A Guide for Mentors

What is mentoring?

Mentoring is a long standing form of training, learning and development and an increasingly popular tool for supporting personal development.

The purpose of mentoring is to help individuals learn, enabling them to gain a greater breadth of perspective, both in relation to the business and their own behaviour, and, as a result, improve their performance.

Mentoring as a relationship succeeds because there are no power games, the emphasis is on cooperation – not competition and the relationship exists for the primary benefit of the mentee.

Skills required for effective mentoring

Experienced mentors agree that the art of mentoring requires them to demonstrate not one, but a whole range of competencies to the right degree and in the right balance. These competencies are likely to include:

  • Self-awareness: in order to recognise and manage their own feelings and behaviour within the relationship and to be appropriately empathic.
  • Understanding others: to have an insight into how people behave and interact with each other and be able to predict the consequences of behaviour or actions.
  • Communication: key to the whole process as a complete set of highly developed skills.
  • Building and maintaining rapport: able to develop trust, show genuine interest in helping others and demonstrate appropriate empathy.
  • Good humour: in order to maintain a sense of proportion, put things in perspective and keep the relationship enjoyable.
  • Commitment to self-learning: able to demonstrate an appetite for continuous personal learning as a role model for mentees.
  • Commitment to developing others: prepared to "go the extra mile", building confidence in mentees, focusing on inspiration and enthusiasm.
  • Goal orientation: able to analyse issues, clarify and stay focused on achievable goals.
  • Business acumen: gained from experience, an in-depth, current understanding of business and its environment.
  • Conceptual thinking: being able to draw on a range of models to help mentees understand, challenges, issues and situations.

Positive mentoring behaviours

MENTEE
  • Prepared for meetings
  • Committed
  • Self-challenging
  • Open
  • Willing to find solutions themselves
  • Willing to ask questions
  • Willing to take the lead in meetings
  • Honest about success/failure and their strengths/weaknesses
  • Takes responsibility for their part in the success of the relationship
  • Willing to share their experiences
  • Respects confidentiality
  • Not looking for fixes
  • Willing to take risks and step outside their comfort zone
  • Prepared to give feedback
  • Takes learning away
  • Allows time for reflection
/ MENTOR
  • Open
  • Interested
  • Uses open questioning
  • Challenging
  • Supportive
  • Approachable
  • Has a broad range of experience
  • Empathetic
  • Prepared for meetings
  • Committed
  • Not overly critical
  • Has realistic expectations
  • Accepting of mistakes – is willing to talk about them
  • Respects confidentiality
  • Listens
  • Remembers previous discussions
  • Is respectful
  • Non-judgemental

What to agree with your mentee

Use the following questions as a prompt for creating an agreement. Ask the mentee to write notes and create an agreement in their own words. Before you meet, you may want them to consider why an agreement would be useful, how formal / informal they would expect it to be, and what they would expect to be included. It’s fine for the agreement to evolve, as long as this is discussed and agreed by both mentor and mentee.

Aspirations

  • What do you hope to get out of these meetings?
  • What do you want to focus on specifically?
  • What do we expect to learn from one another?

Behaviours

  • What role do you expect me to play?
  • How do we want to behave to make this a successful partnership? (Honest, open, trust, challenge, support)
  • How happy are you for me to challenge and confront you?
  • Is there anything either of us definitely does not want to talk about?
  • Are we both willing to give open and timely feedback?

Practicalities

  • Where and how often shall we meet? For how long (sessions and number)?
  • Who will keep records of our meetings – and how?
  • Do you want to have preparation to do in between our meetings?
  • What limits (if any?) are there on confidentiality?
  • How formal or informal do we want our meetings to be?
  • What are our responsibilities towards one another? What are the limits?
  • What responsibilities do we owe to others?

Reviewing

  • How will we measure progress?
  • When and how shall we review the mentoring relationship?
  • What will we do if the relationship isn’t working?
  • What do we do when we want to change the mentoring contract?

