Here are top ten mentee best practices from our 2015 Mentoring Matters Reader Survey:
1. Focus on achieving learning goals
Learning is the purpose and the payoff of mentoring. It’s easy to get sidetracked and lose focus. After three cups of coffee and little work on leadership development, mentoring fizzles out. Goals help you stay focused, moving in a positive direction, and benchmark your progress.
2. Expect to drive the mentoring relationship
Mentors are not mind readers. Be prepared to ask for what you need, when you need it. They won’t know what you need unless you tell them.
3. Create SMART goals that will contribute to your development
Fuzzy goals result in fuzzy outcomes. Make sure your goals are crystal clear to you and your mentor. Goals need to be specific, measurable, achievable, realistic and timely.
4. Be authentic, open and honest
Your willingness to be vulnerable makes a significant difference in your growth and development. If you pretend that all is perfect, your mentor will never get to know the real you, and you will miss out on real learning opportunities.
5. Prepare for all mentoring meetings
Advance preparation for mentoring sessions will save time, make meetings more efficient and result in more meaningful learning.
6. Stay connected and in communication with your mentor
Utilize multiple ways to stay connected to your mentor. Regular and consistent communication is the name of the game, whether it’s face-to-face, email, Skype or telephone calls, the operative word is “and.”
7. Be willing to stretch and step out of your comfort zone
Expect your mentor to challenge you with questions and learning opportunities that might take you outside your comfort zone. They may initially make you uncomfortable, but the stretch is what will maximize your learning.
8. Ask for specific feedback
Your mentor’s honest and candid feedback will contribute to your self-awareness and get you to the next level. Practice asking for specific feedback and be prepared to receive it without being defensive. Share feedback with your mentor and act on what you hear.
9. Focus on the future
It’s easy to get bogged down in day-to-day issues instead of focusing on your future. Keep in mind that mentoring creates momentum towards your future development. Be prepared to articulate your vision for yourself so that you and your mentor can create strategies for your future success.
10. Keep a journal
You will want to make notes of conversations that reflect your learning, and also track your mentoring progress. A journal is a great place to record insights and questions in preparation for mentoring meetings. Although keeping a journal requires discipline and practice, it’s well worth the effort.
If you have other best practices that you’d like to add, please let us know!
Our recent annual Mentoring Matters Reader Survey revealed dozens of best practice topics. This blog is the first in our series of mentoring best practice posts soon to follow. Based on our survey results, here are the top ten:
Start by getting to know your mentee
Make sure you take time to get to know your mentee before you jump into the work of mentoring. Nothing of substance will happen until you establish a trusting relationship.
Establish working agreements
Agreements lay the foundation of a mentoring relationship. Build in basic structures about how you will work together moving forward. Make sure you and your mentee agree on ground rules.
Focus on developing robust learning goals
The purpose of mentoring is to learn. Learning is also the payoff. Make sure the mentee’s learning goals are worthy of your time and effort. Developing robust learning goals takes time and good conversation.
Balance talking and listening
It’s easy and natural to want to give advice, especially because you’ve “been there and done that.” But mentees want more than good advice. They want you to listen to their ideas as much as they want to hear what you have to say.
Ask questions rather than give answers
Take the time to draw out a mentee’s thinking and get them to reflect on their own experience. Ask probing questions that encourage them to come up with their own insights.
Engage in meaningful and authentic conversation
Strive to go deeper than surface conversation. Share your own successes and failures as well as what you are learning from your current mentoring relationship.
Check out assumptions and hunches
If you sense something is missing or not going well, you are probably right. Address issues as soon as possible. Simply stating, “I want to check out my assumption which is … ” will prevent you from assuming your mentee is on track.
Support and challenge your mentee
Work on creating a comfortable relationship first before you launch into the uncomfortable stretch needed for deep learning. Mentees need to feel supported (comfortable) and yet be challenged (a little uncomfortable) in order to grow and develop.
Set the expectation of two-way feedback
Candid feedback is a powerful trigger for growth and change. Set the expectation early on. Be prepared to offer candid feedback, balanced with compassion. Model how to ask for and receive good feedback by asking your mentee for specific feedback on your own mentoring contribution.
Check in regularly to stay on track
Keep connected and develop a pattern of regular engagement. Both partners need to be accountable for following through with agreements. By holding an open, honest conversation about how you’re doing and what you need to do to improve, you encourage mutual accountability and deepen the relationship.
