Making the most out of your mentoring

To get the most from mentoring, there are a number of important considerations, including what do if it’s not working.

Before you become a mentee, you should clarify:

  • your development goals
  • how you will use your mentoring sessions to help you reach your goals
  • how you will know if the mentoring relationship is working
  • what a successful outcome means for you
  • whether you need any agreements from your mentor, e.g. levels of challenge, confidentiality agreements, meeting arrangements, etc…
  • the type of support that you require from your mentor (e.g. sounding board, providing feedback, challenging your limiting assumptions, providing alternative perspectives…)
  • whether there are any barriers that will prevent you from getting the most from mentoring, and what you can do to overcome them
  • what to do if the mentoring relationship doesn’t work

How to identify a good mentor

  • If you’re not part of a pre-defined scheme, you should research potential mentors within and outside your network. Ideally meet informally with a few potential mentors to see who you have a good rapport with.

    If you are part of an organised mentoring scheme, be clear and specific about your mentoring requirements to assist in the mentor matching process.

    If your mentoring requirements are diverse, you may need to consider having more than one mentor in order to meet your needs.

    Ask yourself:

    • What do I need to know about my mentor?
    • What they need to know about me?

Starting your mentoring relationship

  • In your first mentoring meeting, have an open discussion about what you hope and expect to achieve. Agree practicalities such as meeting times, duration of relationship, contact between meetings etc.

    Be open and honest with your mentor as they can only help you based on the information that you choose to disclose.

Once your mentoring relationship has been established

Provide honest and constructive feedback to your mentor about how the mentoring sessions are working for you.

It is vital that you keep to your commitments, follow through with agreed actions and be proactive in your development, both during and between mentoring meetings.

How to tell if your mentoring relationship isn’t working

Hopefully you will find yourself in a productive mentoring relationship that is rewarding for both mentee and mentor. However, mentoring arrangements can and do breakdown for a variety of reasons.

Signs that a mentoring relationship is not working:

    • mentee/mentor cancels appointments, fails to turn up or regularly rearranges last minute
    • mentee/mentor consistently fails to make progress on actions identified in meetings
    • mentee/mentor appears distracted in sessions or cuts sessions short