Bonni: [00:00:00] On today’s episode of Teaching in Higher Ed. number 129, Bill Dogterom shares about mentoring and the shared journey.

Production Credit: [00:00:11] Produced by Innovate Learning, maximizing human potential.

Bonni: [00:00:20] Welcome to this episode of Teaching in Higher Ed. I’m Bonni Stachowiak and this is the space where we explore the art and science of being more effective at facilitating learning. We also share ways to increase our personal productivity so we can have more peace in our lives and be even more present for our students.

Bonni: [00:00:48] I get to welcome to the show today someone I consider a friend and a mentor and how appropriate we’re going to be talking about mentoring and his name is Bill Dogterom, he’s one of my colleagues at Vanguard University where I teach. He teaches courses in pastoral ministry spirituality and practical theology for our undergraduate program. And he brings a practical experience from his 25 years of senior pastoral experience to bear in his teaching and direct involvement with students faculty and staff. I’m so excited to have Bill joining us on today’s Teaching in Higher Ed. Bill, welcome to Teaching in Higher Ed.

Bill: [00:01:29] Thank you. Good to be with you.

Bonni: [00:01:31] It’s fun to have a friend on the show where I am less nervous about talking to you and more nervous just that we both can do justice to this really important topic today. Originally I had in the title of the show “mentoring” but you really have a distaste for the word mentoring. So let’s start by why we shouldn’t call this episode mentoring. What is some of the rejection that you have of that word and what many people think of mentoring?

Bill: [00:02:01] Yeah. The challenge for me in mentoring is a good word and it’s a great concept and it is a wonderful practice. However, in my own journey with students and with others that I was with mentoring has a connotation of kind of a hierarchy kind of a structure. I’m the mentor. You are the mentee. I have something to give you. You have something to receive or take for me.

Bill: [00:02:30] And while there are certainly values in those kinds of things as you’re learning a new skill or as you are learning a new business or moving into a new line of work or whatever – mentoring can actually be a great way because in fact there is a hierarchy somebody knows something and you want to learn from it. But I find that the language of mentoring with that hierarchical – that implicit hierarchy – disables what I really like to do most is to walk with people and to learn from them and hopefully much as they learn from me. So it’s for me it’s more of a shared journey than a pure mentor kind of relationship. So that’s my exclamation mark at the end of that word.

Bonni: [00:03:25] There really is a danger that’s inherent in so much of how the system of higher ed is built. We have fancy degrees we have fancy titles. The other day on Twitter someone was talking about a colleague of theirs who refuses to answer any emails that are from students who don’t refer to this person and their proper title.

Bill: [00:03:47] Yes.

Bonni: [00:03:48] And it did create…

Bill: [00:03:50] I was having a conversation with some of my students this past week about that…

Bonni: [00:03:53] It created an interesting discussion because for me I just think, “Gosh! We ask so much of our students that they’re supposed to remember to make us feel better about ourselves.” And it’s a lot. I even just think about it. There was a former guest on the show who talked about going undercover as a student and reliving the college experience which of course we can never really truly do in terms of the traditional sense of earning a degree. But it’s so easy to forget all the syllabi and papers and you want it this way and another one wants it this way.

Bonni: [00:04:29] It’s just so much to try to navigate but another interesting conversation that did come up was women sharing that well I get called the Miss or the misses but somehow the male colleagues they remember to call them by Professor or by their proper title so that was a I wanted to be quick not to judge too much that feeling of not being respected because of the color of one’s skin or because of one’s gender. It’s just that such a careful balance.

Bill: [00:05:02] Yeah that’s really good I hadn’t hadn’t even thought about that from within the framework of that kind of category of mutual respect because usually when it’s insisted on it’s insisted on because of insecurities. And it’s often couched in – it’s important that you honor those to whom honor is due – kind of a rubric but often it’s more “Remind me how much effort and energy I put into getting to this position or place or whatever.” Yeah.