What do you think? Did we miss any best practices? Let us know!
Starting Strong walks you through several fictional mentoring examples, highlighting the importance of the first 90 days of a mentoring relationship and pointing out invaluable conversations to have.
One of those fictional examples introduces readers to Rafa.
Rafa is a composite of hundreds of mentees we have worked with over the past 15 years. He’s an ambitious Millennial, and impatient to make it big and fast. To help him on his professional path, Rafa’s company has matched him with a savvy and experienced mentor. This is new for him, and he has no clue what to expect from a mentoring relationship.
Sound familiar? If you’re someone who is new to mentoring like Rafa, our new book, Starting Strong, can help you jumpstart your mentoring relationship and get it on solid footing right from day one.
Starting Strong models mentoring best practices by taking you inside a mentoring relationship, allowing you to observe, feel and experience six key mentoring conversations as they take place.
As the story evolves over the first 90 days of their mentoring relationship, Rafa comes to appreciate the importance of a good launch, and the critical role preparation plays in moving forward. He learns many lessons about how to build a trusting, open and honest relationship, how to maximize his mentoring time, and how to take charge of his own learning.
The Conversation Playbook that follows the story is jam-packed with strategies, tips and probing questions that you can use to your advantage while working with your mentees.
Here are five ways to use Starting Strong to deepen your relationship, stay on track and raise the level of your mentoring practice:
Invite your mentees to read Starting Strong and discuss Rafa’s experiences.
During one of your initial sessions with your new mentee, address the questions at the end of each chapter.
Prepare for your mentoring meetings by selecting questions from the playbook to deepen your mentoring conversations.
When you bring your mentoring relationship to closure, give your mentee a copy of Starting Strong as a gift. It will help them prepare for the transition from mentee to mentor.
And, don’t forget to benchmark your mentoring practices against those described in the book.
If you’ve answered yes, then you owe it to yourself to hone and deepen your mentoring skills. And, there is no better teacher than Cynthia Colson. But who is Cynthia Colson?
You’ll meet Cynthia and her mentee in our new book, Starting Strong. Cynthia is an experienced mentor who is committed to her own growth and development as a mentor and the growth and development her mentees.
The story of Cynthia and her Gen-Y mentee unfolds over 90 days (six mentoring meetings) and you get to sit in on each of them. You will hear their private thoughts before, during and after their meetings. At the end of each chapter, you will find questions to prompt personal reflection and spark conversation about the chapter content.
The conversation playbook guides you so that you can engage in parallel conversation with Cynthia and her mentee. It prepares you for your mentoring sessions by suggesting appropriate conversation topics, starters and probing questions to use to build a solid foundation for your own mentoring relationships during the first 90 days.
If you’re ready to move your mentoring practices from good to great, you won’t want to miss this opportunity to benchmark your mentoring skills against Cynthia Colson’s best practices.
Starting Strong: A Mentoring Fable provides a view inside six successful mentoring conversations that take place over 90 days. The reader is privy to the thoughts and reflections of both the mentor and mentee, and gets to observe the personal dynamics of a successful mentoring relationship as it unfolds. It’s an excellent training resource because it models how good mentoring should look and feel.
Cynthia is one of the mentors you meet in the book. Cynthia learned the hard way about how to create a successful mentoring partnership. After a few failed mentoring relationships of her own, she grew from the experience. By the time she launched her next relationship, she was savvier and had a clearer understanding of what it takes to achieve tangible results.
As a Program Coordinator, your mentoring pairs can benefit from Cynthia’s wisdom and experience. During the first 90 days of her relationship, she engaged her mentee in six essential conversations that led him to deepened insight and transformation.
What made the difference for Cynthia? What did she do differently that made her more successful? In Starting Strong, you will learn about Cynthia’s strategies for mentoring success:
Cynthia recognizes that her mentee will be uneasy as the more junior employee, mentored by a senior executive. She takes time to get to know him and put him at ease before launching into the work of mentoring.
Some key structures and agreements help set the tone and expectations for progress and accountability. The mentee, who is new to mentoring, thought mentoring was an informal drop-in relationship.
Learning is the purpose and product of mentoring — and its goals drive the learning. Mentors and mentees alike struggle with goal setting. It can be tempting for mentees to pick goals they can easy achieve or that aren’t relevant to their work success.
Application of skills and learning are a critical part of mentee success.
Stumbling blocks are inevitable in mentoring relationships. Mentors and mentees need a confidential, safe place to get coaching around issues that surface.
