Services / Train the Trainers
Mentoring Excellence Mastermind™ Series
Promote mentoring achievement and accountability with the newest offering from the Center for Mentoring Excellence.
Ask yourself:
- Does your organization want to strengthen its learning culture?
- Could your organization use additional support to help your mentors and mentees make the most of mentoring?
- Are you a mentor, mentee or mentoring program administrator who is making it up as you go?
If you answered yes to one or more of these questions then Mentoring Excellence Masterminds (MEMs) are the perfect solution for you.
MEMs are targeted learning communities designed specifically for program administrators, mentors and mentees who are looking for a single destination where they can:
- Learn mentoring best practices from experts in the field
- Share experiences and gain perspective from others in similar situations/roles
- Create a community of shared interest and experience in mentoring
- Explore ways to maximize the mentoring experience and leverage it for individual, collective and organizational success
- Receive just-in-time coaching, feedback and learning solutions
Mentoring Excellence Masterminds Benefit Organizations
Employees who are in a mentoring relationship are 77% more likely to stay in a job. Thirty-five percent of employees who do not receive regular mentoring look for another job within 12 months. This kind of movement into and out of organizations has serious consequences, diminishing an employer’s ability to compete for talent. Turnover is expensive and time-consuming, and the loss of knowledge, talent and expertise can be detrimental to business results and workplace culture. It’s critical that employers offer opportunities for employees to deliver their best, feel more engaged in the workplace, and learn and grow. Our Mentoring Excellence Masterminds help organizations maximize their investment in mentoring, reaping the benefits of an engaged workforce and a learning culture.
Mentoring Excellence Masterminds Benefit Individuals
- Participants will increase the effectiveness of their mentoring relationships through:
- Confidential peer support/expert coaching
- Feedback
- Best practices
- Expert advice and support
- Structured format with built in accountability
- Content and sharing
- Masterminds create community of learning and growth customized to meet individual and group learning needs
- Mentors, mentees and Program Administrators learn from accumulated experience and unique group member perspectives
- Masterminds provide ongoing Learning opportunities that promote growth and expanded thinking
How Mentoring Excellence Masterminds (MEMs) Work
- Group coaching and feedback calls. Small group size leverages the power of peer feedback, shared experiences and guidance from a mentoring expert
- Enrollees participate in one 90-minute call per month on a topic related to the audience (includes content, coaching and feedback).
- Small groups (12-15 people) with a shared interest in mentoring, meeting regularly
- Designed to meet the specific needs of those who share common mentoring roles
- Learning continues beyond the times of the calls.
- Participants will have access to a private, exclusive online forum.
- All calls will be recorded and accessible throughout the length of the MEMs series (12 months for mentors and mentees, 4 months for program administrators).
- Participants can benefit from participants across industries, or from a customized program.
- The Center for Mentoring Excellence conducts MEMs for participants across industry, location and organization.
- We can also accommodate the needs of organizations that wish to create MEMs exclusively for its own employees.
We offer three MEMs programs, depending on your needs:
- Getting the Most From Mentoring: Mentoring Excellence Masterminds Series for Mentees
- Making Mentoring Work For You: Mentoring Excellence Masterminds Series for Mentors
- Maximizing Mentoring Success: Mentoring Excellence Masterminds Series for Program Administrators
Meet Your Mentoring Excellence Masterminds Facilitator
MEMs are led and facilitated by Lisa Fain, CEO of Center for Mentoring Excellence and our knowledgeable team of mentoring experts. Lisa’s passion for mentoring is fueled by her strong conviction that leveraging differences and helping employees grow creates a better workplace and drives better business results. She has conducted mentoring training programs for corporate, government and educational institutions. Her training as an attorney, coach and corporate leader of Diversity and Inclusion allow her to bring a unique blend of teaching, coaching, listening and problem-solving to the Masterminds, creating community and balancing group and individual learning needs.