Bonni: [00:05:35] Let’s talk a little bit more about mentoring and I know that you have sort of come to realize just this tension between focusing on behaviors and focusing on other things that are a bit more important than behaviors. Talk a little bit about that and especially in your mentoring process.

Bill: [00:05:56] So what I’m after there is often in instruction it’s content delivery that hopefully changes behaviors at one level or another you learn a skill you do it this way or whatever. In my area of concern is less about skill transmission – teaching people how to do certain things and doing them well. I certainly want to be able to do that. But, is more focused more concerned with the kinds of people they are. So less about behavior and more about being – or character. Because I’ve found that if you have a bankrupt character and have learned how to behave, sooner or later the bankruptcy of character will show up no matter how well-behaved you are. And speaking with undergrads you know particularly you know I’m at a place where. You know as we head into graduation or whatever there’s all this concern about what am I going to do and how am I going to make a living and all of those things are very very valid concerns.

Bill: [00:07:20] But really the larger sets of questions ought to be maybe more who am I going to be. What kind of person am I going to be? My guess is that pretty much anybody that we would care to talk to at some more advanced stage in their journey maybe down the road 20 years or 25 or 30 years we’re not. Have guess that this is where they would be 25 years out and they can be looking backwards they can trace the journey. But had they at 20 looked at that 45 year old self of theirs they would never in a million years have guessed how they could have gotten to that place. And therefore it seems to me that the skills are probably less important than the character that has the ability to respond to reality.

Bill: [00:08:21] So my focus in working with people tends to be on what kind of a person are you. Because if you get that right, then what you do doesn’t matter. It’ll flow naturally out of that. But if you don’t get character right – if you don’t get being right – then what you do doesn’t matter. Because sooner or later character will out – being will start to show up – and the ability to respond to life as it actually is gets tweaked and distorted because I only have one set of skills or one set of practices whereas if I have a character that is rooted in reality – it’s rooted in integrity – then whatever happens I have capacity to respond to that.

Bonni: [00:09:14] You teach in religion. I teach in business and that is one of the places where I see the greatest threat of compartmentalization.

Bill: [00:09:24] Yes.

Bonni: [00:09:25] I will never forget teaching for a government agency it has nothing to do with the fact that it was a government agency other than that’s what it was. But a man in front of I think I was speaking in front of over 100 people that day. He shared that his entire career and he had been in his career for 30 years. He was a different person when he went to work and then he was a different person at home and he was essentially trying to get me to help him figure out to navigate that. And I’ve never really had anyone have such an extreme expression of such a divide but especially to then not know that it probably isn’t socially acceptable to admit it.

Bonni: [00:10:05] And for that many people but that that is such a common thread in our lives whether or not we are part of some sort of a religious community or whether or not it’s just the tension between one what what so many people phrase as “my life” and “my work.” And these are two different things but more and more that’s breaking down for a whole bunch of reasons.

Bill: [00:10:29] Yes.

Bonni: [00:10:29] And so the model that you’re describing where it can be about being and less about doing is really going to help us navigate so much of our lives. Yeah it’s interesting too because as you share about that I know you and I know you are so true to this model. It isn’t like you and I have that completely figured out. So we get to pontificate that to our students I’m struggling right now today. But it’s not in the same area but in another a new part of my life I’ve never had to navigate before it’s a whole part of that sandwich generation that that people share about end. And I got it. I got to do the work again.

Bill: [00:11:13] And I mean isn’t that what being alive means? I think that being alive implies within it getting up every day and living that day not in ignorance of yesterday or in denial of tomorrow, but if you spend most of your time with old knowledge or most of your time longing for new, you don’t have any capacity for what’s actually in front of you in the current moment which is as it turns out all you will ever have.

Bill: [00:11:45] So that posture of learning – again you know kind of go back to our conversation about mentoring – but that posture of being a learner even if the person sitting across the table from me is a 21 year-old you know junior I can learn things from her and not maybe skills although frankly, they have skills that I don’t have.

