Adapting Mentorship across the Professions: A Fijian View

Abstract

This paper describes three mentorship workshops facilitated in Fiji, which were part of 11 such sessions recently conducted throughout the Pacific island region. The authors investigated the findings that emerged in these three workshops as part of an ongoing leadership initiative co-sponsored and cofunded by five institutions: Leadership Pacific, the Pacific Co-operation Foundation, the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, the University of Saskatchewan, the University of the South Pacific, and Victoria University of Wellington. Workshop attendees represented a variety of professions and occupations from educational, health care, government, and religious organizations. The researchers achieved their purpose by facilitating the three cohorts of Fijian leaders to begin to develop an adaptive mentorship approach that resonated with the attendees. The authors also extracted findings that could inform future research investigating how leaders representing different cultures and professions could adapt a generic mentorship model to create unique frameworks with the potential to enhance mentoring practice in their respective situations.

Keywords

• Inter-professional Mentorship
• Cross-disciplinary Research
• International Collaboration
• Cultures in Coaching
• Fiji