When mentees are part of a community of fellow learners, they’re far more likely to leverage the benefits of mentoring. It gives them a safe place to learn, ask questions and bounce ideas off each other. The Mentoring Excellence Masterminds Series for Mentees (Mentee MEMs) combines the benefit of a learning community with expert content and coaching, ensuring success and providing just-in-time support.
The series includes twelve (12) 90-minute live video conferences covering the following topics:
- Identifying Learning Goals. Goal setting is one of the most challenging aspects of a mentoring relationship. How can you formulate and hone your goals to ensure you achieve the results you want?
- Exploring Different Mentoring Models. Most people think about one-to-one relationships when it comes to mentoring, however there are lots of different options and many you can engage in at the same time. Which options are right for you?
- Creating A Vision For The Future You Want. Perhaps at this point in your career you don’t know what you don’t know about options for your future. What questions can you ask yourself to clarify your vision?
- Developing Your Skills. To get the most from mentoring, you will need to develop and draw on develop your skills as a mentee. The skills you develop are transferable to other aspects of your life. What are your strengths and challenges as a mentee?
- Understanding How Difference and Learning Style Can Work For You. Knowing about your learning style can help you solve problems, make better decisions, work collaboratively with your mentor, manage conflict and engage in more satisfying relationships with your mentors. What is your learning style and how can it help your mentoring relationship?
- Getting To Know Your Mentor and Building Trust. Getting to know your mentor goes hand in hand with building trust but it takes time. How do you co-create a mentoring relationship where you can be real and authentic with your mentors?
- Establishing Agreements. It is essential to lay a the groundwork for a productive and satisfying mentoring relationship. What ground rules, confidentiality agreements and boundaries should you set?
- Driving The Relationship and Managing Your Time. Mentees need to to drive and monitor the mentoring relationship, and ask for what they need. What do you need to do to be prepared to drive the relationship and manage the time you spend?
- Monitoring Goal Progress. Creating a process for monitoring your progress will help you stay focused and create momentum. How do you measure the progress you are making on achieving your goals?
- Getting The Support and Resources You Need. When mentees don’t get the support they need from their mentors or access to the resources they need it is often because they don’t know how to ask. What do you need to do to reap the fullest benefit from your mentoring relationship.
- Getting Good At Asking For Feedback. Getting feedback is often challenging. Asking for it is sometimes even harder. What strategies can you use to make sure that the feedback you receive is relevant, practical and meaningful for you?
- Bringing Mentoring to Closure and Moving Forward. The old saying, ‘when one door closes, another door opens’ rings true when it comes to mentoring. Closure and forward movement go hand in hand. How can you leverage your mentoring relationship to create momentum in your continued growth and development?
Includes Bonus Mentee Webinar: 10 Best Ways To Find A Mentor: What You Need to Know and Do
When mentors fully invest in creating effective mentoring relationships, they benefit from mentoring just as much as mentees. Our Mentoring Excellence Masterminds Series for Mentors (Mentor MEMs) provides a community of learning, expert content and just-in-time support for mentors looking to develop their mentoring skills and make the most of their mentoring relationships.
This mastermind is for you if you or your organization is interested in:
- Providing ongoing mentoring support to maximize mentoring success
- Facilitating ongoing development of mentees
- Providing just-in-time coaching
- Ensuring that mentees are getting what they need from their mentoring relationships
This series is made up of twelve (12) 90-minute live video conferences, addressing the following topics:
- Getting Started. Effective mentors learning as much as they can about mentoring and current best mentoring practice before they engage in a mentoring relationship. They make time to reflect on what they have learned from past mentoring experiences and reflect on their strengths and challenges. How well have you prepared yourself for getting started? What more could you be doing?
- Building Your Capacity as a Mentor. Mentoring offers a unique opportunity to grow and develop in your role as a mentor. What are the qualities do good mentors possess? What do you need to do to grow your capacity and competency as a mentor?
- Building Trust. Each relationship must find its own path and maintain a sufficient level of trust to develop a quality mentoring relationship and promote learning. It takes time and attention to build trust. In some cultures it takes more time than in others. What are some of the proven strategies to facilitate this fundamental requirement for mentoring?
