Helping your people achieve their potential, build relationships & develop professionally

Mentoring enables one person to help another achieve their potential by sharing experience, listening and guiding.  It’s a one-to-one relationship between mentor and mentee based on trust, confidentiality and equality.

The driving force of mentoring is the relationship between the two people involved in the learning process.  The underlying effectiveness of the learning process comes from the dynamics and the quality of this relationship.  Mutual trust, respect and open communication are the foundations.

Through establishing a consistent approach and style for mentors and mentees based on research, the relationship will typically evolve through four stages.

Initiation: It is important for the two people involved in the relationship to clarify the goals, objectives, process and the length of the engagement. This helps give the engagement a structure and both parties have a common understanding and expectations of the desired outcomes and plan of action.

Cultivation: Guided by the objectives, the two parties work together to determine and carry out the plan of action and build the mentor-mentee relationship. Actions and activities may include such things as: dialogue, observation, role plays or brain storming.

Separation: At this stage, the two parties decide to end the mentor-mentee engagement, hopefully because they agree that the mentee has met the task or skill objectives set at the outset.

Re-definition: At this stage, the two parties seek the answer to the question “how are we going to be now?” To avoid false expectations or disappointment, they discuss the nature of their relationship moving forward.

Every mentorship should include an evaluation process. If the mentee completed a self-assessment at the beginning, the results can be used to do a final appraisal of how the mentee grew. The evaluation should always be put in writing, to give the mentorship finality and formality. There should be an opportunity for both the mentor and mentee to say what they would do differently next time, what worked, and what didn’t.

Fostering an effective relationship between the mentor & mentee

In order to facilitate the relationship between the mentor and mentee and create greater understanding of the different work styles different psychometrics can be used to indicate the different styles and approaches that the mentor and mentee may take to problems.

Mapien has a team of Psychologists who are accredited in a number of different tools and will work to ensure any programs are tailored to incorporate the preferred tools of the client.

Mapien recommends a co-design approach to help identify the tools that best align with existing activities already undertaken to ensure the program is tailored appropriately.  This process has been very successful in several mentor programs and has helped facilitate greater understanding between the parties at the start of the relationship.