O what a morning!
On this glorious fall day, how exciting and energizing to look out and see you — this remarkable audience of women and men of such varied ages and backgrounds. What brought us here? What chasm, what wide divergences, are we seeking to bridge? How will mentoring help narrow the gaps? What is mentoring across difference?
Let’s explore these questions together. Today as we near the end of the first decade of the 21st century, globalization and large migrations of people transform our world. The pace of change accelerates. Events often move faster than our understanding. The economic uncertainty of the past few years creates additional anxiety and too often increases fear of the other, in some cases leading to language and actions that dehumanize those who are different.
Here in Charlotte and across the nation the workforce, the consumer base, the student populations of K-12 schools, colleges and universities, and the citizenry at large are becoming increasingly diverse. The U.S. is now the most religiously diverse nation in the world. By 2050, approximately half of the US population will be people of color. By 2020, a majority of American college students will be non white. Nationally, one in four of today’s kindergarten students is Hispanic. One in 8 Mecklenburg County residents was born outside the US. More than 140 native languages other than English are spoken by students in CMS. In our workplaces, at our schools and in our community and governmental organizations, we encounter daily individuals who are different along many dimensions — race, ethnicity, national origin, geographic background, history, religion, gender, sexual orientation, age.
In this new multicultural age, how will we respond? Will we feel threatened or enriched and enlarged? At a very practical level, will we have the cultural flexibility and adaptability to work effectively with the whole rainbow of humanity?
Such cultural elasticity is essential if we are to address the challenges before us — economically, educationally and in the community. One proven method to increasing cross-cultural competency is to enter into a mentoring relationship with someone who is culturally different. Research shows that by participating in such a relationship, both the mentor and the mentee, can increase their knowledge of other cultures, their awareness of themselves and others and learn specific new skills to adapt to differences. In the process, they become more culturally competent — developing the ability to interact respectfully and effectively with individuals of different backgrounds in other settings.
Research by Catalyst, the organization that works globally w/ businesses and the professions to build inclusive workplaces and expand opportunities for women, shows consistently that the lack of access to cross-cultural and cross-gender mentors is a major barrier to career advancement for women of color. Likewise, a number of academic studies highlight how the lack of mentors for college students from traditionally underserved communities increases the likelihood of their dropping out before graduating. Increasingly, businesses and organizations are recognizing that diversity can be a source of competitive strength. By recognizing and building on differences, firms can serve previously untapped segments of the market and enhance their bottom line. Research shows that diverse work groups come up with more creative, innovative solutions.
So today we have an exceptional opportunity to learn about an effective tool to expand our cross-cultural effectiveness—Mentoring Across Difference.
To give you an overview and to spark your thinking, I ask you to consider 5 Os—
Odyssey, Obstacles, Openness, Oops and Opportunity
First O- odyssey. Mentoring is a one on one relationship between a mentor and a mentee. If you enter such a relationship, you’re starting a journey, an odyssey of discovery. It’s quite appropriate that we start here because the word mentor comes from the name of a Greek character in The Odyssey, Homer’s epic poem. Mentor was an old man to whom Odysseus entrusted his son and his palace before leaving to fight in the Trojan War. Over time, the word mentor has come to mean in addition to, a trusted friend, a more experienced person who serves as a counselor, a teacher, a coach, a role model to a mentee. Mentoring is about one person helping another to achieve something of importance in their development. Traditionally, it’s thought that the mentor inspires, develops, challenges and empowers the mentee. Research shows that successful mentoring often results in much personal growth and development for the mentor as well.
The second O is for Obstacles. Like Odysseus, who faced a string of difficulties in getting home after the Trojan War, mentoring across difference is challenging. As a Harvard Business Review article stated: Mentoring across difference is not a natural act. Such relationships can have difficulty in forming, developing and maturing. Four potential obstacles were identified:
- Negative stereotypes, preconceived notions of what a person of a certain background is like or is capable of.
- Difficulty identifying with the other person—close mentoring relationships are much more likely to form when both parties see parts of themselves in the other person. The mentee sees someone whom he wants to like in the future. The mentor sees someone who reminds her of herself years ago. Differences in race, cultural background and class can make that identification harder. Also when the mentoring is across race, the mentor may have limitations as a role model. A white mentor urged his African American protégé to adopt a more aggressive style. But when he did so, others labeled him an “angry black man.
- ”Protective hesitation—a situation in which both parties refrain from raising touchy issues, especially race and racism. People are fearful of appearing prejudiced. Such a mind-set can cripple the mentoring relationship. A mentor may not give much needed constructive feedback that would hasten the mentee’s development. A mentee may never voice her true concerns that she’s being treated differently because of her race because she’s concerned the mentor may think she has a chip on her shoulder.
- Skepticism about intimacy- the author found that many people in the corporate world question whether close, high-quality relationships across race and cultural difference are possible. Mentees have concerns: Does the mentor have an ulterior motive? Am I selling out my culture to fit in?
