Mentoring helps you view the organization with a fresh eye toward its functions, politics, and culture. You may, for example, gain a new understanding of how people from different generations or backgrounds approach their work and careers. Also, many mentors say they get personal satisfaction and fulfillment from their mentoring relationships. If you’re feeling burned out or cynical, mentoring can boost you and your career.
The benefits of mentoring are well known: It gives less experienced employees valuable feedback, insight, and support while passing down wisdom and institutional knowledge.
Establishing Psychological Safety
Do not Judge
Empathize: Identification with and understanding another’s situation, feelings, and motives.
Acceptance is the key
Leading by example
Being Assertive
When we judge, we lack empathy. When we judge, we see others from our point of view, completely missing their point of view. Have a balanced approach. To mentor, to coach, you must look into their world; you have to give up your assessments and opinions. You listen with complete attention if you want to build trust with your mentee.
The knowledge shared by Fred Kofman in these videos brings you many aspects of conscious working. Also, the content will help you mentor/coach in different situations and deal with people.
Update the details of which topics you would want to mentor for in the Peer mentorship Cockpit.
Mention the number of hours you are available each week/month to mentor.
Create your ReadMe Doc and update in the Peer Mentorship Cockpit
Take this test https://www.16personalities.com/free-personality-test
Once you have a mentee, share your ReadMe Doc and personality type with them.
Ask your mentee to take the Personality type test and share their results. This will help us understand each other better and hence set clear expectations.
Steps to initiate and execute Peer mentoring:
Set up a call with the mentee and understand the specifics of the mentoring requirement
Understand how many hours of coaching is required and schedule accordingly, decide mutually on the frequency of calls (if more than one meeting is required)
Create content for coaching in a Gdoc or Confluence
Create a ticket in Jira for mentoring
Record, log, notes in the Jira ticket
Once coaching is complete, update in Mentee requirement Tab (in the Peer mentorship sheet) as Done with the date (with comments, if any), and close the Jira ticket.
Regularly check the Peer mentorship cockpit; someone could have mentioned you for a new mentoring request.
On day 1 of each month, update your availability to mentor for the month and hours you can invest.
Do: Be clear where the line is drawn between your responsibilities and those of their manager.
Do: Agree on goals for the mentoring relationship from the outset and put them in writing. Frequently go back to your goals to measure progress.
Do: Remember that mentoring is a process with a goal. Have a fun relationship but don’t get off track and lose sight of goals.
Do: Act like a colleague first, an expert second. Strike an open and warm tone so your mentee will feel they can ask you difficult questions and take risks. Listen as much as you speak so that their questions and aspirations are always the central focus.
Do: Set realistic expectations. You can provide your mentee access to resources and people, but make it clear you do not wield your influence over others – coach as you can, but the mentee needs to do their work.
Do: Listen, listen, and then listen some more. Hear the concerns of your mentee before offering advice and guidance. Establish trust and openness in communication from the start.
Do: Recognise that the mentee’s goals are their own and may have career goals that differ from their chosen path. Your role as a mentor is to guide; it’s up to the mentee to decide what to implement in their career.
Do: Recognise that women and other minorities within the organization sometimes face additional barriers to advancement. Educate yourself about the issues. If you want to learn more, ask for advice and support via the appropriate Diversity, Inclusion, and Belonging channels.
Do: Keep an open mind. If you are a man mentoring a woman or a mentee from a different ethnic group, be aware and respect their experiences, ideas, and goals. Cross-gender and cross-cultural mentoring relationships can be very enriching and successful. Still, it requires open dialogue about how gender and culture influence your mentee’s work in the organization and the mentoring relationship itself.
Do: Educate others within the organization about the advancement of women and other under-represented groups. Approach managers and other team members and mentor them on being effective managers or colleagues to those who might have different experiences.
Do: Teach your mentee how to become a mentor themselves – by example and encouragement.
Mentoring is being discussed in https://axelerant.slack.com/archives/C1W8BBRDH. If you become a mentor or mentee, it is recommended that you also join this channel.