Here at The Mandt System, we’ve been thinking a bit about mentoring programs. A few new initiatives have started to take flight here (specifically The Mandt Student Academy) and as they do, we are investigating various ways to help our Instructors be as successful as they can be.
I think most people recognize the ways that mentoring can benefit new hires (increased staff retention, better staff morale, increased competency, etc.), however, we have a challenge with mentoring since we don’t typically work side by side with any of our Instructors and much of the mentoring is done virtually (i.e. via email, video conference, phone calls, etc.).
A few things that we have tried (and it’s going to be quite a bit of trial and error) is embracing the technology and trying to use that to our advantage. For example, as much as we wish we weren’t so tied to our devices, most everyone has a smartphone from which they can capture pretty decent video images. We have asked some of our Instructors to take video of them teaching various sections of our curriculum so that we might be able to offer feedback. Similarly, we have also taken video of Mandt Faculty and made that available to Instructors to use so they may model drilling of some physical skills.
Another method that we have used, is asking all of our Mandt Faculty to provide a voice recording of them talking through some of the physical skills so that Instructors might be able to hear a few variations. We believe that is important so Instructors may hear that, while we all stay true to the standard, each of us uses language that is more comfortable to us.
Thus far our mentoring seems to be working well, even if we can’t always be physically with each of our Instructors. As we move forward, Mandt will continue to be innovative in our efforts to mentor the concepts of dignity and respect while providing the best quality services to all people.
Nikki Wince, Faculty Supervisor