- Listening and Conversation. Listening is the one trait that mentees say they appreciate the most in their mentors. It is a basic requirement of conversation. Many mentors think they have engaged in conversation but actually what they been engaged in is a transaction. How can you elevate your listening skills and the level of your mentoring conversations?
- Establishing Agreements. Establishing agreements before you get into the work of mentoring assures mutual accountability for achievement of learning goals. A robust conversation about mentoring learning goals, ground rules and some of the softer issues in a relationship— topics like confidentiality, boundaries, and hot buttons go a long way in contributing to mentoring success and accountability. What is the best way to help a mentee formulate goals? What accountability assurances do you need to put in place to stay on track?
- Leveraging Difference. Understanding others begins with understanding ourselves. The good news is that mentoring is a proven strategy for increasing self-awareness – for mentees and mentors. What can you do to create awareness and leverage the unique skills, perspective and attributes of you and your mentees?
- Facilitating Learning. A mentor who knows how to support, challenge, and provide vision can facilitate mentee growth and development despite the obstacles that present themselves. Mentoring partners who are prepared to engage in a meaningful feedback process have a much easier time overcoming obstacles. How can you power up your facilitation and feedback skills?
- Coaching Skills. There are times when you need to bolster performance in the present to help a mentee move into a desired future. That is when coaching skills come to bear in a mentoring relationship. What is the difference between mentoring and coaching and how will you know how to balance the two?
- Honing Your Feedback Skills. The mentor’s role is to provide thoughtful, candid and constructive feedback. You will need to set the stage so that your mentee knows that feedback is an ongoing part of mentoring. You will need to give feedback and ask for feedback. Most importantly, you will need to role model all aspects of good feedback practice. How good are you at asking for, receiving and giving feedback? What can you do to improve your skills?
- Getting Unstuck. Every relationship faces obstacles at one time or another. The challenge is to overcome and learn from them. Mentoring partners who are prepared to engage in a meaningful feedback process have a much easier time overcoming obstacles. What steps can I take to address mentoring conflicts and stagnation without compromising the relationship?
- Identifying Resources You Will Need. Your mentee asks you a question you cannot answer. How will you help the mentee get what they need?
- Bringing Mentoring to Closure and Moving Forward. Closure presents a unique opportunity for reflection, growth and development for both mentors and mentees. If closure is to be a mutually satisfying learning experience, you must prepare for it. What can you do to help your mentee leverage his learning and make closure a mutually satisfying learning experience?
There are many factors to consider and moving parts at play when developing an effective mentoring program. Program administrators must balance their day-to-day responsibilities while making critical decisions that can make or break a mentoring initiative. Our Mentoring Excellence Masterminds Series for Program Administrators (PA MEMs) is designed to guide program administrators through these decisions, providing the expert support and just-in-time coaching they need to ensure mentoring success.
PA MEMs is for program managers who are interested in:
- Ongoing support that maximizes program success
- Professional development opportunities
- Just-in-time mentee coaching
This twelve (12) 90-minute live video conference series will address:
- Examining Your Role as Program Administrator. To be successful in your role as a program administrator you will need to continue to grow your knowledge, information and resource capability. Which skills and competencies will you no need to make a difference?
- Building Organizational Readiness. Organizational readiness is foundational grounding and stabilizing a mentoring program. What steps will you need to take to take to create mentoring readiness in your organization? What is your organization’s history and practice when it comes to creating readiness?
- Designing the Right Opportunities. Mentoring comes in many sizes, shapes and configurations. Which of these opportunities is right for your organization? What specific opportunities currently exist or are emerging to engage people in learning through mentoring?
- Creating Appropriate Support Structures. When readiness and opportunity are combined with support structures mentoring flourishes. What structures and practices currently exist that function particularly well to support learning in your organization? What additional structures and practices do you need to put in place to support mentoring?
