Mentoring: The Art of Teaching and Learning
Justin Kauflin and Clark Terry
In jazz, attaining mastery on your instrument is what musicians strive to achieve. This can be referred to as a developmental process of moving from being an apprentice with a beginner’s mindset, to the intermediate stage of journeyman, then ultimately to the expertise and command of a master. Each musician may start out emulating an influential master, but eventually establish their own sound. Most often, a musician is mentored by one more experienced to help identify and hone their sound.
These mentor/mentee relationships have been a cornerstone of the jazz world—a way of passing on musical wisdom to the next generation of players. One beautiful example, captured in the extraordinary Netflix documentary “Keep On Keepin’ On,” reveals the relationship between jazz trumpet legend Clark Terry and his mentee, pianist Justin Kauflin. In his early twenties, Justin absorbed every word the ninety-four-year-old Clark uttered. It was a heart-warming, inspiring film that revealed an undeniably deep bond between an elder master and an up-and-coming artist.
Our JLP principle of Shared Leadership and the practice of Improvisation demonstrate how such relationships can extend even further. Shared Leadership holds that each musician is a leader on their own instrument and as such can contribute to the music-making through the improvisation—wise spontaneity—of their solos. Justin shared in interviews that for him and Clark it went both ways and that Clark said and lived by the dictum that “When you’re teaching, you’re learning.”
Camille Brown and her company in Mr. Mr. TOL E. RAncE
In a recent New York Times interview, dancer, choreographer, and director Camille Brown (“For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide/When the Rainbow is Enuf,” “Fire Shut Up in My Bones”) expressed a similar philosophy towards her company of dancers. Brown states that she wants everyone in the room to feel visible and asks the question, “How do you make them believe that the space is theirs? That they own it, and they are enough?”
The answer to Brown’s question could very well be answered by Patrice Gordon’s explanation of the concept of reverse mentoring. It reaffirms the notion of the value that a younger, less experienced individual can bring to a seasoned veteran.
As an executive coach and author of Reverse Mentoring: Removing Barriers and Building Belonging in the Workplace, Gordon frames reverse mentoring as a means to develop leaders and gain more substantive diversity and inclusion throughout a company’s culture. Gordon notes that this concept, of younger generations mentoring leaders, was started by Jack Welsh at GE Capital when he realized that the younger workers had a better handle on how to use the internet. Gordon’s first-hand experience, as an employee one year into her professional career, of mentoring Virgin Atlantic CEO Craig Kreeger was revelatory.
As it allows the perspectives and experiences of under-represented individuals to find their voice, Gordan says that the power in reverse mentoring is being able to highlight and value the differences, not the similarities.
Gordon states that to allow the novice to teach, the master needs to be:
· Genuinely curious about what the younger individual has to offer
· Intentional about the relationship to gain value from it
· Open to being vulnerable
· Clear about how they want to use their power
There is wisdom in master to apprentice mentoring as well as in apprentice to master mentoring. Our challenge is to recognize which is needed, at what point, and with whom, so as leaders, we can continue to grow.
