8 minute read
Mentoring the next generation of leaders within the APWA Donald C. Stone Center
Mabel Tinjacá, Ph.D.
Director of Professional Development American Public Works Association Kansas City, Missouri
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PWA founder Donald C. Stone believed in education and servant leadership. Everyone who knew him or writes about him mentions his keen focus in these two areas. Mr. Stone expressed the need to promote professionalism within the service professions, to pass experience to the next generation, and to educate and round out knowledge with practice. The next generation of public works leaders will certainly need to be prepared to apply critical and systems thinking to real and unpredictable twenty-first century challenges.
APWA honors Mr. Stone’s legacy by developing the next generation of leaders through a rigorous credentialing program that challenges public works professionals to develop a project, take assessments, attend an APWA-approved institute, and work with a mentor. The mentoring process within the Donald C. Stone (DCS) Center is a one-onone relationship that could forever change the careers of supervisors, managers and executives within public works.
Imagine you are interested in becoming a team leader or supervisor for the first time. Imagine you are an experienced mid-level manager who was just given the opportunity to lead a cross-functional team for a new sustainability project. Imagine you are an executive who has just taken a job in a city in the tornado belt. Imagine you are a female engineer, wondering how to position yourself for advancement within an engineering consultant firm. If you are a candidate seeking credentialing within the DCS Center, you will have an opportunity to select a mentor from the top leaders within public works to guide, support and move you as you practice new skills and competencies beyond your current capability and prepare you to be one of the next generation of competent leaders. Wouldn’t it be reassuring to try new skills and concepts, be creative and innovative and not walk through the land mines by yourself?
Mentoring is not new, but the variety of mentoring programs has grown in number and scope to include small, medium and large corporations and nonprofit organizations. Mentors exist for a multitude of programs: doctoral students (University of Maryland, Baltimore County); to attract, retain and develop leaders (California International City/County Management Association); to pass along best practices internationally (ICMA Uganda); to encourage leaders to coach the next generation of local government professionals (ICMA’s Legacy Leaders Program); to train and support venture capitalists (Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation Venture Fellows); to support and encourage engineers and scientists (The Young Employee Success Network); to support law students through cyber-mentoring (Rutgers-Newark Law School Alumni Association). Raytheon is a company that prides itself in hiring, retaining and developing world-class talent. They do so through mentoring. Sandra Beckett, Raytheon University programs manager, advises new hires, “Make sure that once you come aboard, you obtain a mentor as quickly as possible. It can make a world of difference in your career.” At the DCS Center you select a mentor from a pool of nationally recognized public works leaders who have committed themselves to a service credential.
The National Association of Elementary School Principals (NAESP) uses mentoring to ensure leadership succession. They use retired and experienced principals to train, advocate and support newlyassigned principals. Principals give back to the profession by supporting newly-assigned or even experienced principals through mentoring.
The International Association of National Public Health Institute (IANPHI Advocacy) uses mentoring to develop leadership among its membership. Like DCS, mentors and mentees in the IANPHI program develop a plan of action and set goals and milestones which they use to keep priorities clear in an ongoing, evolving process.
There are increasing numbers of articles and how-to books about mentoring. It is catching on as one of the driving human resources processes in succession planning
The inaugural group of PWLFs inducted at Congress 2011
The APWA DCS Public Works Leadership Fellow (PWLF) Mentors
The PWLFs are a group of highly experienced and successful leaders within public works. Many are past presidents and have been recognized as Top Ten Public Works Leaders; all have been in public works for over 20 years. The applications submitted for this service designation are reviewed by the DCS Program Council, a select group of public works professionals chosen by the president of the association. As of the end of June this year, 185 individuals have received the PWLF service designation.
Best practices supporting mentee development
The quality of the APWA DCS program is important in positioning it as an effective, cutting-edge program in leadership development and succession planning. As a way of benchmarking the DCS Center against best practices, we turned to the Academy for Educational Development (AED) Center for Leadership Development. AED is a nonprofit organization whose mission is to solve critical social problems and build leadership capacity in order to build communities. The Center for Leadership Development works with future leaders to elevate their professional competencies.
The AED identified through research the 12 best mentoring practices that led to mentee development. The goals of the mentoring programs are: (1) orientation; (2) to develop character; (3) to develop specific skills or competencies; (4) to discuss issues, ideas and challenges; (5) to initiate, support and implement “stretch assignments”; (6) to expand the mentee’s network; (7) to identify other learning opportunities; (8) to manage risk-taking and identify dangers; (9) to explore career options; (10) to promote reciprocity and define mutuality; (11) to identify more than one mentor; and (12) to develop a learning plan.
The DCS Center program through its 184 mentors meets most of the best practices identified by the AED. Each PWLF works with one candidate to provide guidance, instruction and support and to move them from understanding best practices to applying what they know. Together, they develop a professional development plan and execute a project.
Progress against the plan is documented in a journal. When candidates complete their professional development plan and meet all of the DCS credentialing requirements, they submit their professional portfolio to the APWA DCS Research Council. The Research Council bestows the credential to candidates when they deem the professional portfolio reflects knowledge, comprehension, and critical and systems thinking. All aspects of the program help guide and support the candidate in that direction.
The Rigor-Relevance framework in mentoring
The DCS Center uses the RigorRelevance framework as part of the educational model. The mentors play an important role in moving the DCS candidates from “knowing” a concept to thinking critically and solving problems in increasingly challenging and unpredictable situations. They do so by discussing the APWA core competencies and encouraging candidates to practice those competencies to help formulate, develop and implement a public works project and by suggesting
ways of expanding horizons and stretching capabilities as candidates work through their professional development plan.
The Rigor-Relevance framework was developed by the International Center for Leadership in Education and is based on the idea that there are six levels of learning:
1. Knowledge awareness
2. Comprehension
3. Application
4. Analysis
5. Synthesis
6. Evaluation
The second aspect of the RigorRelevance framework is the application model. This is a continuum of knowledge application to increasingly more complex problems. The more difficult the application of knowledge, the more relevant it is.
1. Knowledge in one discipline
2. Apply in one discipline
3. Apply across disciplines
4. Apply to real-world predictable situations
5. Apply to real-world unpredictable situations
Combining these two continua forms a quadrant matrix that is helpful when thinking about educational, training and professional development experiences within public works. • Quadrant A: students gather information and are asked to remember it
• Quadrant B: students use that knowledge in increasingly challenging environments
• Quadrant C: students can use that knowledge more critically through analysis, synthesis, and evaluation
• Quadrant D: students solve problems in increasingly complex real-world situations
The Rigor-Relevance model can be summarized simply as practice what you learn. Practice it often and in a wide variety of situations. Critically evaluate what you learn, tie it to other things you have learned and use it creatively. Finally, practice it in unexpected and new problemsolving situations.
It is the mentor’s role to help make this happen; it is the mentee’s role to go out and practice. There are more than 100 mentor pairs currently working on this right now and more to come. Mentoring is an essential component of the DCS Center and, given the caliber of talent among the PWLFs and the mentees in the program, we predict that the next generation of leaders could be one of our very best.
Mabel Tinjacá can be reached at (816) 595-5214 or mtinjaca@apwa.net.
