As we celebrate National Mentoring Day on the 27th of October, we honour more than just individual relationships; we celebrate a powerful catalyst for personal and societal impact. Through my journey as mentor, mentee, and mentoring coordinator, I’ve distilled three fundamental truths about mentoring that are worth sharing and reflecting on, not only in the context of this day but when considering how to succeed in academic-policy engagement.
1) Bridge Builder: Connecting Cultures and Experiences
When I moved to the United Kingdom, I left behind my professional network and faced the daunting task of understanding a new cultural landscape. The environment I once mastered and understood was now in the past, and instead, I faced a new reality that was foreign to me.
Thanks to my induction process at the University of Oxford, I benefited from a mentoring relationship with Albert Park, a lecturer at the Department of International Development. He didn’t just help me navigate Oxford’s academic world; he bridged the gap between my past experiences and my new environment, making the unfamiliar feel conquerable.
This bridge-building aspect of mentoring extends far beyond individual experiences. Researchers and institutions in the UK engage internationally and work together with partners across the globe, making it crucial to have a greater understanding and cohesion in our increasingly multicultural work environment. Thus, mentoring could support us in building those bridges and fostering cross-cultural collaboration, enhancing our ability to address global challenges through diverse perspectives and shared knowledge.
2) Catalyst for Learning and Growth: Nurturing Intellectual Development
The power of mentoring lies in its ability to transform tacit knowledge into explicit understanding. By engaging in dialogue with a mentor, we often uncover insights and connections that might have remained hidden in our own thoughts. This process of articulation and reflection, guided by an experienced interlocutor, can reveal new pathways of thinking and expose areas for growth that we might not have recognized on our own (Yanai & Lercher, 2024).
This insight resonates deeply with my own experiences. For instance, since early 2024, I’ve been participating in the excellent UPEN mentoring programme, where I’ve greatly benefited from my mentor, Lisa Hodgson from Durham University, along with colleagues Daisy Forster (Nottingham University) and Nicholas Brown (Birmingham University).
At the start of this relationship, we established clear objectives about what we wanted to gain from this experience. We’ve decided to discuss and learn from each other on experiences such as learning and development for academic-policy engagement, local and regional engagement, and career progression within this field. Since then, we’ve developed a powerful group to discuss and explore the complex intersection of academia and policy engagement, and how best to support our colleagues and policy professionals in our work.
3) Network Amplifier: Expanding Horizons and Opportunities
While the immediate benefits of mentoring are often personal, its long-term impacts ripple outward. The University of Oxford’s OPEN Peer Mentoring Scheme, which I coordinate, is a prime example of this network amplification. Since 2021, it has benefited over 120 policy professionals and researchers, fostering connections that transcend the typical six-month programme duration. Beyond the evident benefit that participants gain in understanding how to navigate the challenges of academic-policy engagement, these relationships have sparked collaborations on larger projects, demonstrating how mentoring can catalyse systemic change.
Participants become part of a cohort where they interact with other researchers from Oxford and their policy professional peer mentors. This interconnected community exemplifies how initial one-on-one mentoring relationships can evolve into expansive networks of collaboration and innovation. The result is a powerful multiplier effect that not only enhances individual careers but also drives progress across entire fields and industries, creating a lasting impact on both academia and policy-making.
The Interconnected Nature of Mentoring
While I’ve illustrated each ‘truth’ with a single example, it’s clear that all the experiences I’ve shared interweave and reinforce one another. For instance, policy professionals have built bridges to the academic world, just as researchers have gained valuable insights from the workings of policy. Lisa, Nicholas, and Daisy have become part of my new professional network, and I’m confident in reaching out to them whenever I need clarity on something. Similarly, I’ve learned from Albert not only how to navigate Oxford but also why he initially joined the OPEN Peer Mentoring Scheme as a mentee in 2022, to enhance his policy engagement understanding.
This interconnectedness exemplifies the true power of mentoring that we celebrate this October – a practice that builds bridges, catalyses growth, and amplifies networks, creating a ripple effect of knowledge and support that extends far beyond individual relationships.