Bill: [00:12:12] But her experiences, her journey, has shaped her and framed her and her understanding of how life works. Even though it’s still developmental. The truth is all of our understandings of how life works are developmental. So I want to be mentored if you will by her as much as hopefully I can be helpful to her.

Bonni: [00:12:35] In what areas or in an area do you find the most struggle being able to do that well?

Bill: [00:12:42] Oh boy.

Bonni: [00:12:43] Where you’re just fighting yourself. [laughs]

Bill: [00:12:46] Yeah. I think that there’s a perennial temptation or push or. . . I don’t know… Drive maybe to find solutions that are manageable to problems that are bigger than – yield to any management. So for example teaching is a really pretty basic skill set. But the ways of teaching – like your and your use of technology in the classroom has me in awe – I have no idea how you do what you do and yet when I talk to your students it is not for show it’s not for you know so you can be one of the cool kids on the block – It’s because it actually works. And that that is fascinating to me. But on the other hand in a higher education we’re getting all the time experts telling this you know this technology or that – modus operandi – that’ll make the difference. And in fact if you don’t have a relationship with the students if you don’t have an openness to care for them. Then all of the technology in the world won’t get over that barrier that you’ve just built.

Bill: [00:14:18] And I’m convinced in some ways that part of the reason your technological savvy in the classroom works for your students is because they know that you really care about them. You really want them to get this. And this is a language that you recognize that at some level they speak. So I’m going to learn your language so I can communicate with you in a way that is both fascinating to me but also helpful to you. Well they’ve just mentored you. They’ve just taught you because you have become their student. You have learned your way of teaching from them. So if that’s the case and this you know kind of narrow framework. Why can’t it be in – name it – you know numerous other other ways of thinking about it.

Bonni: [00:15:11] You have some different ways of framing different archetypes of framing our journey together. And and I’d like you to share a little bit about these and any associated stories that come up in your mind as we share about them let’s start about farmers.

Bill: [00:15:29] OK. So the first two are from really from a friend of mine Linda Hartzel (now Schubring). When she and I worked together on student life she was dean of students and she said that one of our tasks in walking with undergrad students particularly is to be farmers and her image there was of the sowing of seed – of planting ideas – of helping cultivate a new way of thinking about something so it’s that new seed thought that then is allowed to flourish.

Bill: [00:16:11] There are obviously lots of implications with farming allowing the seed to develop without supervision. Letting it happen. Having an environment within which it can be sown and land and then leave it alone for a while so that it flourishes. So that’s one.

Bill: [00:16:31] The second is of the poet. And what she was after there is providing language providing a vocabulary providing metaphors and images that will help those with whom we want to understand their own journey more clearly when we don’t have words. Our thoughts become muddled when we don’t have a vocabulary or an image or a picture.

Bill: [00:17:01] Our thoughts become – it’s hard to know what what we think about anything. So often I’ll be sitting with the student and having listened to them talk for a while. You know something like would it be helpful to think about your journey in this way and providing an image. Gerald May has a wonderful book in which he reflects on the Dark Night of the soul of that famous poem from St. John of the Cross. That has helped people understand. Some of the darker seasons that we go through and how do we negotiate those.

Bill: [00:17:43] And so using that language and describing how her or his story next to that language often gives them greater clarity on their own journey. Now they’ve got a look now they’ve got words. So that’s the second is poet than the other words that I like to think of as an architect. If you’ve ever been in consultation with an architect building a building or doing a renovation or whatever the best architect listen very very carefully to what the outcome is supposed to be which this building in this space supposed to do.

Bill: [00:18:23] And then creates structures within which that is more likely to occur than not. So if I as somebody who’s walking with the student even a job as a professor can provide some structures and provide some. Some trellises on which the grape vines can grow so to speak that then helps them have a level of safety because things are there. There is oh but this is this is where I belong. And then there’s another one that’s fairly common in the mentoring language world and that is the rabbi or the network person or the way maker is the person who sees a new employee or seems a student or sees a colleague and invites them along to journey and create some strategic conversations and open some doors and make some introductions.