The 90 day mark is an excellent time to schedule a check-in with mentoring partners.
How have you made the most of your first 90 days of mentoring?
Starting Strong provides a view inside six successful mentoring conversations that take place over 90 days. The reader is privy to the thoughts and reflections of both the mentor and mentee, and gets to observe the personal dynamics of a successful mentoring relationship as it unfolds. It’s an excellent training resource because it models how good mentoring should look and feel.
Cynthia is one of the mentors you meet in the book. She is an experienced mentor who is committed to her own growth and development as a mentor and the growth and development her mentees.
The story of Cynthia and her Gen-Y mentee unfolds over 90 days (six mentoring meetings) and you get to sit in on each of them. You will hear their private thoughts before, during and after their meetings. At the end of each chapter, you will find questions to prompt personal reflection and spark conversation about the chapter content.
Cynthia learned the hard way about how to create a successful mentoring partnership. After a few failed mentoring relationships of her own, she grew from the experience. By the time she launched her next relationship, she was savvier and had a clearer understanding of what it takes to achieve tangible results.
What made the difference for Cynthia? What did she do differently that made her more successful?
In Starting Strong, you will learn about Cynthia’s strategies for mentoring success:
Cynthia recognizes that her mentee will be uneasy as the more junior employee, mentored by a senior executive. She takes time to get to know him and put him at ease before launching into the work of mentoring.
Some key structures and agreements help set the tone and expectations for progress and accountability. The mentee, who is new to mentoring, thought mentoring was an informal drop-in relationship.
Learning is the purpose and product of mentoring — and its goals drive the learning. Mentors and mentees alike struggle with goal setting. It can be tempting for mentees to pick goals they can easy achieve or that aren’t relevant to their work success.
Application of skills and learning are a critical part of mentee success.
Stumbling blocks are inevitable in mentoring relationships. Mentors and mentees need a confidential, safe place to get coaching around issues that surface.
The 90-day mark is an excellent time to schedule a check-in with mentoring partners.
The conversation playbook guides you so that you can engage in parallel conversation with Cynthia and her mentee. It prepares you for your mentoring sessions by suggesting appropriate conversation topics, starters and probing questions to use to build a solid foundation for your own mentoring relationships during the first 90 days.
Are you from Gen X or Y, anxious to advance your career?
Are you eager make a mark in your organization?
Are you committed to orchestrating your own future?
If you’ve answered “yes” to any of these questions, you will need good mentors if you’re going to be successful.
In our new book, Starting Strong: A Mentoring Fable, you have the opportunity to observe mentoring at work and learn valuable lessons from an experienced mentor about what makes a mentoring relationship successful.
Cynthia, a talented and successful VP of Marketing and Communications agrees to mentor Rafa, a Gen Y financial analyst. Cynthia enjoys mentoring talented, ambitious employees, but only when she is sure that her time investment will truly make a difference.
Rafa is new to mentoring and doesn’t know what to do or what to expect. In retrospect, he realizes that he had a lot to learn about mentoring. The truth of the matter is, most mentees, like Rafa, would like to come to mentoring better prepared.
In Starting Strong, you soon discover just how important the first 90 days are to laying the groundwork for a productive and successful mentoring relationship and what you can do to prepare yourself so that your mentoring relationship starts out and stays strong.
Here’s a sneak peek at some of the success strategies you will find in our book:
Get to know your mentor and help them get to know you.
Do you feel comfortable being honest and open about your strengths and weaknesses?
Establish agreements that define your relationship and clarify your expectations.
How often will you meet?
What is your understanding about confidentiality?
Who will set the agenda for your meetings?
Articulate the goals that will be the focus of your relationship.
Are they SMART (Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant and Timely) enough to produce tangible results?
Identify specific learning opportunities that will encourage you to stretch and grow.
Are you playing it safe, or are you being pushed out of your comfort zone?
Here’s another question we often get about mentoring. Again, we hope it helps you in your own mentoring adventures.
Note: These questions are compiled from several questions we receive, and do not necessarily reflect any one person’s submission.
Q: I’ve been tasked by my HR VP to start a mentoring program to prepare our managers for new roles with greater responsibilities. Our VPs and senior leaders are the mentors and I’m supposed to put together a training session for them. I have never developed a training program before and I have never trained senior leaders. I’m shaking in my boots. Help!
