The mentors of each of the functional communities are typically

Summary. When we’re feeling drained, mentoring is one of the tasks that tends to fall by the wayside. But mentors don’t have to burn themselves out to be helpful and effective. This approach, called “fuel-efficient mentoring” by the authors, suggests how to be a mentor in an efficient manner that benefits mentees, growing their confidence and their network, but also conserves your energy. First, define boundaries and expectations, recognizing your own preferences; second, set a time budget that mentees can draw on; third,reconsider how you structure meetings with mentees and try group conversations; fourth, try virtual meetings; and finally, look for ways to turn other commitments, such as professional events, into mentoring opportunities. The endless string of demanding tasks at work can leave us running on empty — deadlines, meetings, projects, and ongoing training modules all demanding our effort and limiting our time to refuel. As an energy-saving measure, we may cut corners. One task that commonly falls down on the priority list is mentoring. While In the face of a pandemic with no end in sight, we must preserve our fuel supplies while we mentor others. It is possible to be a mentor in an efficient manner that benefits mentees, growing their confidence and their network, but also conserves your energy. We call this an approach we call fuel-efficient mentoring. The goal of fuel-efficient mentoring is straightforward: to become a more adept mentor with an even larger gr...

Mentoring is any form of social learning where someone with more experience (a mentor) helps guide the learning and growth of someone with less experience (a mentee). There are common, but completely understandable confusions on what mentoring is, how it differs from other types of learning engagements, why it matters, and how to even get started by either finding a mentor or launching a mentoring program. If you’re beginning your journey through mentoring, you’re in luck! This page is a hub for mentoring and will lead you right to other important topics on both the purpose of mentoring and the unique approach to learning that exists within mentoring relationships and programs. 🙌 Hey, HR Leaders and Admins! Mentoring programs can reduce employee retention by 50% or more. Our What Is Mentoring: Mentoring Defined in Simple Terms The best way to define mentoring is that it’s a 1-to-1 engagement between a learner (the mentee) and a more experienced individual (the mentor) who shares knowledge and guidance around a specific need. However, even as we say that that’s the “best” way to define it, note that a 1-to-1 engagement is the most common but not the only way to structure a mentoring relationship. You can find more on that below in the section on “Mentoring Formats”. Let’s visualize what mentoring might look like for you here with the following scenario: When someone is starting a business for the first time, they may seek the advice of a more experienced business owner as a...

Mentoring works. That’s why 71 percent of Fortune 500 companies have workplace mentoring programs. But mentoring programs need good mentors. Did you know there are at least eight different mentoring styles? No matter what style of mentoring fits your personality, being an effective mentor is easy and worthwhile. Why are mentors so important? Mentorships are beneficial for participants and the organization. Being involved in a mentorship presents an opportunity to grow, learn new things, practice skills, and build your professional network. When asked how mentorship has helped her throughout her career, “Seeking out a mentor and establishing that ongoing relationship has been monumental in scaling my confidence. Not only has it contributed to accelerated skill growth, it has also given me an opportunity to demonstrate how quickly I can apply new concepts with someone in the trenches. My mentor can both vouch for me in the future to others and has expressed wanting to work directly with me in her business. It's a win-win-win.” In one study. Ninety-seven percent of employees believe that Silvi Specter, Director of marketing at “I don't know what I would do without my mentor. She gives me objective, clear guidance on all of our marketing activity, and is a crucial resource for me to stay confident as a leader and reach my goals. Mentorship is important to my career because it enables me to learn and grow and become an expert in my domain. My mentor gives me resources I need to...

Summary. People who have strong mentors accrue host of professional benefits including more rapid advancement, higher salaries, greater organizational commitment, stronger professional identity, and higher satisfaction with both job and career. But marginal or mediocre mentoring plagues organizations. Prospective mentors often are randomly selected or told to participate with little or no training and leaders fail to reward mentoring, so it is seen as an onerous add-on duty. Organizations that want to improve theirmentoring programs should start with who they select to be mentors. Competence in the role requires two things: functional mentoring skills, which can be taught, and foundational virtues and abilities that mentors should already have. Look for the best-suited employees to serve as mentors and then give them the preparation and support they’ll require to achieve genuine expertise in the role. After five decades of mentoring relationship research, the evidence is irrefutable: people who have strong mentors accrue a host of It is little wonder that prospective employees now prioritize the availability of mentoring in Fortune 500 companies offer mentoring programs of some sort. However, there is little evidence these programs are having broad impact. A If there is a single, consistent Achilles heel in organizational mentoring structures, it is real work leading to pay and advancement. What’s more, too often program leaders erroneously assume that any successful manag...

In 2006, American Psychological Association (APA) President Gerald P. Koocher, PhD, convened a presidential task force on mentoring to connect psychology graduate students and early career psychologists with more experienced senior psychologists in a range of mentoring relationships that cut across areas of scientific and professional interests. The mission of the task force was to work with organizations and individuals to facilitate mentoring relationships both formal and informal; and to leave structures in place that will sustain mentoring as an integral part of being a psychologist. To accomplish this goal, the task force created a training program for potential mentors and mentees that is appropriate for State, Provincial, and Territorial Psychological Associations and Divisions. A pilot mentoring program is being launched at the 2006 convention and if it proves successful, a broader program may be established. A long term goal is to establish web-based networking for the APA membership. Further, the task force hopes these efforts will inspire diverse educational, research, and policy outcomes. To gather support for this endeavor, the task force established partnerships with the Policy and Planning Board as well as other boards and committees. They sponsored special programming at the 2006 convention that stemmed from this initiative. This Introduction to Mentoring was produced as a general guide for prospective mentors and mentees who are interested in engaging in p...

“The more I give my teacher-power to students and encourage them to take more responsibility for their own learning, the more they show me how to redesign my ways of teaching.” — Howard Rheingold, “ Howard Rheingold has been a champion of peer-to-peer learning for years. Howard’s ideas are often in my head, milling about with Lev Vygotsky and social theories of learning. When I set out to design a As background, writing mentors in our program begin training with an upper division course called In the large freshman composition course, mentors write alongside the students, read alongside the students, and sometimes complain about the work alongside the students. They function as peers, near-peers, more capable peers, and sometimes as instructors. The mentors sit with their small groups of 10 freshmen when we meet together in the large class, and the mentors lead two-hour workshops each week with their small group as well. In addition, the mentors and I meet for two hours each week where we often discuss “mentor identities” and think about the affordances of various ways of being. For example, we know there are times when it is helpful for a mentor to commiserate with a student about procrastination or share a time when they too struggled with an assignment. Other times, it is helpful to the group if the mentor can function more like a teacher, perhaps reminding a student that it is disrespectful to the group to show up late. Based on our exit interviews with freshmen, the s...