Mentorship Program Guide

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7 years ago

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Mentorship Program Guide

Implementing a mentorship program in the workplace can be a powerful way to offer career guidance enabling your company to meet its defined operational goals.

It improves employee satisfaction, retention and recruitment, but it can also, be used to:

Promote and increase diversity in the workplace,

Help new hires acclimate to their new roles quickly and more confidently,

Assist in identifying and grooming high-potential employees.

The program fosters networking opportunities and exposure beyond the high potential employee’s day to day scope (such as different levels of leadership, departments, and perspectives on the organization), in addition to helping to foster cross-functional thinking, engagement, and retention.

Employees will usually be assigned a mentor for 2 years with regular, structured meetings and subsequent informal communication points, positioned to benefit both the employee and the mentor in gaining new perspectives.

The mentor acts as a trusted counselor, or guide, who assists the mentee in setting and achieving goals for developing career direction and skills.

By participating in a mentorship program, mentors develop valuable skills that can further their personal and professional development. The relationship between mentor and mentee requires honest, openness, commitment, and effort by both individuals.

In a mentoring relationship, mentor and mentee:

Identify objectives and goals, and developmental needs,

Define and establish a plan to accomplish mentee goals,

Meet regularly in person or via phone (Skype/Zoom) or email to review and evaluate progress.

This program is a tool for leaders to create developmental opportunities for high potential employees through 1:1 career conversations. The program can then be evaluated for consideration of a broader roll-out.

Criteria

It is often said that the most important work of a manager is the development of his or her employees. When articulating the mentoring objectives, the mentoring team needs to use goal formatting and link the SMART goals to the company’s defined business objectives.

Through the partnerships with the People Operations team, mentees and mentors will be selected based on the opportunity, qualification process and criteria.

Communication

Communication is important, and the program’s progress and metrics for success should be reported at every step, from the needs assessment stage to debrief. Ongoing communication will also help identify interested mentors and mentees!

The program should be introduced to employees at all levels.

Everyone should understand the mentoring program’s goals and objectives.

All employees should also know which employees are eligible and how someone can sign up to participate.

Tools

The mentorship program requires planning, structure, management buy-in and follow-through.

Evaluation

Upon completion of the program, there will be many people within the organization who have are interested in the mentoring program’s effectiveness. By analyzing the different metrics, the success of the program will be adequately assessed.

Mentorship Program Guide For Mentors And Mentee’s

You may find it useful to be mentored (or coached) at different stages of your career – perhaps when you are new to a company; perhaps in transition between jobs in a company; or when wanting to progress or change a direction.

But what is mentoring?

A Mentorship Program provides opportunities for mentors and mentees, to experience, share and learn from each other’s gifts and talents.

Championing or sponsoring someone’s professional progress;

Providing advice and support; and

Listen, question, and challenge individuals encouraging them to find job/career answers and determine actions.

The way mentoring works will depend on the mentee’s individual objectives, although it is possible that all the points mentioned above will play a part in your mentoring at some stage.

What will happen is based on the mentee’s individual objectives, and the first step in the process is for you and your mentor to set out and agree upon expectations, objectives, and all mentoring aspects.

A successful mentoring relationship benefits you by increasing your confidence and getting a sense of career direction. Providing a risk-free learning environment in which you are offered career guidance.

Mentoring is NOT:

On-the-job-training,

A guarantee to a successful career,

Necessary for everyone,

Casual and friendly advice.

The mentor’s role:

A mentoring session is a time in which a mentee has permission to concentrate on and talk about him/herself. This list summarizes what can normally be expected of a mentor whose role is to support a mentee’s personal and career development:

Listening actively with interest,

Manage the mentoring sessions, while encouraging the mentee to take responsibility for the content,

Use tactics, such as challenging a mentee who is not sufficiently focused, encourage the mentee to take ownership and respond appropriately,

Help the mentee to see the bigger picture,

Helping a mentee to reframe how he or she views something, or to consider a different perspective,

Taking an interest in the mentee's progress.

The mentee’s role:

Within the company mentorship program and mentoring relationship, a mentee is expected to be:

In control of the agenda, taking responsibility for your own development, rather than expecting ‘quick fixes’ from the mentor,

Committed, taking the actions planned with the mentor,

Prepared to be challenged,

In a professional relationship with the mentor.

Although a mentor can suggest growth opportunities and career guidance, the mentee is ultimately responsible for his or her own career development.

How often and for how long to meet

About once a month for about an hour is generally considered to be the normal arrangement.

How many meetings / how long should the mentoring program last?

