Prioritising Mentee’s Objectives

Usually setting objectives is one of the first tasks in the mentoring relationship and will set the direction for the mentoring pair. Sometimes the mentee may have too many areas they want support with and, if this is the case, the mentor needs to help them in prioritising them down to maybe two or three.

Also, as the relationship progresses, circumstances may change for the mentee and the objectives might need to be reviewed and amended to meet these changes.

If the mentee’s objective is long-term, then this will need to be broken down into the steps needed to achieve it, and the full objective may not be expected to be achieved with the one mentor. If this is the situation, when the smaller step is close to being achieved, the current mentor can support the mentee in looking at who/where to get the support they need for the next step(s).

Prioritising

Tools to help prioritise goals involve discussion between mentor and mentee and some reflection on the mentee’s part. Here are a couple of suggestions to try out and you may know of others to use also.

Weighting exercise

One way is for the mentee to ‘weight’ their objectives by giving them a numerical or alphabetical score to determine importance to them. The mentor’s role is to discuss and question why they have given the score. They might also be able to offer some insight on how long it might take to achieve and whether it is within the timescale of the mentoring relationship.

After the initial weighting exercise, the mentee re-evaluates the list and puts it in order with the highest scoring objectives at the top. The mentee then agrees the objective(s) they wish to work on within the mentoring relationship.

Change Balloon Technique

The mentor has a large sheet of paper on which a hot air balloon is drawn. The mentee is asked to list all their objectives on a separate sticky note for each and stick them to the basket of the balloon.

Then, the mentor points out that the balloon has a leak. A sandbag must be thrown overboard – which one will it be? As the leak worsens, more and more sandbags are jettisoned, in order of least importance, and placed in a pile. When only two are left, the mentor asks “Do these intuitively feel the highest priorities for you?”.

The pile of objectives that have been jettisoned can be revisited later if required as they are now in priority order.