Hints and tips on being a great mentor

Mentors, among other things, can provide exceptional learning experiences for their mentees, and in doing so, expand their mentees’ awareness, insight and perspective. Here are some tips to help you become a great mentor:

Structure

  • Set objectives at the beginning of the meeting
  • Ask the mentee what structure will work for them, or use PDP and 360 to provide structure and focus
  • Revisit the objectives and expected outcomes
  • Ask the mentee to recap at the end of the meeting/agree actions
  • Revisit contracting

Behaviours

Be credible

The best mentors are those who have credibility in or achieved success in the areas in which the mentee is seeking support. Being credible doesn’t mean you have all the answers. The best answers will come from the mentees own thinking, with the help of your wisdom to support them.

Careful listening

As a good mentor, you will be an excellent listener, hearing exactly what the mentee is trying to say, through their words, tone, attitude and body language. You will be able to listen actively by repeating points you think you have understood and asking whether you have understood correctly. Through careful listening, you will display empathy for the mentee and your understanding of his/her challenges. When a mentee feels this empathy, the way will be open for clear communication and more effective mentoring.

Body language

Body language is really important – provide support and encouragement

Be aware of when rapport is met

Questions to provoke insight / understanding

Ask coaching questions with the intention of enabling the mentee to gain insight into their situation / issue and therefore a greater understanding of this and what they might like to actually do as a result

  • Use how, what, why?
  • Use open clarifying questions to establish the source of the issue
  • Avoid using leading questions
  • Question assumptions that may be wrong
  • When the mentee asks you a direct questions – throw it back to them

Acknowledge achievements

  • Celebrate their successes to build their confidence

Reflect back during the discussion

  • Repeat what the mentee has said, framed as a question

Learning from experiences

  • Focus on learning from experiences
  • Draw positives from an experience to apply to the issue being discussed
  • Share your experiences where appropriate

Give feedback

  • Give positive feedback directly
  • Don’t shy away from being direct and challenging

Find ways of looking at the same problem from different perspectives

  • Reframing
  • Related worlds
  • Explore who else could help

Frequently asked questions

Can I be a mentee and a mentor at the same time?

It is common for mentors to simultaneously be a mentee. This works very effectively and is common practice.

What if I can't deliver what my mentee expects of me?

Your mentee should bring a clear set of objectives to the first meeting that you can review together. You may find that you cannot help them on every objective and you may want to concentrate on key areas. It may also be that you signpost your mentee to other contacts if you feel you are not the best person to help them in certain areas - one of the roles of a mentor is to help the mentee develop networks. Remember that mentoring is a subtle art - often it is the small things that count like offering an impartial ear, understanding a predicament and providing encouragement.

What can I do if our meetings seem to be running out of steam?

Although the mentee should drive the relationship and set objectives, the mentor should spend time thinking about how to meet those objectives, and perhaps planning activities for the mentee. Signposting mentees to other contacts is very useful and will help the mentee build contacts, as well as provide further points for discussion.

What are the benefits of mentoring for the mentor?

The benefits of mentoring have been reported to include:

  • an opportunity to 'give back' to theprofession;
  • finding work more meaningful and satisfying;
  • a refinement of leadership skills;
  • improvement in coaching and listening skills;
  • exposure to new and diverse perspectives; and
  • an opportunity to become re-engaged professionally.

Potential session to session guide

It is suggested that a commitment is made to 6 mentoring meetings where the mentoring pair engages in focused discussions. Those are driven by both the mentees overarching goals for the mentoring relationship and the specific goals for the session. This document is aimed at helping mentors to effectively support mentees in reaching their goals by the use of powerful questions that could accelerate mentees’ progress. Please note that these are suggested questions and mentors should be using them in a flexible way, by demonstrating all key mentoring skills.

Pre-meeting preparation check-list

Before your initial conversation you should think about what you want to achieve from the first conversation and the mentoring programme overall.

  • Consider your own expectations and goals in relation to becoming a mentor
  • What questions do you think your mentee might want to ask you
  • What will you need to do in order to make the first meeting effective
  • Consider how much time you can spare for this and make a time commitment in your diary
  • Gather as much information as you can from the mentee prior to this meeting so that you can concentrate on the aims of the relationship when you meet for the first time
  • Think about your preferred learning style and ask mentee about theirs

SESSION 1 – DESIGNING YOUR MENTORING RELATIONSHIP

The first mentoring meeting is critical for building rapport and the end result of this conversation will be an agreement that spells out the expectations and responsibilities of both mentor and mentee.

