Myth:
The mentor is done learning and know everything and adept is there to learn.
Fact:
The person who thinks he is finish learning is finish. The mentor also has to work hard to develop his competence. Mentoring is mutual learning.
Mentor prepare yourself
Good mentoring relationship starts with preparation by both parties. As a mentor you should be as aware as possible of what you have to contribute and how your potential contributions can match the needs of the adept.
The adepts too, might prepare a list of questions about what they hope to get out of the mentoring relationship.
The following checklist will give you an idea of the things you will benefit from clarifying as a mentor:
- What carees ecperiences have helped me most in my own professional development?
- What were the most important lessons learned from those lessons?
- What «truths» would I want to pass on from those lessons?
- If I were to contribute one quotation to my own book about succeding in this organization, what would that quote be?
- What have mentors done for me and my development? What kinds of mentoring experiences have been most helpful to me?
- If I had the power, what would I change about any of the mentors I have had?
- How relevant do I believe my experiences and my professional learning will be to the development of my adept?
- As a mentor, how would I like to be remembered?
Trainers in Europe
Right now I am working, together with Kai Roer (www.bebetter.no) on a really exciting mentor program, for trainers in Europe. Junior Chamber international (www.jci.cc) is a worldwide organization for young leaders between 18 and 40 year.
They operate more and more like a professional training organization and aim to continuously develop new and young trainers by coaching and providing opportunities to train with more experienced trainers.
And I am developing a mentoring program to increase the number of trainers in Europe in 2009. In short we provide a trainer (adept) with a more experienced trainer (mentor) to help the adepts further in their trainer career. Especially for trainers who wants to train outside their own country. We put the adept and mentor together and train the mentors to be a good mentor in seminars across Europe in 2009.
Hopefully we get as much as 30 adept and mentor pairs (our goal) working together to boost their training career.
I will post more about this and if you have any question write them her at the mentorguru.info
How to implement peer to peer mentoring
This is a good step by step guide from the Mentoring specialist Judith Germain on how to embed a peer to peer mentoring programme within an internal comms department.
Read more her http://maverickmastery.com/leadership/how-to-implement-peer-to-peer-mentoring/
Anyone care to comment that one?
Myth about mentoring #3 ADVICE
Myth:
The mentor is giving advice and the adept listen.
Fact:
Mentoring is about getting others to succeed, guide, give support and help to network.
Mentoring is about getting others to succeed, guide, give support and help to network.
A good mentor can make the difference in navigating your professional path
This is so thru and what it`s all about. Taylor Lindstrom writes about how mentors can help with career development in San Francisco Chronicle (www.sfgate.com).
Taylor Lindstrom writes about how mentors can help with career development and Kathleen Pytleski, senior vice president of Mentium (www.menttium.com), a mentor-mentee matching company, recommends that employees find a mentor who has the skills that they may not already have. «Look for someone who has a skill set you want to develop, someone whose talents you admire. “This person’s a good leader — I want to be a good leader like that”, she says.
Because mentors can provide excellent counsel, companies often provide a formal way for junior employees to partner with senior-level staff. However, seeking a mentor within one’s own company has both advantages and setbacks.
The New Style of Mentoring
In many ways, today’s mentoring relationships function quite differently from those of the past.
In the traditional style of mentoring, the primary goal was a one-way transfer of a broad range of knowledge or information. The mentor was the authoritarian source of this information, and directed all other aspects of the mentoring relationship. The mentee was a passive recipient and often had little say or control in the relationship. The relationship lasted for a set period of time, and a mentee would have only one mentor. Mentoring would only occur on a face-to-face basis.
Today many mentoring relationships have evolved to become more focused on learning. Unlike the traditional model, learner-centered mentoring is a dynamic and two-way relationship that involves critical reflection and full participation by both partners. The mentor assumes a role of a facilitator. The mentee becomes a proactive and equal partner, helping direct the relationship and set its goals. The mentee can also have multiple mentors over a lifetime, and even concurrently. There will still be face-to-face interaction, but mentoring can also occur by telephone, e-mail, or other means.
There is no right way to mentor. Every mentoring relationship is as unique as the individuals involved in it. However, no matter who the individuals or what shape the relationship takes, setting some goals and completing some groundwork can help create a stronger and more productive relationship.
Myth about mentoring #2 GENDER
Myth:
The mentor is a man and the adept/mentee are a women.
Fact:
Gender is immaterial, women are as good mentors than men. It`s all about the genuine interest.
Why Mentoring is Good for the Legal Profession
Some say that mentoring not only benefits the individuals involved, but also pays dividends for the profession as a whole. F.ex. even laywers who are just starting out at a law firm or lawyers who are moving into a new area of practice can learn from the experience of others through a mentoring relationship.
If you practice in a law firm you likely take for granted the fact there is a confidant down the hall who is instantly and easily accessible if a question arises. If you are a sole practitioner, you will appreciate this is a luxury that you don’t have. Mentoring can help newly called lawyers get a leg up on the incredible amount of learning that lies ahead. Law schools and bar courses simply cannot impart the skills and experience that are critical for practicing law proficiently.
No matter what the background of the participants, a mentoring relationship can accelerate the process through which critical skills are gained and can help prevent mistakes. When individual lawyers more quickly increase their skills to become an integral part of the profession and the administration of justice, the profession itself benefits.
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.