Mentoring in front of us or behind us?

Society today is rediscovering that the process of learning and maturing needs time and many kinds of relationships.

The resurgence of mentoring in almost every occupational field and area of life is a response to this discovery. "Please mentor me," is the spoken and unspoken request
expressed by so many. What do they mean? How do people get into it? …
 
Mentoring is as old as civilization itself. Through this natural relational process,
experience and values pass from one generation to another. Throughout human history, mentoring was the primary means of passing on knowledge and skills in every field in every culture. But in the modem age, the learning process shifted. It now relies primarily on computers, classrooms, books, and videos. Thus, today the relational connection between the knowledge and experience giver (mentor) and the receiver (adept) has weakened or is nonexistent.
 
They are talking more about coaching than mentoring in my country and we have a lot of certifications in coaching, but none in mentoring. Probably is it because mentoring is based on volunteering but in the future we have to get some more structure in the business. Write articles, blogs and use the media. And then we have to make some certification rules. It is a important job.
My shortest training would be a 3 hours training in “The Big Five” and even with little time to practice the tools, the participants was very happy.
So if anyone of you have some stories about mentoring you would like to share, send it to me and I will post it on my blog. Together we can make mentoring better for more people and their careers.

Trainings in Trondheim

Some of the adepts in TrondheimAs I told you before I went to Trondheim in Norway to hold two seminars. Both for the participants in JCI Evolutions Mentorprogram for young people in Young Enterprice Norway.

On saturday we started at 10 am and were working with strenght, posibilities and SMART-goals up to 16 pm with all the adepts in the program. They were very interesting in the subject and real active all day. This is going to be the platform for further development trough the program and especially for the AM-meetings (Adept and Mentor meetings) every month.

Oh I love to meet so many positive and active young people and spend time with them, I actually learn as lot as them.

On sunday we started at 11 am to train all the mentors, from businesses around in the county. They were also very positive and active through out the wholde session, working with «The Big Five». Tools for AM-meetings.

I look forward t be hearing from the project group next time.

Sertified D.I.S.C analyst

Today I got my sertification on using the Thomas International Personal Profile Analysis (PPA), www.thomasinternational.net. The test provides an insight into how people behave at work answering questions such as – what are their strengths and limitations? Are they self starters? How do they communicate? What motives them?

I am going to use it in matching criteria, not the whole test, but a smaller version. But it is going to be fun to have this tool to do so.

Check it out, it`s maybe something for you to.

Please if you have experience with DISC as a tool, or some other types of tools, write something here about it.

“The Big Five”

Right now I sit and work at my mentoring seminar, called the big five. That relate to the most important mentoring tools you can use as a mentor.

The five tools are:

  1. Active listening
  2. Effective questions
  3. Feedback
  4. Be responsible
  5. Recognition

And for the next week I am going to conduct the seminar both in Oslo and then in Trondheim in Norway. At the seminar in Oslo I have help from a good partner Kai Roer. You can learn a lot at his blog at www.bebetter.no about training. He is a very active trainer across europe.

The Big Five is also in my book for the mentors.

ooVoo the next evolution in online communication

ooVoo has many great features — from video calls with up to six people at once to video messaging to chat and file transfer capabilities. This could be possibilities to have mentors also far away, and for mentors to have more adepts at meeting the same time. Click the link for some of the highlighted features http://www.oovoo.com/

This is a recommendation from Krishna De (in the article «Ten tips for finding a mentor»), I have not yet had time to try it out.

Good luck and please come with feedback!

Ten Tips For Finding A Mentor

Krishna De wrote in the Sunday Times article 7. of september (http://www.krishnade.com/blog/2008/howtofindamentor/), that one of the suggestions she made to enhance your presentation skills is to work with a mentor.

But what can you do if there is no formal mentoring programme in your company?
Where might you start in finding a mentor to support your career progress?

Here are 10 tips to help you find and get the most out of working with a mentor:

1. Consider why you are looking for a mentor – Is it about helping you progress your career? Do you want to expand your knowledge into a different sector? This will help you focus on finding a relevant mentor.

