Human beings have been telling each other stories for a long time. We tell stories to package information, to bond, to build shared culture, to inspire and, as in Sendak’s masterpiece, to illustrate deep meaning through metaphor. The epic poem Beowulf, for example, served to highlight the Anglo-Saxon values of loyalty between warriors and their Lord. It may also have contained deeper metaphors for a society making the transition from paganism to Christianity. In more recent culture, the real-life story of Rosa Parks and her defiance of racial segregation in Alabama was an inspiration to the civil rights movement. It also helped to form and solidify the movement’s predominant culture of non-violence.

After millennia of sharing stories it is not entirely fanciful to imagine that we have developed neural pathways specifically to absorb information and emotions presented in story form. Research by Richard Nisbett at the University of Michigan in the 1980s gave one group of participants a story of an atypical benefits claimant followed by real data on typical claimants whilst another group was simply given the story. The result of this experiment (validated by later trials) showed that the atypical story stuck and the hard data was largely ignored. It seems that our brain values narratives more than cold facts.

Today, the value and impact of storytelling for organisations is widely recognised. Commercial organisations use stories in advertising to drive brand loyalty and to communicate corporate and product values. Not-for-profit organisations also use stories to communicate their impact in the world. Stories should not just be reserved for external communications however; they should also be used to inspire staff and volunteers and to communicate an organisation's culture.

Yesterday I visited Rob Trimble, CEO at the Bromley by Bow Centre and fellow Bank of America Awards leadership trainee. Whilst showing me around the oasis of calm and loveliness that is the Bromley by Bow Centre, we bumped into Mandy who told me how she had first come to the centre as an isolated single mum. From her first day she found a place where she could be of use, where she was valued and where she could learn and develop. Fast forward 21 years and she is now a service manager at Bromley by Bow. Her story, related with honesty and conviction, was a perfect example of how a narrative can encapsulate what an organisation is at its best, how people operate within it, and the motivators behind people’s engagement. 

Just as stories have the power to unite and inspire, they can equally serve negative functions. Consider the organisation with 'Supporting employees' as a core value but where new staff hear how 'Jean' was treated badly by management as they stand at the water cooler. That’s why it’s so important to make sure that the organisation’s message and the stories of staff are aligned and consistent.

If you’re looking to use more storytelling in your organisation I can highly recommend Dan Goodman’s book ‘Storytelling as best Practice’. It’s a great starting point and also a good resource for further reading – as is Dan’s website at www.thegoodmancenter.com

In the pressure to deliver facts for funders and structures for our organisations it’s easy to overlook the power of stories – but we do so at our peril. 

Leadership, put simply, is the art of influencing others. It comes in many forms – and it does not always come with a job title! Look around your organisation, community, or family and you will see that many of the most influential people are not in ‘positions’ of leadership.

Our ideal of what great leadership looks like is influenced by celebrated and historical leaders; Ghandi, Martin Luther-King, Winston Churchill, Florence Nightingale. This is both a blessing and a curse. A blessing, in that we can all draw inspiration from these giants. But also a curse because their legacy is so difficult to live up to. 

The curse can be lifted, somewhat, if we remember that celebrated leaders are atypical. They tend to be resolute, single-minded, tireless, great orators and powerful communicators. For every extraordinary leader with these talents and attributes there are a thousand lesser mortals who still achieve great influence and unity of purpose through different means.     

If, like me, you labour under the shadow of ‘great’ leaders, help comes in the form of the book Strength Based Leadership by Tom Rath and Barry Conchie. Their central theme is that effective leaders discover what they’re good at – and do more of it. Much of Strength based Leadership is based on the work of Donald O. Clifton who spent over 50 years researching the subject. He discovered that, although there are key attributes that leaders have, these are very rarely all displayed in one person. The most effective leaders seem to focus on the things they are good at. Paradoxically, leaders who tried to ‘cover all bases’ tend to be the least effective in their jobs.

The key message here is that leadership isn’t about perfection in all things, but being able to identify strengths and optimise performance in those areas. It suggests that strong leaders don’t spend time overly indulging their inner critic or dwelling on what they can’t achieve, but focus on the positive and the possible. Strong leaders are able to recognise their strengths and areas of weakness. They see the strengths and talents in others around them and develop and utilise these effectively to achieve goals.

Rath and Conchie also share recent Gallup Polls data on why people follow leaders. The data suggests that people tend to follow those who they trust, who show compassion, who provide stability, and who provide hope. In some ways I was surprised by the simplicity of these attributes and had, perhaps, expected more about vision, charisma and strength. It also brought me back to diversity in leadership, as these simple attributes can be communicated through the powerful oratory of a towering leader but equally through the simple, quiet, everyday actions of a colleague or friend.

