The first thing to say is that mentoring is not coaching. A mentor is not there to become another member of staff; they are there to help you realise your own full potential. In places, the difference is subtle, but the approach and execution of the support is very different.
You will not be told what to do, but your mentor will help you to explore the options open to you. Help you to create strategies to explore those options and provide examples from their own experience, and those of their network, to assist the mentee creating a viable pathway.
What’s the Problem
Most people seek mentoring because they have a problem, in the first place anyway. So, the first step is to get to know each other, each other’s businesses, and what the mentee believes they are lacking. The more the mentor and mentee get to know each other the more effective the mentoring process is likely to be.
It could be that there is more that you, as a mentor could help with, but start with what they have on their list of things to obtain support for. The list may be very short, or very long. Some very successful people in business have had mentors to help them to improve an element (or elements) of their personal attributes, or those of the business (or a particular part of the business).
The role of the mentee is to help them learn what can be shown as examples of atypical behaviour and then apply it to their situation. The role of the mentor is to provide a variety of different styles that the mentee can research and decide which one to follow.
The Situation
Every person I have mentored has been in a different situation. Has had different goals. Has had varying degreed of difficulty in applying standard techniques to improve their situation. The conversations between mentee and mentor are to establish how any one of these “off the shelf” techniques might be able to become worth while once it is adapted for their own situation.
This is the key point. The situation of the mentee is what drives the mentoring partnership forward. Their needs always come first and only when they are satisfied with progress do you move on to the next topic, or element of the mentoring partnership.
Whatever happens, the mentor follows the lead of the mentee. The trick is that the mentor has the background to slip in other thoughts as follow-ups that could be very important to the mentee. Always finish the main topic before moving onto the next.
The Partnership
I have unashamedly used the word partnership a few times already. This is what the mentor/mentee relationship is all about. Forming a partnership, of sorts, to help the mentee over the hump, or humps, they perceive are holding them back.
We are great believers that if you really want to listen to someone it must be to understand their position. It doesn’t matter if your beliefs are the same as theirs. What is vitally important is that you both want the mentee to reach their goals.
As a mentor you may not be able to make the difference on your own. Sometimes the mentee needs specific, and detailed, help in a subject that you are not a specialist in. Here the mentors role changes a little as they should signpost specialists they believe would be best placed to provide them with the push to help them in any particular area. Your role then becomes one of helping the mentee to see how the new information can be best used.
Not everything will work first time, and it is important for the mentee to share with their mentor when things do not fit with their idea of things. This is natural, even in a long-standing mentoring relationship.
Summary
The key thing here is that there is seldom a way that people can be pigeonholed when it comes to mentoring. Each person’s situation is different. Their immediate need is different. Their outcomes are, more often than not, different.
The mentor/mentee relationship is one that grows over time. This is why some relationships that start as a 9- or 12-month programme continue for many years. Some don’t as once the mentee has got what they need they can move on and re-use the techniques they have been shown to become self-sufficient. Others like to have the shared brain capacity, or the alternative thoughts of an experienced person, to help them navigate to their perceived outcome.
The most important thing is to remember that there is not only one way. Alright is an old saying, but there are “many ways to skin a cat”. Not a great pictorial reference, but it is true.
To create something beautiful it may be the end result looks like you have made your own personal garden with the pathway winding through picturesque beds.
The outcome and the journey are equally important as the mentee may discover there is more to their business than they thought.
If any of this leaves you with un-answered questions, we would be pleased to help in any way we can. You can contact us through email on enquiries@eyebray.com, by phone on 0743211611, or even try WhatsApp https://wa.me/447943211611 . You could even book a meeting directly with me here: https://meetings.hubspot.com/eyebrayltd to see when I am free.
