Mentoring

Summary
An important part of an overall mentoring program is help mentors develop the skills they need in order to provide maximum value in their working relationship with their mentees or protégés. Our two-day workshop for mentors focuses on the specific process skills that will enable mentors and mentee-designates to get to know and trust each other; understand each other's dominant operating style and preferred style of mentoring; and develop actionable mentee development goals.

The retention of talent, plus the passing on of corporate knowledge in order to bridge the past to the future, requires that successful employees coach others. Effective development is a shared process involving input and participation from both the mentor and protégé and it can be a natural process but it is not easy. Effective mentoring requires a unique skill set. The mentoring process is based on trust and influence, guidance versus direction. Mentors must get to know their protégés well enough to decide how much they should be involved in giving specific directions about career or behavioral changes and mentors must be able to recognize when a protégé’s need for direction has evolved into a need for coaching, counseling, or observation and validation. This program will provide participants with an opportunity to learn how to connect with and effectively guide a protégé through their development experience. 

Course Outcomes
The goal of the program is to assist participants in identifying ways to improve as mentors, and build a stronger mentoring process for the organization. Participants will:

  • Define the roles and responsibilities of mentors and protégés and be able to distinguish mentor’s responsibilities from those of supervisors or managers;
  • Identify the role of mentoring in the organization’s career development program;
  • Identify specific strategies and techniques that lead to a successful mentor-protégé relationship;
  • Learn to use a variety of mentoring styles and practices in working with protégés;
  • Utilize a feedback model to enhance communication with the protégé; and
  • Develop personal action plans to identify specific steps that will establish and maintain a successful mentor-protégé relationship. 

A structured feedback instrument entitled The Mentoring Relationship Survey provides both individual and group data needed to monitor and manage the overall mentoring program in your organization. Guided exercises enable each mentor to inventory protégé development needs and specific mentor expertise, identify key protégé development goals, and build a unique Mentoring Action Plan (MAP) that enables them to pull the greatest possible value from the mentoring relationship.

Why should you consider this program?

Because critical job skills can often only be developed through guided, ongoing support on the job by qualified and committed mentors—and because the success of mentor-mentee pairs requires training and preparation to enable them to become effective learning partners.