To overcome these obstacles requires Openness, our third O. A successful relationship of mentoring across difference requires personal courage by both parties. Both must be willing to speak their fears and concerns and to listen to the fears and concerns of the other person--sharing vulnerabilities, listening deeply with sympathy and understanding, explaining perceptions, acknowledging and discussing differences and similarities with sensitivity and self awareness. Self awareness is especially important. One writer put it this way: “Know how you are in the world and recognize that other people may have very different and equally valid ways of being in the world.” Like all successful relationships, mentoring requires a foundation of mutual trust. Working to establish trust is the crucial first step. Making a commitments and sticking with them is vital. To be trusted, be trustworthy.
The fourth O is Oops!!! There are going to be mistakes and missteps along the way. This is tough work and we won’t always get it right. It requires not only a commitment but also knowledge and skills and practice. To this day, I’m pained when I think about the first time I tried to be a mentor across difference. It was 1968 when I was a college sophomore and I was asked to be an advisor to an African American freshman woman. Here’s how it happened. I had been raised in Louisiana in the 1950s and 60s. I had gone to segregated schools until our high school was desegregated by half a dozen black students a couple of years before graduation in 1967. I remember pulling for the black students’ success thinking “I hope you do well and prove the bigots wrong” but I’m ashamed to admit it never crossed my mind to reach out to them and ask what I could do to help. That lack of sensitivity and moral courage haunts me to this day. The most insight I had was a stirring that something was terribly wrong. I remember being up the night the University of Mississippi was desegregated in 1962. I was in eighth grade, listening to the radio as I did homework, and heard the news account that people had been killed. I wept at the stupidity of killing people because of the color of their skin.
During my freshman year at Vanderbilt I convinced my parents to let me go on a student trip to NYC with the asst. university chaplain. It was my first visit to New York. It wasn’t your typical spring break trip or your typical tourist visit. I didn’t go up in the Empire State Building or see a Broadway show. We went to Harlem and met with James Farmer, head of the Congress of Racial Equality, and down to Greenwich Village to meet with other chaplains working on social justice issues. I remember especially racing across a busy street when a philosophy graduate student Pat Wilmot from Jamaica reached out his hand to grab me up to the curb so that I wouldn’t be hit by a speeding taxi. You may think this a very every day action but it’s one of the most memorable moments of my life. It was the first time I’d ever held hands with a person of color who wasn’t a servant. My view of the world began to shift. My view of where I had been reared would never be the same. This was in March.
Over the summer, I was asked to be a freshman adviser and was assigned four freshmen women to mentor, including Sarah, an African American freshman from Nashville. In retrospect, I realize how clueless and insensitive I was. When she said Aunt (ont), I said aunt (ant). I was so ethnocentric I assumed my way was the correct way. I didn’t respect and affirm her way of being. Although I had been around African Americans my entire life, I had no knowledge of or experience with black middle class life and values. Because of my lack of understanding and sensitivity, my ineptitude as a mentor, my relationship with Sarah never overcame the obstacles I outlined earlier and I’m sure did nothing to help her adjust to life at Vanderbilt. Across the years and across the miles Sarah, I apologize.
This experience engendered a profound sense of humility that has stayed with me. I concur with the writer who said “none of us ever fully attains cultural competency. All we can do is commit to a lifetime of peeling back layers of the onion of our own perceptions and biases, being quick to apologize, accept responsibility for cultural missteps and embracing the adventure of learning from others’ firsthand accounts of their own.”
Since Sarah and that experience at Vanderbilt, I’ve worked hard to do better, to become more effective.
So there are the first four Os of mentoring across difference:
It’s an odyssey, a journey of discovery along which many obstacles will be encountered. With an openness of mind, heart and spirit and an ongoing commitment to learning about different cultures, different religions, different ways of being and acquiring cross-cultural communications skills, many barriers can be overcome though oops!, mistakes and missteps, are inevitable from which we receive some of life’s most valuable lessons.
Over the years I’ve found that grappling with the complexities of cross-racial and cross-cultural relationships can strengthen the mentoring relationship when handled well. If the mentor and mentee can come to trust each other enough to work together in dealing with sensitive issues, like race, then they will likely have a sturdy foundation to explore other kinds of differences, thus broadening the perspectives of both parties.
That brings us to this glorious fall morning in today’s multicultural Charlotte and the final O, opportunity. Today’s conference presents a wonderful opportunity to learn about mentoring across difference, strengthening both our commitment and our capacity to become partners in cross-cultural learning. Because culture is learned, the important thing to realize is that we can develop affinities and sensitivities for a number of different cultures. We can acquire multicultural competencies and work effectively with many different populations.
The choice is ours. I close where I started. How will we respond to those who are different? Will we feel threatened or enriched? At a very practical level, will we make the effort to acquire the cultural flexibility and adaptability to work effectively with the whole rainbow of humanity?