How to have an effective mentoring relationship

A short guide for mentees

1. What is Developmental Mentoring?

Having a mentor can be one of the most powerful developmental relationships a person will ever experience. Hundreds of thousands of people from all walks of life and at all stages of their careers are able to point to deep, personalised learning they have obtained from a developmental relationship with someone of substantially greater experience, who has taken a direct interest in them.

Successful mentoring is a two-way learning relationship involving help, support, role modelling and some advice and guidance on the part of the mentor to facilitate the achievement of the mentee’s goals, and the development of both parties.

Developmental mentoring is characterised by:

A need by the mentee to achieve some form of change – for example, in their ability, their understanding, or their circumstances

A high level of trust and openness, which allows mentor and mentee to address difficult, sometimes uncomfortable issues

Being out of the authority line: mentoring relationships do not develop easily between line manager and direct report. This is why the Across Organisational Mentoring Programme is so useful. Effective mentoring relationships usually require the mentor to have little, if any, power over the mentee, or direct interest in their success

Generosity on the part of the mentor, in their time, energy and interest in the development of someone else

Recognition of the value of learning together, even though mentor and mentee may have very different levels of experience.

2. What is my role as a Mentee?

• Have clarity as to what both your expectations of the relationship are from the beginning, identify and initiate the learning goals
• Take ownership for yourself and your future – arrange the mentoring sessions
• Have a positive attitude towards mentoring and development
• Be open to feedback from your mentor and their ideas/ suggestions
• Have regular mentoring sessions with your mentor, show respect and don’t cancel sessions
• Keep a mentoring journal, reflect on and record key lessons learned and most importantly, ways to apply learning

Active use of these roles will enable effective mentoring sessions.

3. Roles of a Mentor include

• Helping identify and address my development needs
• Supporting me towards goal achievement
• Developing my capability by focusing me on goals/ realising my potential
• Listening and giving advice when appropriate
• Encouraging me to take ownership of my own development

4. Starting your Mentoring Relationship

Establishing the relationship

The mentor’s main concern is your personal development as a mentee, to help you develop yourself – but you must always decide the best solution for you even if it means challenging and confronting your mentor.

We would recommend that when preparing for the first meeting you start thinking about what you want the mentor to support you with.  The first meeting is all about establishing the ground rules for the mentoring relationship and exchanging relevant information.

The three main aims for the first session are:

a) Establishing rapport

Get acquainted by discussing each other’s background – tenure with your organisation, experience, motivation and interests to build trust and rapport. It is extremely important to spend a little time at the beginning to build the rapport and trust required to have meaningful and open and honest mentoring discussions.  In rare instances rapport cannot be built between a mentor and mentee and, if after 2 or 3 meetings you find this to be the case, please contact your AFP and they will try to rematch you, with no fault being attributed on either side.  To help build rapport with your mentor you might want to share information on:

• • your current job: what tasks are involved, what relationships are important, and how you feel about your role
  • the current climate within the team/department/overall organisation
  • your career plans/ ambitions

b) Confirm purpose of the mentoring relationship

By the first meeting you should have an outline of what your objectives are to be within the mentoring relationship.  Spend some time in this meeting outlining what these objectives are and why they are important to you, clarifying them with your mentor, and explore how they can support you in achieving them.

c) Build an understanding of what each should expect of the other

It is extremely important to have clear guidelines to underpin the mentoring relationship. Set out an agreement covering what roles and responsibilities each of you will have, and what commitment you are both making.

• • Estimate the frequency and length of mentoring meetings and try to book into your diaries in advance
  • Agree that you, as mentee, are responsible for booking meetings and agendas
  • Agree that you both will keep to arranged mentoring sessions and only cancel if unavoidable
  • Agree to review your relationship regularly and provide each other with honest and open feedback about your mentoring
  • Exchange preferred contact details – we recommend regular communication between sessions
  • Review your preparation work
  • Clearly identify your learning needs, goals and objectives and discuss the development plan and goals

Consider if there are any boundaries and topics that are off-limits in the mentoring relationship and agree them up front. Review if anything crops up during the relationship that should also be included.  Examples of this might include:

• the mentor will assist you in achieving your objectives and goals but you are in the driving seat and chose the way forward most suitable to you
• you will only enquire into each other’s personal life by invitation.

You might make notes of the issues that are being discussed or mentioned during the session, sharing them with your mentor if you wish.  This is a useful method to prompt you to keep track of problems that occur between sessions, and to reflect back on to see how you have progressed when similar situations arise.

5. Maintaining the mentoring relationship

It is suggested that you have mentoring meetings on a 4-6 weeks basis.

The subsequent mentoring sessions are for you to further identify and explore your development needs through your own analysis and insight; review any experiences or situations you have encountered since you last met to see what you have learnt, and how you will use that learning in future; and review progress against the development goals.

In order to gain the most from your mentoring sessions it helps to follow a structure approach, as described below:

Check In at the start of each meeting:

• • Follow-up on commitments and actions from the last session
  • Share your recent experiences (challenges, opportunities, and successes)
  • Explore recent issues and challenges together and discuss options and approaches. Your mentor may wish to share personal stories and anecdotes.

Development Dialogue:

• • Regularly review progress against the development plans/goals – you should monitor your progress and development needs
  • Assess the need to revise or update the plan
  • Identify development opportunities and solutions
  • Aim for self-management – the mentor’s role in the relationship is not to create dependencies by dictating problem-solving techniques and decisions for you. You are encouraged to manage the achievement of your objectives yourself with the mentor providing their experience as a source of ideas, from which you can choose whether or not to use them.

Check out at the end of the session:

• • Clarify any commitments made and anything that needs follow-up, and confirm next session date, time and agenda.
  • Your mentor may provide feedback throughout the mentoring relationship (with your permission), and you should take the opportunity to feedback too.
  • Provide feedback to your mentor on the process they use in the meeting, was it helpful? Are they challenging you sufficiently? Are they too directive, or not directive enough?

Personal reflection for mentees — after the first and subsequent sessions:

It is important for you to reflect after each session as to how you think the session went and you could structure it around the following questions:

• • Preparation for the session – was it adequate?
  • Purpose, desired outcomes – did the session achieve its aim? Did we discuss my goals?
  • What actions, if any, do I need to follow up on?
  • What have I learned? How am I going to use the learning?
  • Do I need anyone else to help me achieve the next steps?
  • What will I do differently/ better in the next session?
  • Are there any outstanding questions I need to raise again?