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!
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.
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.