A: Help is on the way! Your leadership has identified an important business imperative behind mentoring efforts, which is a great first step. Mentoring is not just a “feel-good” activity. It should address the strategic business goals of the organization. You need to ensure that your efforts and investments pay off. It can be overwhelming to create a dynamic mentor training program that is engaging, participative and informative.
An organization that identifies mentoring as a strategic tool must develop its in-house capacity for mentoring training. To be a truly effective mentor trainer, you have to develop some expertise in mentoring. We have a solution for you. Our Mentoring Facilitator Trainer Certification Program will prepare you to deliver Mentoring: Strategies for Success in your organization. The content of that program will ensure your mentor leaders:
Understand the purpose and key concepts of mentoring and how it differs from coaching
Identify their learning style and the role of learning in facilitating mentee growth and development
Recognize the four predictable phases in the mentoring cycle and the key components of each phase
Structure the initial mentoring conversation to get started on the right foot
Explore how to set learning goals, set priorities and identify milestones
Recognize and overcome common stumbling blocks in a mentoring relationship
Support, challenge and provide effective feedback to mentees
Bring the relationship to successful closure
Our training certification process will allow you to master the content and gain experience delivering the material to your audience. You will walk away after three days with all the tools, competencies and confidence you need to be successful.
And you’re in luck. Our next training event is coming up, Monday, September 29 – Wednesday, October 1. Registration is open now, but it fills up fast, so register today!
People often ask us questions about mentoring or seek mentoring advice. We decided to answer a few of these questions on the blog this month. Hopefully their questions (and our answers) will shed some light on your own mentoring questions.
Note: These questions are compiled from several questions we receive, and do not necessarily reflect any one person’s submission.
Q: Six months ago, our mentoring program was announced. Everyone, and I mean everyone, was buzzing about it and our people were eager to get started. At first, there was a flurry of activity and everyone was meeting with their mentee and really pretty excited. But all that energy was short-lived. About six weeks in, our mentors started telling us they had run out of things to talk about. As it turns out, most of them were just having coffee and catching up. It seems like we’ve missed the boat somehow. What would you suggest?
A: What you are describing is the Three Cups of Coffee Syndrome. The mentor/mentee relationship has been established, but it lacks direction, focus or goals to move mentoring forward. This is what often happens when organizations launch a mentoring program without providing sufficient and consistent training for their mentors.
Good mentoring requires specific skill sets. Even leaders who engage in informal mentoring throughout their entire careers struggle with creating successful mentoring partnerships.
Mentoring training builds more confident and competent mentors. It promotes mentor readiness, creates a standard of mentoring practice, provides guidelines for ensuring mentoring success and offers a safe climate of support. Mentor training offers a roadmap and a benchmark for mentors to measure their success as well as strategies to address stumbling blocks quickly.
Good mentoring training saves time. It keeps mentoring interesting, productive and on track from the get-go.
If you’re interested in mentoring training, register for our 3-day training certification program. The Mentoring: Strategies for Success program will teach you how to lead your own one-day training for your organization. Our next program is Monday, September 29 – Wednesday, October 1. Seats are limited, so register today!
Mentoring is an investment of time and effort. To get it right, it is important to prepare the people in your organization and make sure everyone is on the same page. Are your HR and learning/development specialists ready?
Our “Mentoring: Strategies for Success” Trainer Certification Program might be just what your organization needs right now. The Center for Mentoring Excellence’s most popular one-day workshop has been presented to organizations throughout the world for over a decade. This comprehensive workshop provides all the tools and strategies mentors and mentees will need to engage in productive, learner-centered relationships.
Make the investment to train your trainers in mentoring and watch how quickly you reap these rewards. We think you will agree, it is well worth the effort.
Increased talent retention
Heightened employee engagement and productivity
Support for diversity and inclusion
Enhanced employee and career development
Fast-tracked leadership development
Stronger leadership bench
More commitment and collaboration
Enrollment is limited. Take advantage of this limited opportunity and sign up now!
As the story evolves over the first 90 days of their mentoring relationship, Rafa comes to appreciate the importance of a good launch, and the critical role preparation plays in moving forward. He learns many lessons about how to build a trusting, open and honest relationship, how to maximize his mentoring time, and how to take charge of his own learning.
As a Program Coordinator, your mentoring pairs can benefit from Cynthia’s wisdom and experience. During the first 90 days of her relationship, she engaged her mentee in six essential conversations that led him to deepened insight and transformation.