Again, the usual cycle is about 12 meetings over 12 months, but this may vary.

You may also want to consider whether to set dates and times for all the meetings at the beginning of the process, or to set each one as you go along.

Where to meet

Consider whether ‘meeting’ by phone or virtually through something, like Skype might be appropriate for you. How much communication do you expect between meetings? How will you communicate?

What will happen if one party is unable to make a scheduled meeting?

Who will be responsible for keeping notes on what is discussed and what actions are to be taken?

The Mentoring Process & Expectations

The mentor is responsible for holding the process and the mentee for working on the content. This is a flexible definition and it depends on how you have agreed to work together.

What is important! Is that you work to establish a relationship that is based on mutual respect.

What should the Mentor do?

Develop awareness by showing different paths.
Develop strategic views of the organization and culture.
Reflect on attitudes, skills and patterns of behaviors and how it may help or hinder success.
Think, analyze, and probe for meaning.

Provide a risk-free environment in which to share frustrations or difficulties.
Appraise the mentee’s behaviors and how he/she may be perceived by colleagues.
Be neither a critic nor judge, but a candid and honest mentor.
Provide specific feedback to support the mentee’ s personal growth.

Motivate enthusiasm and initiative.
Provide new insight and vision.
Advocate for your mentee
Explore opportunities for specific learning experiences.
Champion the interests of the mentee for visibility and exposure.
Support the mentee’s ideas to people that have the authority to implement them.

Share intuitive knowledge of how things really get accomplished.
Provide information and specific data from personal experience and activities.

If this is the first time that you have been a mentor, it might be helpful to talk about what you might expect with someone who has more experience!

What should the Mentee do?

Do not expect the mentor to solve your problems or provide quick fixes.

The purpose of mentoring is for you to work on your professional development.

Be open to developing your self-awareness.

This does not mean you have to agree with it!

It does mean you should receive the advice, reflect upon it and decide later whether you agree and whether to act on it.

Reflect between sessions on what has been discussed.

Take the action agreed.

The first meeting…

It is worth thinking about these aspects in preparation for the first meeting, so as to be clear about expectations.

Discuss these questions first!

Mentee

25%

What are your objectives for the mentoring? If these are not entirely clear do not worry, but discuss why they may not be clear with your mentor.

55%

What do you hope to get from the mentoring process?

75%

What do you hope or expect to get from your mentor in relation to your objectives?

90%

How will you know and measure whether objectives have been achieved?

Mentor

25%

Are you clear about what the objectives are?

69%

How much ‘work’ are you happy to do for the mentee between meetings?

75%

What other boundaries do you have?

Both

15%

An understanding of confidentiality is essential to the process being productive.

43%

What is your individual understanding of what confidentiality means, and do your ideas align with each other? How will you manage it if they do not?

71%

Unless otherwise agreed or discussed, confidential issues are not to be shared outside the context of the Mentoring Relationship!

94%

How will you manage things if either of you wishes to end the mentoring relationship before the agreed time?

Lastly, throughout the mentorship program it is possible that issues will arise, it is important that you remain open in these circumstances and consider whether it would be appropriate to review and revise the mentoring agreement together, or finalize the program. Whether this happens, or when te process comes to its natural end, ensure that the relationships are reviewed.

Celebrate the progress and achievements made!

Mentorship Agreement

Every mentoring relationship is different. From when and where you meet to what you talk about, YOU decide with your mentor what will work best for your mentoring relationship.

This will help you get you started on your way to a great relationship!

Our goals for this mentoring relationship are:
Our expectations of how we will achieve these goals are:
How we will record and monitor our progress:

Meeting times (frequency and duration)		Methods of communication
Weekly	15 minutes	In Person
Monthly	30 minutes	Phone / Skype, Zoom (video)
Lunch or Breakfast	45 Minutes	Email
When I need Advice	1 Hour	WhatsApp/Voicemail
Other	2 Hours	Other

Optional activities that we will do together:

Attend departmental and company events,

Attend seminars, online webinars or lectures,

Read and discuss a professional book.

Some questions for you (the mentee):

This will help your new mentor align her/his mentoring style.

Describe a successful Mentoring experience you have had.

What were the attributes of the relationship that you found most helpful?

How did you benefit from the mentee – mentor relationship?

Some initial questions for you both:

What behaviors are you intending to work on during the course of the mentoring program?
What specific career objectives are you intending to focus on?
What specific personal objectives are you intending to focus on?

Confidentiality

We agree to keep everything that is said within the mentoring relationship confidential.

_______________________________ ___________________________

Mentee Signature Date: