Thankful for our mentors
(Image Credit: Priscilla Du Preez on Unsplash)
Mentoring is extremely important to me. The gift of giving of your time as a mentor, helping others grow and develop is one of the most rewarding things I’ve done. And we always learn something from others. Have you had a great mentor experience? We’d love to know!
About a month ago we started our Monday Mentor Moments video series on Instagram Live. Every Monday at 10 a.m. EST I record a new video that focuses on one aspect of mentorship. I also challenge viewers to make goals, give feedback, and join the conversation.
If you have missed the videos in the Monday Mentor Moments series check out our Instagram page as well as the Monday Mentor Moments blogs on our website.
Below, we also give you a sense of the content from the first few videos. They focus on the importance of mentorship, making meaningful mentor/mentee connections, making goals, monitoring milestones and the types of mentorships. We encourage you to take up the challenge of becoming a mentor.
We are coming up on the Thanksgiving long weekend in Canada - a time to give thanks. For many this has been a challenging year and being grateful isn’t always easy. Take the opportunity to thank your mentor, mentee or those that have given time to you, advice, or inspiration. Our team will be enjoying the extra time off to rest, relax, and enjoy meals with a small group (keeping in our bubbles during the pandemic). So Monday’s video may be a quick one outside of the studio wherever Helen happens to be.
Take some time to watch the videos, or read the summaries below. Happy Thanksgiving!
Have you had time to mentor others? There certainly are many people who could use someone in their corner right now.
Some of the women I have mentored over the last year have been hit really hard by the pandemic. They are entrepreneurs whose businesses were impacted or HR professionals who had parents with Covid-19. There are so many stories of devastation and perseverance and resilience. I’ve been blessed to mentor these young women.
Having a mentor to help guide you or give advice is more important than ever.
I feel as though mentoring has lost its appeal or many haven’t had an opportunity to mentor others. This gift of giving back has been so rewarding for me. We can all learn from each other and grow.
Starting today and every Monday for the remainder of 2020 I am going to share some tips on mentoring and share some mentor moments. I hope it might provide some inspiration.
My first challenge to you is to start a new mentoring relationship. Ask yourself this - what knowledge or expertise do I have that I can freely share with others? Think about who you wish to help. Is it someone in your industry? Is it youth, or someone with a diverse background that hasn’t had the opportunities you have.
Then hop on your social media platforms and offer it up. For example, I may say something like “Hi there I’m looking to mentor a new HR professional for the next six months. I have a breadth of experience in the workplace including a background in HR and employment law. I’m specifically looking to help someone who is new to Canada or from a diverse background. If you’d like to connect send me a DM and tell me why you’d like to be mentored and what your number one goal is”.
Make sure you meet or chat virtually with a few people before you decide who to start a mentoring relationship with. One of the key factors for success is having a connection. Otherwise, it likely won’t be successful.
Once you’ve met with a few potential mentees and now know there is a connection with one and you are both committed it’s important you have a couple of initial meetings to get to know each other and formalize commitment.
I recommend that you have some questions prepared and I thought I’d share a few icebreakers.
You want to build trust and connection and conversation starters help ease the pressure of your first meetings with your mentee.
Depending on how well you know your mentee you might not want to start off with personal questions. Starting off with light and fun questions like, “What are some of your hobbies?” or “Do you have favourite books or movies?” helps. Remember to ask questions that can help both you and your mentee get to know one another, any mutual interests or areas of expertise that the mentee is looking to enhance.
The natural flow and good listening skills are important and authenticity is also key. Ideally, the connection is already there so it’s not uncomfortable.
Some other fun questions are:
What’s your favourite place from all the places you’ve travelled? Why?
If you could be on a reality TV show, which one would you choose and why?
I know it seems like common sense but it’s always important to be prepared. If you are part of a program at your workplace you likely will have this type of guidance. But if not it’s good to be prepared.
