Behaviours mentee

Supporting the mentee through organizational and personal change - for the mentee, this can be a difficult and even painful experience involving the discarding of many well-established mindsets and behaviours a mentor s support is very much needed to maintain direction and motivation. 

While there was little observable behavioural change among mentees (it was far too soon in most cases), most were actively working on specific goals. 

Some mentees were much more comfortable discussing technical issues, but a lack of deep rapport made it difficult for them to open up on behavioural topics. 

The next section entails a description of effective mentor characteristics, which is mainly based on research conducted by David Clutterbuck over several years and involving many mentoring pairs (Clutterbuck, 2000). Following this, mentee characteristics and behaviours that help mentees to gain the most from developmental mentoring relationships are outlined. Destructive mentee behaviours will also be considered. The last... 

Effective mentors have a portfolio of models that they can draw upon to help mentees understand the issues they face. These models can be self-generated (i.e. the result of personal experience), drawn from elsewhere (e.g. models of company structure, interpersonal behaviours, strategic planning, career planning) or -... 

In contrast to the above, the following constitutes a list of mentee behaviours that do not promote effective mentoring ... 

Table 5.2 Useful mentee characteristics and behaviours for developmental mentoring...

To benefit from mentoring relationships, mentees also need to display a range of characteristics and behaviours that enable this to happen. These include an internal locus of control and its behavioural manifestation of taking charge of the mentoring relationship. Furthermore, an interest in developing themselves and the ability to respect confidential information are also important. 

That said, like mentors, no mentee is perfect either. In selecting mentees for your scheme, it is therefore pivotal to be on the lookout for negative mentee behaviours as well as the positive characteristics - be cautious about choosing mentees who display too many of these to too great an extent ... 

Besides asking mentors about business problems that can be solved analytically, mentees tend to discuss ethical issues with their mentors. It is on these occasions that mentors can contribute to the health of society they should raise mentees ethical and moral sensitivity. They ought to demonstrate the value of ethical behaviour for business success and depict the downside of unethical actions. 

Emotional instability - displaying depressive, aggressive or simply moody behaviour is a taboo for mentors. They must learn how to manage their emotions so as to be capable of providing mentees with the calmness, patience and reflectivity that is required of them. 

Patronizing behaviour - even if a mentor has had more experience and acquired more knowledge than a mentee, there is no need to be patronizing or condescending. This will only serve to reinforce any potential insecurities that mentees might harbour, rather than help them build their self-confidence. In extreme cases, such behaviour might even lead to the premature break up of the relationship. 

As with mentors, there is a range of behaviours that mentees should not display. You might want to remind mentees of these. As stated in Chapter 5, these entail ... 

People might be subjected to discriminatory behaviour on part of their mentor or mentee, and two types of relationships are most vulnerable to this occurring ... 

Chapter 5 takes a close-up look at mentors and mentees - for example, it details the mentor and mentee characteristics and behaviours that support and hinder successful relationships. It also draws attention to the roles and responsibilities of mentors and mentees. 

These considerations are, of course, equally valid for an increase of self-efficiency in students and mentees. The results of participant observation and coaching performed during die summer semester 2010 support the quantitative data. They provide the connection to die design of the module and prove, that the construction of the course and student-centered teaching behaviour enable students to act in self-regulated learning (cf table 1). 

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