Mentoring Valuable in Fostering Growth and Increasing Skills and Competences

Director, Office of Student Affairs and Development at the University of the West Indies (UWI), Dr. Thelora Reynolds, has highlighted the value of mentoring in fostering personal growth and understanding, and increasing skills and competences.
“A good mentorship programme or a good mentor is going to cause the mentee’s skills to increase. (For example you are) faced with a problem, how are you going to solve the problem. The mentor is going to say, let us analyse the situation, let’s see who knows how to solve this and let us work it through,” she explained.
“This means that when they (the mentees) are finished, they should be better persons than when they started the programme,” Dr. Reynolds stated at a mentoring workshop held today (Aug. 5) as part of the inaugural Future Leadership Jamaican Diaspora Conference 2009 at the University of the West Indies’ Mona Visitor’s Lodge.
She stated that mentors should share the knowledge available to them and help uncover any talents that are present within those whom they mentor. She noted that the key to successful mentoring is to recognise and respect each other’s strengths and weaknesses.
According to Dr. Reynolds, a good mentor should have the ability to listen to their mentees; possess adequate situation coaching skills, effective confrontational techniques or new methods of resolving conflicts; and keep abreast of new developments and their implications.
The conference is a joint effort of the Jamaican Diaspora Future Leaders; the Ministries of Foreign Affairs and Foreign Trade, and Youth, Sports and Culture; and the Mona School of Business.
It is being convened under the theme: ‘Connecting Diaspora future leaders, solidifying our places in our homelands and Jamaica’.
The August 3 to 10 conference involves some 400 youth leaders from Jamaica and the Diaspora converging on the Mona campus to discuss critical developmental issues.