- Creating Pairing Protocols. Thoughtful pairing is the most important element in making a good match. A committee can make the match or mentoring pairs can self-select. In either case the magic ingredient is a good learning fit. What are the process steps that need to be put in place to ensure good learning fit? What considerations need to be taken into account?
- Monitoring Progress and Measuring Success. Everyone knows that numbers speak louder than words. Measurement is also a great motivator. Think Peter Drucker: What gets measured gets done. And yet, when it comes to mentoring it is usually the last thing that gets done. What measures of success should you use? Who should be responsible for monitoring progress and measuring results?
- Aligning Your Efforts. Mentoring alignment is a continuous process and must constantly be maintained even after it has been well established. What are the key elements of alignment and what is the possible impact and result when it is missing? What elements do you need to address in order for your mentoring program to be internally aligned?
- Meeting with MAC, Your Support Team. Responsibility for implementation can be vested in a single individual or many. Conscious and careful selection, development and HR utilization are critical. What human resources presently exist in your organization that can be used to manage, administer and support mentoring? What more do you need to include? What are the competencies and capabilities of your mentoring team?
- Facilitating Roundtables. Mentoring roundtables are learning and support sessions designed specifically to promote active and timely sharing of best mentoring practices among a peer mentoring group (mentee or mentor). How do you set up roundtables encourages that encourage benchmarking of progress? How do you about facilitating the process?
- Creating Value And Visibility. Creating value and visibility for mentoring requires a solid strategy. How can your organization strategically add value for mentoring? What is the role of the leader and HR in stimulating value and visibility? How do reward, recognition and celebration help create value and visibility for mentoring?
- Coaching For Mentoring Excellence. Coaching for mentoring excellence helps everyone succeed by boosting the performance of your mentors, mentees, mentoring program managers. Who coaches your mentors? Your mentees? Your mentoring pairs? How and when should coaching take place?
- Recognizing and Addressing Stumbling Blocks. Safety nets can help you address potential stumbling blocks and roadblocks. What do you need to do to avoid them or deal with them? What processes do you need to create to help mentees and mentees address stumbling blocks. What are some of the roadblocks in your organization that may impede mentoring progress?
Delivery: 12 videoconferences over 4 months (3 videos per month for 4 months, January through April)
Cost: $1860 per participant
Q: Do I need to be present for all the calls?
A: We encourage live participation because it helps to get real-time feedback and create community. However, all calls will be recorded and accessible to participants in a secure online site throughout the year.
Q: What if I don’t yet have a mentor?
A: You can still join — and benefit from — Getting the Most from Mentoring, our Mentoring Excellence Mastermind for Mentees even if you don’t yet have a mentor. We are including our bonus webinar, 10 Best Ways to Find a Mentor, to help you find your mentor.
Q: I’m not in a formal mentoring program. Will this benefit me?
A: Yes! While many of our participants will be in a structured mentoring program, there will be others who are in mentoring relationships that they have formed on their own or through a program in which they participated in the past. The Mastermind Series is designed to benefit participants in both such situations.
Q: What else is included besides the Mastermind Calls?
A: In addition to the Mastermind Calls, you will have access to a secure, confidential online community of participants, all call recordings, and special content that will be curated for our Mastermind participants.
Q: How long can I access the recorded calls?
A: Calls will be available on a secure site for 12 months. I’ve been mentoring for years.
Q: How will I benefit from this program?
A: This program provides just-in-time support that can benefit new and seasoned mentors by offering tools and tips to build your mentoring competency, enhance the effectiveness of your current mentoring partnership and provide the tools to help other mentors in your organization.
Q: What if I need more support in between calls?
A: Participants can get insight from each other and from our coaches in between calls on our secure site. In addition to the just-in-time coaching on the mastermind calls, one-on-one coaching for mastermind participants is available for an additional charge.
Q: Will Masterminds be confidential?
A: Yes. All participants will be asked to sign a confidentiality agreement and access to our site is limited to mastermind participants.
Q:What is the cost of the Masterminds?
A: Please contact us for pricing.