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First published in Polish by Barbara Habrych

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Below you can find questions for an exercise I do in my tutoring. I ask the tutees to imagine their 80th birthday party. For young people, this is an incredibly distant prospect (for me still, too ;)) and quite a big challenge. They have to imagine: Who is coming to the birthday party? Friends, close ones, family? What will they say about having you in their lives? What will they be grateful for? What will they admire you for?

The exercise encourages the tutees (mentees) to ask themselves the following questions:

• What do I want to do to ensure I am satisfied with it?
• What are my values?
• What do I want to invest my time and energy in?
• How will my choices today translate into realising my dream of having a good life?
• How to find fulfilment and happiness?
• What to do to feel proud at the end of your life?  

If tutees cannot ask the questions themselves, a tutor will help them.

Moreover, the common denominator for the above questions is authenticity. Talking about being authentic is very important for the success of the tutoring process.

Authenticity as a mark of a happy life

Carl Rogers, one of the most influential psychotherapists of the 20th century, believed that authenticity is expressed by authoring your life and being consistent. This prerequisite for a good life promotes a greater sense of meaning and purpose. Rogers also postulated making authentic decisions by hearing your inner voice instead of those you should take.

Based on Carl Rogers' theory, Stephen Joseph and his colleagues developed the authenticity scale.

Their research showed that "compared with a range of other personality factors, authenticity came out top as the factor that most readily distinguishes happy from unhappy people".

Benefits of authenticity

Stephen Joseph, the author of the book entitled Authentic. How to be yourself and why it matters lists several benefits of developing your true self. They include:

• greater openness to new experiences,
• a more realistic view of yourself and the world,
• increased problem-solving skills,
• greater psychological resilience,
• increased creativity and pro-activity,
• an increased sense of purpose and purposefulness.

The attributes of authentic people

Stephen Joseph lists three steps to authenticity:

1. Know yourself (self-knowledge)
2. Own yourself (skills, taking action)
3. Be yourself (attitude)

The above steps are consistent with the mentees' goals in the developmental tutoring processes.

The tools a tutor can suggest to a mentee could help them develop authenticity

STEP 1: KNOW YOURSELF

Knowing yourself means defining your values, becoming aware of your beliefs, and identifying and developing your strengths, abilities and skills.

One exercise that helps with this is the '80th birthday toast' described above.

You can also introduce to the tutees Howard Gardner's concept of multiple intelligences. Its importance for learning is described here: „Teoria inteligencji wielorakich, a praktyka uczenia się”: https://epale.ec.europa.eu/pl/blog/teoria-inteligencji-wielorakich-praktyka-uczenia-sie

Using this tool in tutoring, I start with the following questions: what are the different types of intelligence, how to understand them, what are the behaviours behind them, and how do they manifest themselves? Then, I ask the tutees to rate each dimension of their intelligence on a scale of 0 to 10.

Here are some questions to ask:

• What makes you rate a particular type of intelligence at 'x'?
• How and what do you use this intelligence for?
• In what situations have you noticed the 'use' of a particular intelligence?
• What successes do you achieve by using a particular type of intelligence?
• What else can you do to get to the next level?
• Which type of intelligence do you want to develop?
• Which one will be of key importance to achieving the goal of tutoring?
• Which one will help you develop your passions? In what way?

Another way of working is to use the PERMA Model, which defines five aspects of a good life:

P – Positive emotion: joy, appreciation, comfort, inspiration, hope, curiosity;

E – Engagement: a state between satisfaction and euphoria brought about by being engrossed in an activity;

R – Relationships: cooperation, staying with people;

M – Meaning: feeling that your work has a purpose;

A – Accomplishments

For each part of the model, you can ask questions that trigger self-reflection. Below you can find a few examples (of course, you can ask your questions for this model):

P: When do you feel positive emotions?  In what situations do you feel joy? What sparks your curiosity?

E: What makes time stand still for you? What activities consume you so much that you forget about the world? What activities make you feel rewarded and contribute to your growth?

R: Whom do you enjoy collaborating with and learning from? After the meeting, which people do you have a sense of 'recharged batteries'? Whom can you count on? Whom do you like to help? Who is important to you?

M: What makes you proud of your work? How does your job support others? What do you give of yourself to others?

A: What are you successful at? What are you proud of looking back on the last week, month and year?

In his book, Stephen Joseph offers a series of exercises to help you get to know yourself. Here is a sample:

 Whom do you admire? 

Make a list of people you admire most. You don't have to know them personally. They can be public and historical figures. Next to each figure, write down the feature you admire most in them. This will help you identify the qualities you want to see in yourself.

STEP 2: OWN YOURSELF

Many tools help organise data when you are about to decide or choose the best solution. One of these is SWOT analysis, an acronym for:

Strengths

Weaknesses

Opportunities 

Threats 

Interesting tools to support informed decision-making are the Cartesian questions, which you can read in the article by Urszula Rudzka Stankiewicz: Designing a training course? Don't forget to include triggers!

https://epale.ec.europa.eu/pl/blog/projektujesz-szkolenie-pamietaj-o-zaplanowaniu-wyzwalaczy

(Although the article is about training, the tool is excellent for personalised education).

STEP 3: BE YOURSELF

One of my favourite tools for supporting yourself is ikigai. Translated from Japanese, it means: "meaning of life, a sense of purpose, reason for living".

(I use this tool in tutoring and with people changing their career paths. I described ikigai in this context in the article: What helps you not to lose the will to live when something terrible happens? How to start looking for a job in a crisis: https://epale.ec.europa.eu/pl/blog/co-pomaga-nie-tracic-checi-do-zycia-gdy-wydarzy-sie-cos-zlego-czyli-jak-zaczac-szukac-pracy-w)

The ikigai involves your profession, passion, mission and vocation. It contributes to the authenticity of your actions. It creates a harmonious whole, allowing people to live and work following one's conscience.

^{Wikimedia Commons}

Using this tool helps to complement the two previous steps, 'know yourself' and 'own yourself', with two important aspects:

1. What does the world need? How can I make the world a better place with my talents? Will my decisions serve only me, my community, and the people around me?
2. What will people pay for? How can I use my talents to gain financial independence? How will the decisions I make affect my finances?

 

It is not tutees alone that face the authenticity challenge. Tutor credibility is pivotal for building a tutoring relationship. You can read more on this in the article by Monika Dawid-Sawicka entitled 'The Awakening. What you don't know about tutoring^':

"Tutoring requires reciprocal authenticity, i.e. a continuous deepening of mutual relationship to a level that makes it possible for the two parties to open up. It takes time, regularity and attentiveness for this to happen. You must carefully select the contents and knowledge imparted to ensure it is appropriate for your mentee. (...) authenticity builds the tutor's position of authority and earns them respect from others."

The exercises suggested above can be modified to support the process and make the tutor and tutee progress in achieving their goals. Flexible selection and use of the tools (or rejecting those that do not work for the tutor) is also a part of authenticity building.

Which of these tools do you use in your development work? How do you modify them? What other tools can you recommend?

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Barbara Habrych – business and education trainer, HR and labour market expert. HR specialist with experience in designing and implementing HR processes. Author of development programmes for employees and managers built on business performance models. Co-author of an expert HRM handbook. Certified tutor and trainer of tutors. Career counsellor with a flair for talent discovery. Graduate of the University of Lower Silesia in pedagogy (specialisations: family pedagogy, social psychology in education) and postgraduate studies in human resources management at the Wrocław School of Banking.