Month: January 2022

Throughout this last semester, I have come very far in terms of my development of effective communication and creative problem solving. I feel like I have become more assured in myself as a communicator due to the tips, techniques and advice I have found from my research. Sometimes due to my lack of confidence and dyslexia I can stumble over my words or feel as though I do not make sense but since beginning this development journey, I have found that I take a second, have a deep breath and really think about what it is I want to say. This has made my communication much more clear and conscise and therefore effective. The responsibility that being a mentor gave me was both challenging and an opportunity for me to take on a new role. My wider development has benefitted from the peer mentoring scheme and the graduate development module as I have developed my research and reflective skills. I have never had to reflect as much as I have recently and it has really benefitted my self awareness. I had to think about my strengths and weaknesses and the impact of these on both my everyday life and my development. I’m not going to lie and say it hasn’t been a struggle, especially because of the lack of engagement I was faced with but, I no longer feel worried or awkward if I have to speak to a group or if I was in a mentor role in the future. Under the circumstances of the semester and my mentor group, I think I reacted well and still managed to continue learning and developing.

I chose the goal of effective communication, not just to benefit my role as a peer mentor but to help me in my wider development as at university, in my future pgce and then my career as a teacher, effective communication is integral. From researching different aspects of effective communication, I found that there were some slight changes that can be made to the way we communicate that make all the difference. For example, your tone of voice used when communicating is often overlooked but from my research I found that the tone in which someone says something has a huge impact on the delivery and reception. Another thing I think will benefit me in my day to day life is being an active listener. I know from my own experience how much I appreciate when I feel like I am being actively listened to. Throughout the last semester at university I found this particularly when speaking with one member of staff. During our conversations I felt as though they were interested and wanted to hear what I had to say and that consequently made me open up more and feel more comfortable. As a future teacher, I wish to be able to mirror this.

During the first few weeks of the peer mentoring scheme, it became apparent to me that my mentees timetables often clashed meaning that there seemed to be no time where we were all free to meet. I wanted to try and nip this problem in the bud and put together a doodle poll with different times available in the week for them to vote when they could attend a meeting. After prompting them to complete the poll for over a week, I finally had some responses to try and work with. Only 4/7 mentees completed the form so I still didn’t have the full picture but from the votes on the poll, no more than 3 people could meet at the same time. I did not have the time in my schedule to run 3+ meetings a week to meet with everyone so I knew that this was a challenge I would not be able to fully solve. As a temporary solution, I chose a time when the most people could meet and made it clear that if the others wanted or needed to, they could meet with me at a separate time or I would be happy to move meetings online to make them more accessible. Due to the lack of appeal for using zoom now when things are back in person mostly, the zoom sessions I did run, that people said they would join, had no attendance. I continued to try and brainstorm ideas that could help the situation but nothing seemed to work, I tried to set meetings similar to office hours where they knew I would be at a certain place for an afternoon, but no one attended. It was difficult to accept that maybe they didn’t need my mentorship and guidance anymore. After the first two weeks and all of their initial questions out of the way, they seemed to settle in to university very well and no longer required the scheme. This didn’t cross my mind at the time because my head was clouded by my own experience of settling into university which was quite negative.

After the lack of engagement from my mentees, I decided that it would be a good idea to ask my Mentor leader for some feedback in order to try and get an outsiders perspective of my success in the role. I originally planned to get my mentees to fill out a survey but only 1 out of 7 responded so it was difficult to gauge the general concensus.

My Mentor leader said “Throughout the peer mentor scheme you have worked hard to try and keep engagement up when your mentees weren’t too keen on getting involved in the scheme. At each stage you have tried to find new ways to boost attendance at meetings, due to the lack of your mentees turning up, such as coming up with plans for meetings and holding them at inclusive places. You provided all information that they asked for about the university. You kept all lines of communication open and made sure they were aware of all events going on in CH. You have been a very good peer mentor and have helped your mentees make the most possible out of the programme.”

After trying so hard to communicate effectively and solve problems creatively recieving some positive feedback really set my mind at ease regarding whether I had fulfilled my role to the best of my ability. When you are part of a team of Peer Mentors it is easy to compare yourself to others who have had great engagement and participation from their mentees. One thing that was also helpful was hearing other people’s struggles with attendance and realising that I wasn’t alone, it was a running theme across this years scheme. By asking others of their advice, I found that no one had an answer of how to solve my problems I was having in my role, which although frustrating, was helpful.

After researching how to think outside the box to solve problems I decided that it would be a good idea to make a meeting agenda to try and implement my research in an organised way.

From my research I found that in order to ‘think outside the box’, I must define and measure the problem, admit when I don’t know or understand what to do and then begin again if things don’t go right. By defining what the problem is, what the contents of the box are, per say, helps to ultimately deal with the problem. All the necessary material to solve a problem are within it. Thinking outside the box means that you cast off the atmosphere that envelops you, leaving your previous experiences and mindsets/attitudes behind and view things from a different perspective.

I read when researching thinking outside the box that slipping into a new role was helpful in changing your perspective. When a problem arose I therefore tried to put myself in a different role, not as the mentor of someone but as a friend, what advice would I give them for their problem now? The responsibility that came with being a peer mentor seemed to affect my decision making and problem solving skills as I felt unequipped for the role, not due to lack of training rather confidence. Perhaps I should have focused on gaining more confidence as a goal of personal development… But, I found that slipping into a new role changed the way I thought about things, quite drastically. For example, when my mentees were not attending meetings or replying to my messages, as myself, their peer mentor wanted to keep on trying to engage them by messaging and planning new, interesting meetings. Then when I changed my role/perspective and thought what an outsider would do, I realised that continuing to message them was not effective and instead I should leave it for a while until they decide to reply or interact. It seemed the more I messaged, the less they replied or read the messages. It was difficult for me to let go in a way as I felt like I was failing as a mentor because my group were not engaging with the scheme but by changing my perspective, it allowed me to take a step back and recognise that things are out of my hands. To try and solve the problem, I had to leave the problem alone as nothing I could do would solve it.

5 steps I decided to take to evaluate my specific problem that was inhibiting my role were:

1. Try to eliminate the problem – I couldn’t physically do this
2. Try to shrink the problem – This was a great problem for me as a lack of engagement from my mentees not only affected my role but my module/assessment
3. See if you can delegate the problem to someone else – I could go to others for advice, but there was nothing they could do about it
4. Ask yourself what insight would make the problem easier to solve – having more training or experience may have helped me to solve the problem as well as making some different decisions earlier on in the role
5. Question whether you actually need to solve the problem right now – By the time I sat down to try and solve this problem, it was already December and some other mentors already stopped working with their mentees as they didn’t require their help anymore. I just had to accept that this may be the case and that I should stop trying to solve the problem and use the things I have learned in a wider sense.

After I realised there was not much in my power I could do to solve the problem in a short space of time, I decided that there were many things I could have done to prevent problems arising that I did not do. For example, if I had made it clearer at the beginning that my role was voluntary and I required their participation for my module, in addition to it being beneficial to them, maybe they would have been more likely to attend. Overall, my research in solving problems by thinking outside the box has been helpful in the long run as it has given me tips and strategies for approaching future problems but has mainly made me reflect on what I did wrong earlier in the process.