Preparing for your mentoring session
Featured in the Proactive Interviewee Skills training manual
By Beverley Williams
Category: Recruitment, Selection and Induction
Credit price: 3 download credits (Single user)
Mentor appears in Greek mythology as an elderly friend and counsellor of the hero Odysseus, and tutor of his son Telemachus. The key elements of the original Mentor – friend, counsellor, and teacher – still apply to the role as we know it today. Formal mentoring of potential high fliers, to enhance their future career prospects and provide corresponding benefits for the employing organisation, is becoming more common. The primary purpose of the mentoring relationship is to give the mentee the opportunity to benefit from the experience, wisdom and guidance of the mentor. However, this does not mean that the mentee takes a passive role. On the contrary, an involved, committed, proactive and participative mentee will inevitably gain more from the mentoring process than one who does not have such a commitment. This training activity introduces participants to the concept of mentoring and guides them through the preparation stages to enable them to gain maximum benefit from each mentoring session.
You open the training activity by eliciting ideas on the origins of the word ‘mentor’ and briefly discuss the concept of mentoring. The participants think about what the organisation expects to see as a return on the investment they make in supporting a system of mentoring. The participants work in pairs to generate ideas on the attributes the successful mentee needs to bring to the mentoring relationship. You then run a group brainstorm to identify potential mentoring preparation agenda items. The participants work in small groups or pairs to refine the preparation agenda for their own use. Using their own current personal situations, they then do some ‘live’ preparation work using the agendas. Following a recap of the training activity, you take one or two key learning points from each person before distributing and commenting on a key learning points handout where appropriate.
Who is it for: This training resource is intended for use by trainers to introduce mentees to the concept of mentoring and guides them as they develop a preparation agenda that will ensure they are able to gain maximum benefit from each mentoring session.
| Resource Type: | Activity |
| Min Group Size: | 4 |
| Max Group Size: | 10 |
| Typical Duration: | 01:50:00 |
| No of Pages: | 15 |
Resources: View standard resources for Fenman training activities
Purpose: This training resource is intended for use by trainers with participants who are currently, or will be, receiving formal mentoring. Ideally, this training activity would take place after mentees have been introduced to their mentors but before formal mentoring session have begun. However, it can usefully be run even if mentoring is already underway. Another very effective application is for this training activity to be delivered on a 1:1 basis by the mentor at an early stage in the mentoring relationship. It is an excellent idea to run your mentors through this training activity, to keep them fully up to date with the messages the mentees will be receiving. It can also work well if the mentors and the mentees work through this training activity together, not least as an icebreaker for them. However, there is a danger that the mentees will not contribute fully in these circumstances and so you will need to make a careful assessment of the personalities involved before going ahead with this possible use.
Download the training activity, Preparing for your mentoring session as featured in the Fenman training manual; Proactive Interviewee Skills