At Friendship Works I want to ensure that we all understand what effective leadership looks like, that we nurture it in its various forms and that we are all able to harness our inner leaders to achieve the vision of our organisation. On a mentoring-related note, friendship is one of our core values and it’s fascinating to see that the Gallup research shows that some of the qualities of friendship (trust, compassion, continuity) are at the heart of effective leadership too. 

I've just returned from an inspiring week in Chicago where I visited the local branch of the American mentoring scheme Big Brothers Big Sisters (BBBS) and also attended The Bank of America not-for-profit leadership training at the National Centre for Leadership Innovation. The trip was funded by The Bank of America as part of the two-year award they have granted to support Friendship Works.

On Monday I met with Erika Corona-Owens and Andrew Synder at BBBS of Metropolitan Chicago. They support 1,500 young people in the 'windy city' and had some great advice on how we can improve our volunteer recruitment process and other systems in order to support more children in London. I also met with CEO Art Mollenhauer to talk about how the BBBS affiliate scheme works, and how we might be able to use this to replicate Friendship Works in other cities in the UK.

The leadership training started on Tuesday. Rob Trimble, the fantastic CEO of Bromley by Bow Centre, was the other Brit on the course; the other 88 delegates were CEOs from across the United States, from Portland to Kansas City. All of the organisations were Bank of America Award recipients, so they represented some of the most innovative and respected charities in their fields. It's been a privilege to meet so many committed individuals and to learn about their successes and challenges in delivering social, educational, and environmental services in the US.

Although there are many cultural and political differences between the UK and the US, many of the issues facing the not-for-profit sector are similar; Government funding cuts, increased demand for services during the recession, recruiting and retaining excellent staff, and managing change. The most obvious difference was the number of charities providing very basic needs in the absence of a comprehensive welfare system. Many of the organisations were, for example, food banks, which distribute food and other essential products to both the unemployed and the working poor. Despite the financial downturn, the majority of the participants were expecting to be able to support more beneficiaries this year than last; a sign, perhaps, of the quality and ambition of the organisations on the course.

The course was intensive and thought provoking. I came away with some great ideas, insights, and a small library of books to read. Andy Goodman's session on using storytelling to communicate vision, culture, and impact was particularly useful. I would recommend his book 'Storytelling as Best Practice' to anybody trying to increase the power of their organisation's ability to engage supporters. I'd also recommend John Kotter's extremely accessible book on organisational change, 'Our Iceberg is Melting' (management theory through the eyes of a group of emperor penguins!).

We also went on a field trip to the astonishing and brilliant 'welfare to work' NFP, the Cara Program (www.thecaraprogram.org) and took part in their morning 'Motivate Me' sessions with some of their students. It was the highlight of my trip and a great honour to share the openness and positivity of adults struggling to find work in such difficult circumstances.

One of Friendship Works amazing caseworkers, Jodie Dickey, will be attending the next leadership course in May (San Francisco) and then we'll both be going to the final course in Charlotte in October. In the meantime I'm going to be working with my peer mentor, Patricia Edge of BBBS of Portland, to put some of our learning from the course into practice.

In my next post, I’ll be going into more detail about strong leadership, what it means, and how to deliver it.

I’d like to say a huge thank you to both Bank of America and The Centre for Leadership Innovation for making last week possible; it was game changing stuff, and we really appreciate their support.

One thing that social scientists do agree on, however, is that children who have good social support are more resilient to disadvantage than those that do not. They are more likely to overcome adversity and to negotiate transitions through childhood successfully. From the 1980s onwards, a large number of robust studies have shown that the presence of a consistent care-giver or other reliable adult is a key protective factor for young people.¹ 

In addition to demonstrating the importance of good social support, social scientists are also beginning to codify the functions that this support provides and what makes them effective. The authors of a new book, A Guide to Youth Mentoring², posit that social support can serve four main functions. It can be tangible support, meaning practical things like money or access to opportunities. It can also be emotional, e.g. somebody who can provide a listening and sympathetic ear. Another type of support is advisory, such as helping a young person to understand their career choices. Finally, support can be esteem building, which is helping a child understand their self-worth. The authors suggest that the most effective social support is also durable, has a reasonable level of emotional closeness, has space for positive criticism, and includes some degree of reciprocation.

We know that children with good social support do better in life, but what does this mean for mentoring providers like Friendship Works?