Bill: [00:19:22] If the student or if the new employee or whatever isn’t competent that will certainly show up quite often the role that was once served decades ago by maybe you know in previous generations by a parent or by a family member opening the door to a new place of employment or a new opportunity we need to Rabbi our students in somehow or give them some opportunities to see what they can do fits into this new entity or organization and then a final one. I don’t have a good single word for this but it’s the idea of the passing of the baton.

Bill: [00:20:07] You know I think through the relay races in the Olympics or or whatever and you recognize how important is it especially for those of us who have been around for a while to recognize our task is not to hold onto the baton of our learning or our knowledge or our position even or our power as long as we possibly can and repel all boarders you know to prevent people from. But in fact our task was really to find ways of passing that baton on. In such a way that those to whom we pass it can hang onto it and carry it forward. So the older leaders the the people who have positions of power by virtue of gender or or race or.

Bill: [00:20:59] Even longevity in and in a position in my view at least should be looking for ways to empower the release to equip younger leaders into those roles and in those places and and maybe travel along them in the same lane for a few paces until they’re ready and able to move on on the road. So those five images are the kind of the framework maybe that I use to think through what I’m doing.

Bonni: [00:21:30] What do you see as the good parts of mentoring that we should embrace while while still having this tension between is it a shared journey or am I the one with a little bit more to pour into this process?

Bill: [00:21:44] Well yeah. Because in every conversation these days I’m always the oldest guy in the room most of the time you know. So the good thing is you do have a certain whether possession or gender or longevity is certain you have a certain position power. And if you use that well if you use that to equip and release others – if you use that to empower others and teach them how to handle that responsibly if they’re able and willing to listen.

Bill: [00:22:20] That seems to me to be a great great gift and a good service where the permission to do that comes from. Is in the shared journey if they know that you care about them that you’re not using them that you’re not walking with them for your own benefit if they know that really you do have their best interests at heart they’ll teach you how to teach them. And so that’s the permission piece, I guess…

Bonni: [00:22:54] What are some practical steps that you take to… I don’t know. Maybe you are reducing the power distance or or or even just how do you throw out the welcome mat. How do you how do you get students to really believe that the door is open?

Bill: [00:23:12] Yeah. Well the probably the first biggest trait strikes back a little bit. I think what we’ve talked about a few minutes ago and that is I want people to call me Bill. I don’t insist on a title. I return phone calls. I respond to the e-mails quickly. So I want to let them know that I’m no different than they are. The second thing I do and I have many opportunities to do this and that is it may when I’m wrong because sometimes in the course of a lecture or in a conversation I’ll say things just after I’ve thought it but not completely after I thought it through. And and sometimes that’s not a bad thing. I think I would land with that. But other times it’s like oh no that’s not what I really meant to say.

Bill: [00:24:11] And sometimes even two or three days later I’ll have to come back. And I did a couple of weeks ago in a class I came back in and I said what I said the other day, in retrospect, I don’t really think that. I need to apologize for misleading you and in that way. My experience was with folks is generally that they will identify more with leaders teachers who admit and lead by and through their mistakes more than they will be impacted by people who never apparently make a mistake and who always have the right answer and who always have the quick comeback.

Bill: [00:24:54] So that’s the second thing that I try to do. The third one. Is that I learned this from my dad. Who just had a curiosity about people. And I share that as well. I you know Eugene Peterson and he probably quotes it from somebody else but says that “People are not problems to solve but mysteries to explore.” So when I’m sitting down across the coffee table at Starbucks or wherever with an 18 or 20 or 22 year old I really believe this is the most fascinating person on the planet at that moment.

Bill: [00:25:35] They have a story and they might not even know what this story is but I want to help them run it and tell it and so off we go. And there is a genuine – that’s the best word I can use – curiosity that is respectful of their ministry. I’m not going to poke and prod and cry if they don’t want to. But what I’ve found is that if people know that you’re actually listening to them, rather than waiting for them to stop talking so you can say your next brilliant thing. If they know that you’re actually listening to them, they will let you in their story and in to the places of their journey that are just jaw-dropping amazing.

