In an increasingly busy world, it is all too easy to focus on duties, to-do lists and targets at the expense of nurturing human connections. Yet, so often, it is the support of our colleagues and people around us that ensures we get the job done. None of us can work in a vacuum, especially in such confined conditions as on board a vessel. Like it or not, we all need each other and it is the mix of skills, personality traits and experience that help a wider team become greater than the sum of its parts.

This human contact, mutual support and mix of personal qualities sits at the heart of what mentoring is – or should be. At its best, mentoring should happen naturally, provide support and encouragement and help everyone involved in it grow in their careers and in their character. It should involve the sharing of experiences, discussions about scenarios, both real and hypothetical and growth of confidence, problem solving and leadership skills. While it can be argued that there is no automatic ‘designated reward’ for mentoring (as opposed to teaching or coaching, which is usually provided as a paid service), those involved in the process normally enjoy multiple intangible benefits that stay with them for a very long time afterwards.

So, if this is what mentoring is, or should be at its best, what is mentoring NOT? The process should not feel forced, with either party feeling coerced into it or resentful of the perceived ‘intrusion’. Mentoring should not take up so much time that it interferes with the completion of duties and progression of wider goals. In his book, Mentoring at Sea: the ten-minute challenge goes on, Captain André LeGoubin talks about mentoring taking up the same amount of time it might take to drink a cup of coffee – just ten minutes.

Rather than requiring extensive planning or a complicated delivery lasting several hours, mentoring at sea can take the form of spending ten minutes thinking about how you might help someone tackle a problem. It could involve taking ten minutes out of your day to show someone with less experience how to master a task on board ship, or answering their questions about a scenario that is new to them, but about which you have more experience.

The beauty of such an approach is that anyone can find the time to do it, and everyone has something to offer someone else in terms of passing on experience, sharing skills and instilling confidence. You don’t have to attend a course before you can be a mentor – and you don’t have to be the person in charge. At its most effective, mentoring can work both up and down the chain of command.

In an industry that famously experiences issues with staff retention and career development, learning how to be a mentor – and be mentored yourself – is so important. Unsupported people on board a ship, or those who feel isolated to afraid to ask for help, tend to leave the industry rather than struggle on alone. In the physically smaller world of working at sea, issues can take on huge significance and feel larger than they are. You cannot escape work in quote the same way as when you can travel more of a distance between your workplace and home. It is very easy to feel overwhelmed and alienated pretty quickly – and that’s before other issues such as language barriers and lack of confidence come into play.

So, can you afford not to encourage a mentoring environment in your workplace? Can you think of a better way to spend ten minutes than building human connections, helping others with things they are worried about and seeking help and support for yourself? Promoting safety and inclusivity on board, retaining hardworking staff for longer and widening the pool of potential leaders of the future?

As Captain André LeGoubin notes in his book, anyone can be a mentor. While teaching and coaching can help impart more formal schemes of learning and the technical skills required to get the job done, mentoring provides the essential human connections that can really make a difference – and are often reflected upon and remembered with gratitude and fondness years, or even decades down the line.

Are you ready to take up the challenge?

Mentoring at Sea: the ten-minute challenge goes on by Captain André LeGoubin MNM MA FNI was published by The Nautical Institute in the summer of 2024 and is now available for purchase.

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Mentoring At Sea, 2^nd Edition

Developing Soft Skills in Mariners