Knowing that good social support makes a big difference means that we can be confident that mentoring will have a significant impact if it meets three conditions: a) it is addressing an identified gap in a young person’s social support network, b) the mentor is able to provide support which plugs this gap, and c) the mentoring relationship has the attributes of positive social support. There are a few things that we have to do to ensure that we meet these conditions.

Firstly, we need to assess the needs of each child referred to the service and establish how they could benefit. Secondly, once we know what shape the gap in their social support network is, we need to find a mentor who is able to plug this gap. We also need to ensure that the mentor understands how they can help, and that they are given adequate supervision and training to meet the need. And finally, we need to build a relationship between the child and their mentor that is durable, close, strong enough to endure positive criticism, and that is mutually beneficial.

All of the children supported by a mentor at Friendship Works have been identified as being able to benefit from additional social support. The need is different for each child. A parent suffering from poor mental health may not be able to provide emotional support; a parent with a physical disability may struggle to provide access to opportunities for their child. Because the need of each child is unique, the additional support that we offer is tailored to fit.

One of the great advantages of a mentoring scheme like Friendship Works’, is that the right mentor can be identified to meet the needs of each child – the right sized plug for the specific gap in each child’s social support network. The quality and durability of the relationship is something that we strongly emphasize by focusing on the relationship that is built over the two year commitment. We believe that a child benefits most from a genuine friendship with their mentor, which can only happen if the relationship is given time to grow and enrich both the child and the mentor.

Setting up effective and good quality mentoring relationships is resource intensive. Casework staff need to properly assess each child and family, screen, train and build good working relationships with volunteers and provide regular and in-depth supervision once a match is underway. Jean Rhodes, one of the leading researchers into mentoring in the US, recently warned against reducing this investment of resources and watering down the quality of assessment and support. There is clear evidence that ‘lighter touch’ approaches to mentoring are, in the long-term, less cost-effective in delivering real change in young people’s lives.

We appreciate these opportunities to reflect on our approach to mentoring. Mentoring has an amazing potential to help young people develop, but, as at Friendship Works, it needs to be delivered to a high quality with the commitment to spend time getting to know each child, family and volunteer and to provide proper training and support once a match has been made. 

We’re always looking for ways to serve young people more effectively. If you have any insights about a need that was supported by a mentor in your life, we’d love to hear about your experience.

¹ Werner, E.E and Smith, R.S. (1982) Vulnerable but Invincible: A Study of Resilient Children. New York: McGraw-Hill

² Dolan, P. And Brady, B. (2012) A Guide to Youth Mentoring: Providing Effective Social Support.  Jessica Kingsley

We announced the news on Monday morning, when I had the honour to officially open the Stock Exchange for trading. A slightly nerve-wracking event, opening the market for trading on the very first day of the new financial year. I’m pleased to report that all figures on the screens were green when I pushed the button.

The launch event at the London Stock Exchange was hosted by LSEG’s Chief Executive, Xavier Rolet, who gave a great speech about the power of mentoring and why he believes it is crucial to invest in young people and their future.

It was also attended by the Minister for Civil Society Nick Hurd MP, and Friendship Works’ supporters Tim Pigott-Smith, Jon Snow and Charles Dance.

During speeches at the event the Minister for Civil Society said ‘I’m a great believer in the power of mentoring and its effectiveness in supporting children through important life transitions.'

We’ll be holding him to that statement!

We couldn’t be more delighted with our new corporate partnership with London Stock Exchange Group and we’re really looking forward to working with staff over the next 3 years. It’s going to make a huge difference to us and the number of children we can support in London. Thank you to everybody at LSEG who helped to make this possible.

We look forward to keeping you updated on progress as the partnership develops.

A useful starting point is to define the terms. A role model is someone to look up to; they set a positive example and inspire another person to emulate their best qualities. A mentor is more active in that they use their experiences to provide advice to someone who is in the process of developing. Finally, a friend is somebody who you can confide in, have fun with, and rely on for emotional support.

The relationships between our volunteers and their matches involve a mix of these elements.  Because our volunteers are stable and compassionate adults, many children will naturally tend to look up to them as a role model. Additionally, our volunteers often share their wisdom or insights with their young person, and occasionally offer some advice. We do stress to our volunteers that their role is not to “fix” problems or tell their young person what they should do, but there is certainly a mentoring component. We even refer to our volunteers as “mentors”.

But clearly the strongest element of their relationships – as our name suggests – is friendship. On a weekly basis, what our volunteers provide is a fun activity, a listening ear, and emotional support, which is exactly how any other healthy friendship works. A good friendship is mutually-beneficial; our volunteers and the young person that they support both get a lot out of the relationship, albeit in very different ways. And any true friendship will sometimes encompass a mentoring or role modelling function. Most people can draw on their own experiences to remember a time when they sought advice or guidance from a more experienced friend, or were encouraged to better themselves by following a friend’s positive example.

