The Influence of Mentoring on Developing Leaders: Participants Share Their Perspectives

Abstract

The experience and reflection of participants of the Kansas Educational Leadership Institute (KELI) program are the focus of this article. Many Kansas superintendents face the challenge of working hundreds of miles from colleagues who wear similar hats and work in comparable roles. Often the closest professional mentors or peers live hours away, making face-to-face collaborative opportunities rare. Many superintendents are simultaneously serving as campus principals and do not have fellow administrators in the district with whom to collaborate. The Kansas Educational Leadership Institute (KELI) is an organization designed to bridge this mentor/mentee gap through a framework of support intended to help novice school leaders grow and thrive. In January 2013, all mentees and mentors in the KELI program received questionnaires and were asked to share perceptions regarding the program of support offered by KELI. Some highlights reported by mentees overwhelmingly noted the helpfulness of face-to-face mentoring as impacting their practice, while mentors consistently affirmed the value of professional training to develop deeper coaching skills. One mentor expressed that the KELI program presented a confidential setting in which new superintendents had an "outside set of eyes and ears to serve as a sounding board" for local district issues and the responsibilities of the new position. The article concludes that the value of the KELI mentoring program, as evidenced in the perceptions of new superintendents and veteran mentors alike, will warrant a strong focus on sustainability.