Bonni: [00:26:27] I was meeting recently with a student who I’ve grown pretty close to and who has lost a parent during college. And I had really desperately tried to get him to be open to therapy and it just meant so much to me in my life and really wanted to encourage him to do that. And I had just assumed it was a complete and utter failure and there were all sorts of reasons why that just wasn’t going to work for him. And here we are more than a year later after those conversations and he said I said something about because now it’s graduation and what am I going to do and job that that terror which I completely get of oh gosh this is coming much quicker. This train is leaving the station much quicker than we all thought it was going to.

Bonni: [00:27:15] And I had said something about about in relation to his priorities and all that and I said something about gosh, “I still hope that at some point in your life you would think about therapy even just down down the road. I hope that that’s something you’ll consider.” He says, “Oh yeah I did that actually I did that.” I mean my head’s going to explode. What is a time where you weigh after the fact to realize that something you had done in that shared journey actually had made a difference but you didn’t realize it until much later?

Bill: [00:27:49] I can’t think of a single case.

Bonni: [00:27:51] Yeah.

Bill: [00:27:53] And again the reason partly is because that’s half that happens all the time.

Bonni: [00:27:57] Yeah. You talked about passing the baton because one of the things that helps calm me down a little bit is actually you. Cause I liberally will think about you sometimes when I’m just struggling thinking – I can’t do this. And then I go well you don’t have to do this you’re going to do your piece and Bill’s going to do his piece. Sandie’s going to do her piece. And down the line and go so we were caught doing that shared baton with each other as we really try to serve our students.

Bill: [00:28:24] And I think that’s that’s the point of the farmer aspect. Farmers don’t expect instant results. They’re willing to sow the seed and there’s a huge risk engaged in caring for somebody because you don’t know what the outcome is going to be. So what I would say especially the deep skills – if you will – of being. They they don’t happen right away. And I’m not even sure that the real meaningful conversations that you have with students or whomever bear much fruit in known ways for some time.

Bill: [00:29:10] So every once in a while I’ll run into a student from four five six seven eight 10 years ago. And I will hear myself in their language. And they are completely unaware that maybe they heard that in the classroom first or at a Starbucks conversation first because it is just become part of how they. How they think and how they view the world and how they understand things. So the long haul big long vision really reframes life away from expectations towards expectancy.

Bonni: [00:29:51] I definitely need to do more reflecting on that and I just had a recent failure around this. There was a shooting that had made national news and I had heard about that and the drive into work. And so students had said, “Oh, did you hear about what had happened?” And I said, “Oh yes. I did hear about what happened.” And it turned out they were talking about a homicide that had occurred directly across the street from our campus.

Bill: [00:30:18] Yes.

Bonni: [00:30:18] And I’m looking back then and I’m not proud but I just this is how I live. I laughed about it. Isn’t that funny that I can’t even keep track of what violence has occurred when and it certainly is not funny. But my reaction was not to acknowledge the severity of that in this moment where we were all playing one of these ridiculously silly games and everybody is kind of on their own in separate groups I was not “teaching.” Of course I was, but I mean I was not lecturing at that moment.

Bill: [00:30:49] Right.

Bonni: [00:30:50] It did not hit me until I got home and was in bed and thought, “You remember what it was like when you lived by yourself in an apartment. And there was a shooting where you lived. You were terrified.” And I wasn’t terrified you and I worked at the place for a long time. I was not afraid. It’s a safe campus and these things do happen. But I thought, “How dare you not look around to better navigate that.” But what you’re reminding me in this conversation is Monday is comin’ and I will see them again on Monday and I can apologize and I can check in and see how they’re doing.

Bill: [00:31:33] And what they will “learn” from their will be different than if you had responded correctly the first time. And I would argue probably more profound for them.

Bonni: [00:31:47] I just wanted to go tuck them all in.