Get Acquainted: Start with what you might have in common.

  • Find the commonalities as well as uniqueness. Break the ice by talking about why they joined this mentoring scheme, passions, aspirations, interests. What do you do when you are not working?
  • Ask them about themselves, their studies, their career and current role and any previous experience of mentoring.
  • Define time commitments, general rules of behaviour and that the mentee organises the meetings.
  • Confidentiality (What do we need to do to protect the confidentiality of this relationship?)
  • Expectations (what do you most want from me as your mentor?)
  • Goals (what do you want to have achieved by the end of the mentoring, i.e. to assist your career and future work-life?)
  • Success criteria and measurement (How will we know if we have succeeded?)
  • Accountability (How do we ensure that we do what we say we are going to do?)
  • Protocols for addressing stumbling blocks (What might get in the way/take us off track? What process should we have in place to deal with any stumbling blocks we encounter?)
  • Consensual mentoring agreement (What do we need to include to ensure that this agreement works for us?)
  • Discuss how the mentor will give feedback to the mentee, and any concerns around this.

The mentee should summarise the discussion to ensure you’re both clear and comfortable with what has been discussed and agreed.

The purpose of mentoring is to allow the mentee to grow, develop and become independent. To begin with the mentor will have an encouraging supportive role, as the mentee develops and grows in confidence the mentor’s role will change to become more about challenging the mentee’s thinking and encouraging self-reflection.

It is important to discuss and understand the stages of the mentoring journey in order that you can both manage the process to ensure the learning outcomes are achieved.

Set a home work between now and next session to brainstorm clear 6 month goals and ‘what gets in the way’ and be ready to explore it in session 2.

SESSION 2 – CLEAR DIRECTION

You have collaboratively created a mentoring agreement outlining what they wish to accomplish and when. Now it’s time to plan how will go about achieving set goals.

Discuss your 6 month mentoring goals

  • Identify your top 3 goals
  • In 6 months, time what do you want to be saying/doing differently?
  • How will you know/measure you have achieved your goals?
  • How passionate on a scale of 1 – 10 are you about your goals?
  • Where are you now?
  • What are your strengths that will help you achieve your goals?
  • What are the development areas be addressed?
  • What is getting in the way? (fears, obstacles, people)
  • What can you do about the obstacles?
  • What do you commit to doing between now and next session?

Set a homework and accountability for them to work on in between sessions based on overcoming an obstacle.

SESSION 3 & 4 – PROGRESS REPORTS

Check in on progress. This is the half way point.

  • What have you accomplished so far?
  • How long have you been working on this?
  • Where do you need to refocus?
  • What is your next step?
  • What do you have to do to make it happen?
  • What problems or obstacles might occur that would prevent you from achieving the best result?
  • What will you do if the first plan does not work as well as you expect?
  • What resources do you have; what do you need?
  • How can I help you succeed?

SESSION 5 – THE JOURNEY CONTINUES

Both partners become more comfortable about challenging each other's perceptions, exploring issues more deeply and experiencing mutual learning.

  • What have you achieved/pleased about since our last session?
  • What have you learned since last time?
  • We have 1 session left, how are you doing on your 6 month goals?
  • What is still challenging?
  • What can I most support you on today?
  • What is the step up for you?
  • What is it time to let go of?
  • What do you commit to between now and our last session?

SESSION 6 – COMPLETION

It is expected that mentors help mentees to close relationship in a constructive and professional manner.

Start with basic questions and demonstrate that you would like to get mentee’s feedback:

  • Celebrate – what have you achieved?
  • What are you proud/pleased about?
  • What is there still to work on?
  • What are your new 6 months goals?
  • What are our next steps (continue working together? Work with a new mentor? Complete program for now?)
  • Acknowledgements – What do we want to say to complete our 6 month mentoring?
  • What are our next steps?