Many of us are painfully aware of the shortage of consultants in Bible Translation Organizations. What can be done about this? How do we train enough consultants well enough and quickly enough?
by Tim Stirtz, SIL Global Linguistics Coordinator
Image by Veii Rehanne Martinez, Free for Canva Teams
At the October 2023 Bible Translation conference, Teryl Gonzalez presented the paper Quality and Quantity: More Consultants, Better Trained. This was about mentoring translation consultants in cohorts as a way of multiplying the number trained as well as improving the mentoring given to each trainee.
Inspired by this example, I suggested that those of us learning a participatory linguistics method do the same. In Nigeria, SIL is beginning the Mark Road Initiative, a four-year project to serve 35 language communities with initial Scripture translation, which may include the book of Mark. To assist communities in choosing well-informed orthographies for this Scripture, the plan is to use a series of two Rapid Grammar Collection (RGC) workshops. I was invited to assist with the first for the Zhire community, and to mentor six facilitators who would lead these workshops for other language communities of the initiative. Three facilitators were British, two were Nigerian, and one was British-American.
Just as in Teryl’s cohort, each facilitator learning the RGC method did all the preparation for the workshop as if they alone were going to lead the workshop. We met regularly through Zoom the four weeks before the workshop, as well as three days in person immediately before the event. Doing so helped us get to know one another, become united in our focus, as well as prepare the content of the workshop sessions.
Then each afternoon of the workshop, after returning to our lodging, we discussed the day’s sessions as a group, giving each other feedback and planning the next day’s sessions. The person who led the session in the workshop always had the first opportunity to say how they thought the session went. In many cases, we were more critical of ourselves than others were of our sessions. The comments of the session leader often helped others know whether they thought the session went well or poorly and could then adjust their comments accordingly, such as limiting negative feedback when the person already admitted to several things they would do differently the next time.
Many of the comments given were positive, and those which were constructive nearly always met our goal of being kind, specific and helpful. Inexperienced facilitators learned how to better lead a session just by listening to the comments of others about what specifically went well and should be used again. Some facilitators were not used to giving feedback and grew in this skill by listening to others. Just being able to work together, bounce ideas off each other, and sympathize with each other contributed greatly to our own mental health.
In several ways, the group feedback was seen as better than individual feedback ever could be. Different people noticed different things, so there were always more helpful insights given in our group than would have been possible by any one person alone. And especially when relating to those of a different gender or culture, the group dynamic helped insure that our comments were more appropriate than they may have been if given individually. This is because the more people that are listening to us, the more careful we are to say what everyone would find appropriate.
On the other hand, giving feedback is always tricky, and even more so in a group when many are listening. When someone leads poorly, it can be difficult to give enough specific, helpful suggestions without discouraging the person. In such cases, the group may hold back in saying what needs to be said out of fear of embarrassing the person in front of others. In that situation, the group facilitator could then give additional feedback to the person individually after the group feedback.
In limited cases, such as for character evaluations, anonymous feedback might be appropriate, as in a google form document. However, our group agreed that for evaluating facilitator sessions in our workshop, the group feedback builds more trust and closer relationships than could happen with anonymous feedback.
Having now tried cohort mentoring myself, I am convinced of its value and effectiveness, not to mention the number of well-trained facilitators that can be multiplied as a result.
I see potential for this kind of mentoring for many other skills in a variety of academic domains, especially where the skills are best learned in working with a language team. Although one-on-one mentoring has its place, whenever possible I will prefer to be involved in cohort mentoring, and encourage others to give it a try as well.
How could you envision using cohort mentoring in your academic domain ?
Share your ideas and insights below by clicking on “Comment”.
Thanks so much, Tim! What a wonderful report and recommendation for this kind of working. I hope many of us will be inspired to build such mentoring peer groups and see many more people growing in healthy ways as a result. Thank you!
Thank you, Tim! This information is as pertinent today as when you wrote it a year ago. My domain is program management, and the annual program planning workshop is an event that lends itself to the type of cohort mentoring that you’ve described.