Filtration Method of Coaching and

Educating

2015
Filtration Method is a novel method of coaching, mentoring and
educating to enable the mentee or learner to achieve his objectives.

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Filtration: A Novel Way to Mentor and Educate

Filtration (Reverse Osmosis) A Novel Way of Coaching, Mentoring and Educating
We often speak of coaching or mentoring a person to hone his skills, knowledge and behaviour that can
enable him to excel in his life.
The most common way of coaching, mentoring or educating a person through discussions and often
through discussion on how to improve his ability to achieve his lifes objectives. This form of coaching is
similar to the process of osmosis in which, the knowledge and experience of the coach, mentor or
educator assesses or evaluates the ability of the mentee or the learner and directly guides him through
discussion on how he can develop and enhance his capability to excel in managing and executing his
responsibilities.
This is followed by regular appraisals and assessment of his performance to further guide him in his
course of achieving his objectives. This is a diagnostic way of mentoring or educating a mentee or a
learner.
The filtration method of mentoring is like a reverse osmosis process, the mentee derives the methods of
achieving his objectives viz. learning or excelling in his life and career. The mentor guides the mentee in
Socratic Method by questioning suggesting and helping the mentee to analyze and validate the strategy
he devises to achieve his objective. The mentee or the learner takes the initiative of defining the
objective he wants to achieve. For instance, the mentee is asked to create a poster of what he wants to
achieve in life and a mentee may then create a poster like:

The mentor can be the parent too; may ask the mentee how he would like make his life an inspiring one.
The mentor may also ask the mentee to identify his passion, talent, and capabilities in terms of his
knowledge, skill and aptitude and set his objectives for himself and channelize his passion to achieve his
lifes objective. Mentor can explain that the poster is the lifes objective, and ask the mentee to draft a
plan or strategy of how to achieve it. The mentor can then orient to the mentee to some of the tools like
mind mapping preparing a timeline to draft a strategy and plan to achieve the objectives.
Mentor then asks the mentee to explain his draft strategy and then further ask the mentee to explain
the strategy as per the timeline the mentee has devised, mentor further asks for information on how
the mentee plans to enhance the capabilities, organize the resources he needs. The mentor can even

Filtration: A Novel Way to Mentor and Educate

ask the mentee to graphically depict his creative thinking in the form of a poster, where he may consider
himself a butterfly or a bee or a squirrel or even as a merchant, office manager planning and organizing
for achieving his objective, he can creatively depict his experience in the form of a poster, one like this:

This will help the mentor gauges the mentees approach and attitude to channelize his effort and
provides necessary reference and inputs to plan and devise his plan to implement his strategy by
developing a Gantt chart, planner, and scheduler as the guidelines to implement the plan. The flight of
imagination and creativity makes the coaching session interesting leading to more animated discussion
between the mentor and mentee.
Post confirming the plan to implement the strategy, the mentor can ask the mentee about the
challenges he can face in executing his plan. He can again ask the mentee to let his creative juices flow
and create posters of the internal and external challenges he can face while implementing them and
how he may try to overcome them. The mentee has to be creative with a positive sense of humour and
may create a poster like this on meeting with internal challenge:

With a positive sense of humour, he can create a poster. Following is a sample poster:

Filtration: A Novel Way to Mentor and Educate

This helps the mentor to get an insight into the mentees behavioural approach to life, work and the
difficulties linked to them. The mentor then, through queries guide the mentee to be aware of
On this note, the mentee can devise a strategy and plan to manage the challenges or difficulties, even
the unforeseen ones he may face in achieving his objective, be it functional, career related or a learning
objective. This he then presents to the mentor to whet, consolidate and devise a self check mechanism
in the form of the scheduler that can help the mentee to be aware of any point may not be able to
execute the step he has planned to. The scheduler will also have the means planned by the mentee to
overcome the difficulty.
Through the filtration method of supervising, mentoring and educating, the mentee or the learner
devise their own strategy, plan along with checks and controls to achieve their functional, career and
even personal development objectives. This method can be beneficially used by the parents, guardians,
supervisors, managers, coach and mentors.
Finally, the mentor can ask the mentee to narrate his inspiring success story of achieving his objective
and the lessons learnt or experienced gained. To even showcase any innovative solution he devised to
overcome any unique challenge that he may have faced in while trying to achieve his objective.

Filtration: A Novel Way to Mentor and Educate

Suggested:
A teacher or educator can use this method to guide a learner in preparing for and doing an
assignment viz. essay writing, project, or even learning any discipline/subject
A parent or guardian can use this method to guide his ward to set and achieve lifes goals while
achieving the primary objective of personality development
A manager or supervisor or even an executive can use this method to achieve functional
objective
A coach, mentor, or even soft skills or technical facilitator/trainer can use this method to
develop or hone the mentees capabilities in the form of knowledge, skill and behaviour
Social workers too can beneficially use this method to achieve their objective of social
development.