2. Explore what you are looking for in a mentor – Are you looking for someone to be a great sounding board? Do you want someone that is willing to share their personal experience and expertise? This will help you be clear in your communication as you approach a potential mentor.

3. Review how important it is to have a mentor close to hand – The experience and personality of your mentor is going to be a factor when approaching someone. But how important is it for you to find someone to work with face to face – or would you enjoy working with someone by phone, by Skype or even by video conferencing making use of the new social media platforms such as Oovoo.com?

4. Take stock of what you will bring to the mentoring relationship – Are you committed to taking action? What specific experience have you had that might be of interest to a mentor? In successful mentoring relationships, both the mentor and the mentee find value in the relationship, so get clear about your unique experience that will enrich the relationship between you and your potential mentor.

5. Review your immediate network – Who is it that you already know that you trust and value? Is there someone in your workplace you could approach? Perhaps your mentor could be someone you have met in a professional network you are a member of? Or could your mentor be someone you have worked with in the past? Take the time to consider all the people you already know as a potential mentor as that will make it easier for you to approach them.

6. Focus your approach – Before approaching a potential mentor, do your research. Who do you know that has worked with the potential mentor? What’s their view on how open, challenging yet supportive this person may be? Ask for advice on how to best approach the potential mentor.

7. Prepare for the meeting – Once you have identified one or two people you would like to consider to be your mentor, approach them one at a time and request an exploratory meeting either by phone or face to face. If the potential mentor does not know you, is there someone who can make the introduction for you? Make sure you have your updated CV available to provide background detail on your career to-date.

8. Outline an agenda – Keep your request for an initial meeting to be around 30 minutes – this meeting is to connect you with a potential mentor and not a first mentoring meeting. Your goal is to outline why you are looking for a mentor and to explore if they might consider being your mentor. Don’t put your potential mentor under pressure to make a decision immediately – they may need to reflect on your request given their other commitments. Also look at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Dp9YdNZVGA&feature=related for how to break the ice.

9. Follow up after the meeting – After the meeting take time to follow up with the potential mentor, perhaps by sending them a handwritten note thanking them for their time meeting you. If the person you approached is not able to be a mentor for you, you could engage their support in finding a mentor.

10. Take action – If you have found a mentor to work with, then plan your first meeting and schedule it in the calendar. You can then prepare a draft agenda covering the subject areas that you would like to cover in your first meeting such as confidentiality, the way you plan you connect, how frequently you want to meet and the scope of what you would like to discuss. Seek your mentor’s input to the draft agenda – preparing for the meeting will ensure that your mentor sees that you committed to the relationship with them and will help get you off to a flying start.

Apply these ten tips and you’ll be sure to find a mentor to support you in expanding your professional success.

This article was initially published as part of a feature in Marketing Age titled ‘Get Thee A Guru’ which you can access HERE : http://www.krishnade.com/media/20080630-Marketing-Age-Get-Thee-a-Guru.pdf

My book project

I am writing two books about mentoring. They are handbooks for the involved part in a mentoring relationship.
I have learned in my years working with mentoring that both adepts and mentors don`t get the full potential out of the time they spend together.
The reflection part and the overall perspective is less because they take easy on the fact that writing down all thoughts is important.
It is important if you want personal growth to take notes. So my project is to find some tool to make it more easy for both adepts and mentors.

I am writing one book for the adept and one for the mentor. Mentoring is an exciting topic and it is easy to find a lot of material, but more difficult to select the most important.

Care to comments or tip me of topics you are more than welcome

Are You ready to get a mentor?

The popular advice is «find a mentor».
But before you get one you should ask yourself «How ready am I to be mentored»?

Your readiness will have a significant impact on how successful and productive the mentoring partnership will be.

Follow the link and take this quiz that will give you a start in assessing your readiness..

http://www.coachingandmentoring.com/Assessment/ReadinessToBeMentored.htm