For all the conceptual grappling about how to describe the role of our volunteers, maybe it would be easier and more relatable to just say that they are genuinely good friends to a young person. Intuitively, people do understand what it means to have a genuine friendship. They go beyond the superficial, they find room even during busy periods of our lives, and they stand the test of time.

If you’ve ever had a mentor, how important was the friendship element of the relationship?  Can you remember a time when one of your friends mentored you or served as a role model? We’d love to hear your thoughts in the comments below.

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Friendship Works' long-term mission is to embed mentoring in communities as part of everyday life. It’s an ambitious goal, but one that we believe is ultimately necessary to ensure that all children in England who need a mentor have access to one. 

Relative to the UK, mentoring is already firmly embedded in US culture, chiefly through the work of Big Brothers Big Sisters. In the US, youth mentors are universally recognized as valuable and admirable; mentoring is proudly added to CVs to demonstrate a person’s commitment and values, and it is often used in TV and film to signal that a character is a genuinely great person.

So why has mentoring developed less enthusiastically in the UK, and more importantly, what should be done about it?

I have a few thoughts on why the UK has been slower to embrace the concept of mentoring, but to be honest, my guess is as good as anyone’s. Following the industrial revolution, demographics began shifting towards urban environments and people increasingly found themselves in new types of communities. Beginning in the early 1900s and continuing throughout much of the century, the UK moved towards an increasingly comprehensive welfare state system. The US, however, experienced the same post-industrialization trend towards urban life but without the same rise in government-driven welfare programs experienced in the UK.

One explanation is that the newly defined sense of community in urban environments, combined with the rise of the welfare state, resulted in a belief that the government – not people in the community – should take responsibility for those in need. By contrast, many Americans want to eliminate what few social welfare programs they have under the belief that the government should not be involved, it should be people in the community. How those beliefs would play out in reality is a separate matter, but the belief that the community should take responsibility is widespread and of principal importance when considering how mentoring became embedded in US society.

So where does that leave us? Perhaps it’s more useful to look at how it worked in the US, rather than guess why it didn’t happen in the UK. Big Brothers Big Sisters started in New York in 1904 when a juvenile court clerk recognized a problem and decided to take action. Ernest Coulter said, “there is only one possible way to serve that youngster (who is in trouble) and that is to have some earnest, true man volunteer to be his big brother, to look after him, help him do right; make the little chap feel that there is at least one human being in this great city who takes a personal interest in him, who cares whether he lives or dies.” As we would put it more succinctly, young people need a trusted friend.

Maybe mentoring caught on so strongly in the US simply because one person had a good idea, a good network, and the persistence to see it through. No one can be sure if that’s what it takes to embed an idea into society, but that’s the formula that we’ll continue to use at Friendship Works.

Dave Nordsieck

Many people might still think of bullying as something that takes place in the playground or outside the school gate. For children today, however, bullying is as likely to come via text messages or in the form of cyberbullying on facebook and twitter. Regardless of the type of bullying, it’s still vulnerable children who are more likely to be targeted – particularly those who lack confidence and who find it difficult to build good peer friendships. 

Some of the difficulties faced by the children we support make them more vulnerable to bullying. Social isolation, learning difficulties, being a young carer and other challenges can all leave children feeling less confident and less able to cope. A reliable adult mentor is an important extra source of support, someone to talk to about their situation and to share their worries with.

A mentor can also help a socially isolated child feel more ‘normal’ and confident enough to take part in everyday conversations with school friends. Some of the children at Friendship Works had never been to the cinema, for example, and had missed out on other cultural experiences that most children take for granted. It may seem like a small thing, but it can leave children feeling that they’re excluded and abnormal. Children want to fit in (as evidenced in the excellent report from The Children’s Society – The Good Childhood Report) and our mentors can help to give them a more common experience of childhood.

Children with very low levels of self-esteem are particularly vulnerable to bullying. Some children may even blame themselves for what’s happening to them. Regular time spent with a positive and encouraging adult can help a child feel more ‘ok’ about themselves, that they are ‘good enough’ and deserving of care and respect. This simple and internal shift may be the first step on the road to tackling bullying.

The Big March isn’t going to eradicate bullying overnight but it’s a great way of highlighting how vulnerable some children are – and what we can do to protect them.

Please consider joining us in Beatbullying’s global campaign by signing up to the Big March.