Bonni: [00:31:50] Oh it’s so hard when you’re living in fear. And so many away from their parents or family for the first time. Yeah.

Bill: [00:31:57] Yes.

Bonni: [00:31:59] This is the time in the show where we each get to give our recommendations and mine. Today was a video posted by a friend on Facebook and this is Mr. Rogers talking to a young boy appears to be about nine years old or so in this particular video. And he is disabled he’s in a wheelchair and I only mention that since you’re listening to this podcast and are not going to be able to pick up that little detail just from the audio in the beginning. I’m going to play a small clip of this but I’m going to encourage people to reference the show notes because it is just a beautiful thing to see. And as I watched this clip I instantly thought of you because the curiosity that you described is so evident throughout this entire conversation and the shared journey is so evident. And in fact the symbolism in he is sitting on the steps of his little porch that Mr. Rogers is just to quite literally be connecting at the same level as this boy. I’ll just play a short short bit but then I’ll encourage people to go check it out.

Mr. Rogers: [00:33:13] That’s a very fancy machine. And you’re the one who makes it go.

Jeff Erlanger: [00:33:13] Right.

Mr. Rogers: [00:33:13] Did it take a long time to learn how?

Jeff Erlanger: [00:33:20] “No, not really. I had other wheelchairs. My first electric wheelchair only took me about a day to learn how to use it.”

Mr. Rogers: [00:33:30] Gee. That’s wonderful. Jeff, your mom and dad must be really proud of you.

Jeff Erlanger: [00:33:33] I’m sure they are.

Mr. Rogers: [00:33:34] Yeah. Well I know I am. Now uhh, can you tell my friends what it is that made you need this wheelchair?

Jeff Erlanger: [00:33:45] Sure. Well when I was about seven months old, I had a tumor and it broke the nerves to tell my hands and legs what to do.

Mr. Rogers: [00:33:45] I see.

Bonni: [00:34:03] I hope that people will go listen to the full conversation and not just listen for what’s there but listen for what’s not there there’s not even an ounce of interrupting there’s great pauses in the conversation where Mr. Rogers just allows this young boy to express himself as he might. It’s just a beautiful thing.

Bonni: [00:34:24] And then I really don’t want to spoil too much but I loved the part where Mr. Rogers starts to sing a song. And at first the boy is just enjoying the song and I thought oh that’s great you know he’s just going to listen. He knows that song. And at first he starts to mouth the lyrics and then after a few more seconds he begins to sing. And I thought what a beautiful capturing of sharing the journey and that when we give the people that we’re so blessed to be able to share that journey with an opportunity for the silence for that deep listening to have that curiosity to see what their story is and then just let them come and join us in singing.

Bonni: [00:35:11] Bill, What do you have to recommend today.

Bill: [00:35:14] For me. Just a couple of books that have been significant. And the first is a by David Benner, Benner. And it is called “The Gift of Being Yourself”. And then the second and that other book by Gerald May who I referenced earlier a number of books that he has written about one that really was profound for me was a book called “The Wisdom of the Wilderness”. So those would be my my recommendations.

Bonni: [00:35:46] Bill I’m so glad that you were up for coming on this show today to talk about not mentoring and to talk about the shared journey I have such high regard for you I treasure your friendship and consider you to be one of my mentors. Thank you so much for your contribution to this continuing conversation.

Bill: [00:36:03] Thanks for the opportunity to be part of the conversation.

Bonni: [00:36:08] Thanks for listening to this episode of Teaching in Higher Ed. you can find the show notes with links to the books that Bill talked about and that great Mr. Rogers clip that I shared will be at teachinginhighered.com/129.

Bonni: [00:36:24] And I would like to really plead, beg, borrow. No there’s no borrowing involved. Ask you to if you have not yet left a review for the show or giving it a rating that really does help us be able to share the show more broadly helps bring it up on the search results so more people can share it and you can do that using whatever service it is that you use to listen to the show. ITunes is best but if you use another one that works too. Thanks so much for listening and I will see you next time.

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