You also want to know early on what goals the mentee has and what they hope to gain from the mentorship? It’s important that the mentee knows that they need to lead the way and that the mentor is there for guidance and advice.
You can ask other colleagues or a friend for help if this is your first mentoring experience.
Set up a quick phone call or send off an email asking them about their experiences with first-time mentor meetings as well as ice-breaker ideas.
You can even reach out to a former mentee to get their thoughts on how well the initial meetings went and whether the ice-breaker questions helped with establishing rapport.
Overall, one of the first steps of mentorship is making sure you and your mentee feel comfortable enough to move forward with the relationship, and light and fun ice-breaker questions are one way of achieving that.
This week I challenge you to start creating some ice-breaker questions that you feel will help you to get to know your mentee without getting too personal. Make a checklist and give enough time to get to know each other.
Making goals and monitoring milestones
Today I want to discuss the importance of structure and setting goals for the mentoring partnership. First, be sure that your mentee is clear on what they’d like to accomplish. It’s a time commitment and while it’s nice to have chats and that’s important it’s equally crucial to set some milestones for your time together.
Is the goal to work toward a promotion or a career change? Or gain a new skill set? Is the purpose to work on communication skills or some financial acumen?
Similar to work or business objectives or development goals, this needs to be confirmed. I recommend having an agreement and many formal programs recommend this. The agreement sets out one or two goals, frequency of meetings, whether via phone or video and for how long. Is there freedom to communicate in between meetings and how? Is it okay to text or email if your mentee wants help with something?
Set the expectations up early on and make sure you have been clear on time commitment is this 6, 8, or 12 months?
Ensuring that there is a purpose for the mentoring relationship will help keep it on track. It can always evolve but it will be much more successful if you know where you going!
Structure and types of mentorship
It’s October and we are full-on into Fall here; it’s getting a bit crisper and the leaves are turning colours. A beautiful time of the year. We’re also heading into the Thanksgiving weekend in Canada. And I encourage you to take some time for gratitude every day.
Today I’d like to thank the many mentors out there giving their time and sharing their expertise with others. The gift of mentorship is one way to make a difference so I encourage you to become a mentor. Check out the first few sessions of Monday Mentor Moments to get you motivated as we cover off tips on how to start and stay engaged.
I thought I’d go back to basics and discuss some of the types of mentorship. Mentorship can be structured or unstructured, organic, or formal. That is the form of mentorship. For example, when I first left the corporate world and started down the path of entrepreneurship I worked with a woman I admired. She ran a company called Work-Life Harmony and we worked together on projects when I was at CIBC. What started out as a working relationship evolved into organic mentorship and soon became something more formal as I learned from her. We weren’t part of a corporate program where we signed an agreement or had set meetings. It was on-the-job everyday mentoring. You may have that already in your life and not realize.
Structured mentoring is the type of program you often see in many organizations but mainly larger ones where they put into place formal processes and measure outcomes. Either way, you still need commitment, goals, and follow up for it to be successful.
There are many categories of mentoring, from traditional mentoring to peer-to-peer to reverse and more. The majority focus on traditional mentorship. Generally, traditional mentorship is where a more experienced person will guide and give advice to someone with less experience. Picture the wise old owl who shares expertise with a youngling. Take Harry Potter and Dumbledore - yes I’m still a huge fan. On the face of it, Dumbledore is imparting his wisdom from learned experience to Harry. One of the organizations I mentor with is Futurpreneur, they provide mentors to young entrepreneurs in addition to funding. Not all of the experiences will be meaningful unless there is the right match.
In many companies, there are peer-to-peer mentor programs where colleagues mentor one another. One colleague may have expertise in marketing and another may be in finance, and they want to learn and develop from one another a different discipline. The peer-to-peer mentors are generally of the same level of experience within the organization and want to gain knowledge in an area outside their direct training and experience. These peer-to-peer mentorships should be guided in the same way as other programs. You can’t just leave people out there to figure it out on their own. You need to provide tools and resources to help them succeed.