The Children’s Society recently published The Good Childhood Report 2012 – A Review of our Children’s Well-Being. The report is the result of six years of research using interviews and surveys of over 30,000 children aged eight to 16 living in the UK. What is unique about the project is that it focuses on children’s subjective well-being, rather than objective measures such as school attendance or family income. The aim of the report is to understand how children perceive their own happiness, and then to determine what factors affect their perception.

Something that is truly striking about the report is how insightful the children are about their needs, and about what makes them happy with life. For example, they don’t think that they need to be wealthy to be happy; they just want their family to have enough, and to have about as much as their friends’ families do. The report is quite extensive and we don’t have the capacity to give a proper overview, but you can find their conclusions on page 58 of the document.

There are a number of factors identified in the report that have a resounding implication for the importance of mentors. Children’s relationships with their friends are of course very important, but relationships with key adults in their life are even more important – for two reasons. First, children need to feel supported in a safe and trusted relationship with adults. Second, children need to be listened to, and as they grow up they increasingly need to feel respected, trusted with responsibilities, and active in decision-making. Mentors help supplement all of those things for children who aren’t receiving enough of it. By requiring a minimum commitment of two years from our volunteers, we ensure that relationships have enough time to develop trust and demonstrate to the child that the mentor will be there to care about and support him or her. In addition to lending a listening ear, mentors also help their mentees to participate in the planning of the activities that they do together.

Something that is unique about Friendship Works is that – as our name suggests – our volunteers are both an adult mentor and a friend. Friends are extremely important to children, and the children in the report highlight their need by noting that it’s good to have “a special friend you can always talk to or ask questions to”. The combination role of a key adult as well as a steadfast friend positions Friendship Works mentors as amazingly positive influences in the lives of children facing a tough time.

Finally, it really bears noting that stability is a theme that was repeated throughout the report. The importance of stability is something that Friendship Works has known for a very long time, and that is why we stand by our model of long-term relationships with the children that we support. The most inspiring sentiment that we took from the report is that a child’s low sense of wellbeing can truly be helped by the presence of a mentor in their life.

Levels of subjective well-being are changeable and low subjective well-being is not fixed or inevitable. It should be possible to prevent low well-being and avoid some of the potential longer term repercussions, by providing support for children during key transitions in their lives, and when they are facing particular challenges and adversities.

At Friendship Works, we strive to be the support that children need to make it through difficult times in their childhood. It’s nice to have a report to confirm that we can make a real difference to the life of a child.

So what has the business community learned about building a successful mentoring program, and more importantly, what implications does it have for youth mentoring programs?

First off, the article stresses that a mentoring program is not a replacement for good management and leadership, nor is it a substitute for development or training. Rather, a good mentor builds a relationship of trust where they can share their experience, insight, and help their mentee build connections. In the youth mentoring context, the clear parallel is that our mentors are not replacement parents; they are an additional trusted adult who will listen, share their wisdom, and help the child experience new activities.

Secondly, good mentoring programmes recruit mentors who are enthusiastic about the role – but who are also realistic about the time and energy that they will need to commit. In return, mentors should be provided with good quality training and ongoing support. This is important so that mentors have a clear understanding of their role and what boundaries should exist between them and their mentee. It’s also important to understand why people are applying to become a mentor.  It’s fine if somebody wants to build their CV or to gain recognition – but they should also want to make a difference and be keen to take up the challenge of the role.

Finally, the most successful mentoring programmes take time and effort to make the best possible match between a  mentor and mentee. To accomplish this, the program must take into account the experiences and interests of both. It is especially important to establish a quality relationship in the first few months, which can be done by starting with a formal structure and regular contact. At Friendship Works, we spend an enormous amount of effort on matching each child with the right mentor. We also establish a formal structure – regular and consistent meetings for a minimum of two years – so that the relationship has the chance to fully develop, become a valuable source of support for the child, and have a lasting impact.

In nearly every way, the key points highlighted by Success Magazine confirm the model that we have developed at Friendship Works over the past 30 years. We believe very firmly in the hallmarks of our model – such as the emphasis we place on long-term relationships, high quality matches, and professional training and support.

Our long-term vision for the future is to embed the concept of mentoring in the community so that children receive mentors in their community even without charities like ours. As one businessman in the article puts it, mentoring is not a separate programme in their company; it is part of the DNA of what they do. In the same vein, we hope to one day make mentoring part of our wider cultural DNA.

What do you think makes mentoring a success? We’d love to hear what you have to say.

* Available at http://www.successmagazine.com/how-to-develop-a-mentorship-program/PARAMS/article/1655/channel/22#