UK. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts and has published many books and papers on the practice of coaching and mentoring. He is a founding member of the European Mentoring and Coaching Council (EMCC) and Honorary President of Coaching York. In 2014, the EMCC presented him with the Mentor award for services to mentoring and also in 2014, he received a life time achievement award for contributions to mentoring.
Doctor Paul Stokes is an academic, coach, coach-supervisor and consultant, working at Sheffield Hallam University within the Business School. In 2002, he co-founded one of the first MSc Coaching & Mentoring programmes in the country. He is an active developer, researcher and evaluator of coaching & mentoring programmes, most recently working with Medicins Sans Frontieres, the National Health Service, local government and a range of small and medium sized enterprises in relation to their coaching & mentoring work. He also works as a coach, mentor and supervisor.
As an experienced international speaker on coaching & mentoring, he has recently spoken at various events in North America, Norway and Amsterdam. He has published a number of books, book chapters and articles on coaching & mentoring, including the 3rd edition of the best selling “Coaching & Mentoring Theory & Practice” text, together with Prof Bob Garvey.