MENTORING -- A Never Ending Process!
By Joseph D. Tullbane, III.
President, FAOA
There are many buzzwords in every Service that could mean a lot or very little.
"Mentoring" is one of those frequently used but little thought of words. In general, it means that
the old experienced hands of any profession should guide their juniors with sage advice and
guidance. It all seems to have something to do with nurturing an organization and building
something better for the future. In the FAO Community, regardless of the Service involved,
"mentoring" takes on an extremely significant character. In such a select field of endeavor much
of the community's cumulative knowledge is passed from one FAO to another.
Attaches and Security Assistance Officers have the often onerous task of supervising young
FAO officer trainees working and learning the ropes at their overseas stations. It is sometimes
looked at as extra duties to be done only when there is sufficient time (a commodity that is
always scarce). But the real health of the FAO community demands that this task be among the
most important of his/her duties. Young FAOs need to be counseled regularly in more than
simply professional development. Mentoring takes the form of discussion on the host nation's
military, economic, political, and social organization, for both resident FAO trainees and for
visiting FAO trainees. It includes exposure to different elements of the country team and to
inclusion in at least some of the mission social activities. Good mentoring, consisting of
carefully thought out advice and guidance, can make the difference between a worthwhile in-country experience for a trainee and a useless waste of time away from basic service. Frankly,
anything less than an all-out effort would make the FAO training program a terrible waste of
resources, rather than an investment in the future. The in-country training phase that these
mentors control is the time when a young officer gains a working knowledge of the region, puts
his book learning to practical use, and begins the process of building his native contacts within
the region. Because in-country training is the least structured of all the FAO training phases, the
advice and guidance, as well as the support given by the senior officers on station take on even
considerably more significance than normally. The significance of this mentoring will only
become a greater issue as more and more Marine, Navy, and Air Force FAO trainees are added to
the system. Personal mentoring of this sort really demands that the senior FAO community keep
abreast of the changes within their service and try to understand how the FAO Program of their
service fits into the greater Service context.
However, it is important to realize that the concept of nurturing an organization and
building a better future encompasses far more than individual mentoring. It includes "selling"
the Service on the value of what our specialty does. I don't mean proselytizing or recruiting. I
mean actively advertising our worth by both action and word. Your work in this vein will pay
dividends to the organization as a whole by creating better understanding of what we do and how
commanders should use our skills. Over time, it will also create a command environment that
will reinforce the mentoring process for our younger FAOs.
Is this really a critical issue in the building of a better future for defense? Probably not, but
it might be the difference between producing a top quality young FAO and having "a good one"
slip through our fingers.
1997, Foreign Area Officer Association
Springfield,
Virginia
Maintained by LTC Steve
Gotowicki
http://www.faoa.org