Massage Therapy Journal Winter 2024

Winter 2024 • 67

Competence is the ability to feel effective and productive in professional and personal tasks . A mentor can help a mentee build competency in a variety of ways. For example, the mentor may teach a particular skill, such as bookkeeping or using social media for marketing. Or, they may teach how to access resources or information. Early on in a massage career, a student or new professional may simply need the opportunity to practice on someone who can provide good feedback and suggestions. It’s important to remember that this sharing of knowledge is a two-way street. Younger massage therapists may have experience and knowledge that veteran practitioners struggle to obtain, like technology, for example. Since many massage therapists come to massage as a second career, a mentee may have life experience and past occupational training they can share with their mentor, too. Building competency is as much about building confidence as it is about the ability related to a particular skill. Having a caring role model plays a significant role in success. Mentors can act as champions and coaches to help celebrate successes and overcome setbacks. Massage therapists understand the concept of autonomy from our training in ethics . The ability to be self-determined and make our own

choices is important to our human experience. People who experience autonomy have a greater sense of freedom than people who believe they are being controlled. Many people report that nothing makes a job more dreadful than being micromanaged. Mentoring can help support our sense of autonomy. Through thoughtful words and actions, a mentor can help to define choices and possibilities surrounding various circumstances in the mentee’s experiences. This work might include helping the mentee brainstorm courses of action and listing the pros and cons of each possibility. A mentor might also share examples of how they’ve made important choices in the past. Note, the work of the mentor is to support the mentee’s choices even when they do not align with the mentor’s own preferences. Relatedness, sometimes called connection, refers to the need to have a sense of belonging with other people . Maintaining meaningful relationships—both professionally and personally—is important for the well-being of massage therapists. Many massage therapists spend much of their time in treatment rooms with their clients, often with little to no talking, and sometimes in solo practices without any coworkers. While our client relationships

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