Nurturing Two Colossi: A co-creation relationship

Mentoring is a process involving two or more individuals, usually with the more experienced member acting as a mentor to provide guidance to help the less experienced member, who is the mentee, to develop and learn. The conventional thinking is that the mentor will support the growth of the mentee in a unidirectional fashion, where the mentor is higher in the hierarchical order, possessing more knowledge and power. This chapter describes a different approach to mentoring by adopting a co-creation relationship. In a co-creation relationship, the growth is mutual, since it involves alliance learning, in which both teacher and student participate actively in continuous dialog, exploring and anticipating that something new and unforeseen will occur. Since the dynamics of co-creation require the ability to critically reflect, think independently, and be creative, one can be more certain that the individuals who travel through the experience will be more prepared to navigate the unforeseeable circumstances. The outcomes of learning are not confined to typical products of doctoral studies, such as the thesis and publications, but most importantly mean the development of the whole person. The outcomes of learning and growth are mutual, in equipping both the mentors and mentees with the key attributes of the twenty-first-century knowledge worker. The mentorship story does not end at the horizontal level of passing on, but at the vertical level, from the more mature to the younger generation. That is how we can build a stronger nursing profession, with the co-creation of legacy and inheritance.