CLINT'S VIRTUAL MENTORING STORY
Designing a New App for Mentoring. What had eluded me all these years to find the right "encore career" for me had been hidden in plain view all along. And it all came together during my Encore Fellowship in San José, where I was building a mentoring program for underserved high school age youth.
It took the coronavirus pandemic of 2020 to be the catalyst. Sheltering at home had forced me to move online, and once I had moved there I happened upon an unexpected innovation. Zoom and Google Hangouts, it turns out, are very well suited for mentoring. I soon discovered that mentoring remotely could be as good, if not better than getting together in person.
First and foremost, video teleconferencing as a medium solves nearly all the insurmountable logistical hurdles of getting mentors and mentees together in the same place at a time convenient for each other. In addition, I quickly came to the realization that working online could break down the cumbersome administrative tasks of recruiting, orienting and screening potential mentors and mentees.
The group-oriented approach itself brings a number of benefits. It’s conducive to holding the attention of young people, whether in a large group or in breakout group settings, especially when you can embed relevant videos and interactive surveys into a session—all in real time. It also enables mentors and mentees the opportunity to get to know one another well enough to establish a strong foundation of trust. Once this trust is established, group gatherings could go on indefinitely, lasting an entire school year or to the point where individual matches for one-on-one mentoring could be made.
The creative process in coming up with this design is noteworthy. I was extremely fortunate in being able to team up with a sidekick who is a technology native and much closer in age to the young people we’re serving. I brought my muscle memory to our deliberations; my Millennial partner brought his flashes of insight. I brought “creativity, slow.” He brought “creativity, fast.”
It took the coronavirus pandemic of 2020 to be the catalyst. Sheltering at home had forced me to move online, and once I had moved there I happened upon an unexpected innovation. Zoom and Google Hangouts, it turns out, are very well suited for mentoring. I soon discovered that mentoring remotely could be as good, if not better than getting together in person.
First and foremost, video teleconferencing as a medium solves nearly all the insurmountable logistical hurdles of getting mentors and mentees together in the same place at a time convenient for each other. In addition, I quickly came to the realization that working online could break down the cumbersome administrative tasks of recruiting, orienting and screening potential mentors and mentees.
The group-oriented approach itself brings a number of benefits. It’s conducive to holding the attention of young people, whether in a large group or in breakout group settings, especially when you can embed relevant videos and interactive surveys into a session—all in real time. It also enables mentors and mentees the opportunity to get to know one another well enough to establish a strong foundation of trust. Once this trust is established, group gatherings could go on indefinitely, lasting an entire school year or to the point where individual matches for one-on-one mentoring could be made.
The creative process in coming up with this design is noteworthy. I was extremely fortunate in being able to team up with a sidekick who is a technology native and much closer in age to the young people we’re serving. I brought my muscle memory to our deliberations; my Millennial partner brought his flashes of insight. I brought “creativity, slow.” He brought “creativity, fast.”