Mentee needs

An understanding that mentees need to be motivated to continue to strive to achieve reasonable objectives and should never be given the impression that this lark is too difficult for them. 

Gender Ethnicity/race Personality Time issues Mentor s personal style Mentee needs... 

It is obvious that mentee needs will influence the outcome of a relationship. However, in addition to outcomes, mentee needs will also influence its dynamics. For example, can you imagine how different it would be to mentor someone who wants to become better at planning and organizing his or her job tasks than to mentor someone who wants to gain greater confidence in diverse work situations ... 

Having established the overall objectives for the program as well as more specific mentee needs, you and your team are... 

Another point to remember in mentor selection is that the mentors you want to recruit might be very different from each other, requiring distinct job descriptions and selection criteria. This is due to the fact that the mentor target groups (and their associated criteria) are determined by the organization s and the mentees needs and objectives, as well as by the mentoring schemes that were selected. 

Business-to-business - mentors with corporate managerial expertise are matched to the needs of owner-managers of small and medium-sized enterprises. Typically, the mentors focus on supporting mentees to enhance clarity and effectiveness in business. 

An individual learns through mentoring in a variety of ways -for example, by virtue of the various roles that mentors adopt. The following list, based in part on an analysis by Kathy Kram (1983), depicts some of these functions, but it is by no means exhaustive. The mentor s assumption of any one of these roles is largely guided by the mentee s needs, and this means that the mentor is unlikely to adopt all of these roles for every mentee. 

Written support packs and workshops were utilized to prepare mentors and mentees for the scheme. The support packs covered topics such as the skills needed for mentoring, the ethos of mentoring and information on its benefits, whilst the workshops were more practical in nature, addressing the following aspects ... 

For the mentors, skills training was deliberately omitted, since all of them were seasoned MDs who had mentored all their lives and who valued discussing their practice once they were immersed in it but did not seek disembodied training beforehand. There was also no skills training for mentees, but discussions were held before and during the scheme about their experiences and support was given where needed about how to get the best from their mentors. 

Clutterbuck and Megginson (1999) devoted an entire book to the challenges and practices of executive and director mentoring. In their book they emphasize that, although there are both national and individual differences, the specific needs executive mentees typically want to address show recurrent patterns, and these are shown in Table 3.2. 

Each mentee was allocated to a mentor drawn from the executive team (including the Chief Executive and Chairman). Pairings were based on the mentee s development needs, the strengths and style of the mentor, an avoidance of direct line relationship, and geographical feasibility. 

The mentoring pairs met up roughly every other month and the lifespan of the relationship was determined by the participant s feelings about the value that they were gaining from it. The mentor s performance was regularly reviewed by the executive team, and mentees were regularly surveyed to understand the impact of the program on their needs. 

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. 

The mentoring that is to take place after the assignment is crucial as well it is important to individuals to conduct a retrospective analysis of the experience on the basis of which they can draw out the main learning points. Mentees may want the opportimity to work out how they can leverage the experience gained abroad, and they need support in re-adjusting to their... 

The scheme to be introduced here simply revolves around the need for mentees to improve their competencies in a certain area. The focus of this type of mentoring scheme is often quite... 

The scheme is run in conjunction with the Advancement of Women Task Force (AWTF), a group dedicated to the progress of female managers. It is co-ordinated by Kristen Nostrand, P G Marketing Director, and a small team of mentors. As in most traditional mentoring schemes, mentors and mentees are matched on the basis of compatibility in terms of expectations, needs, personality and locations. The structure of the scheme is highly flexible so that the participants can respond to their own individual needs. A central coordination team ensures that the Mentor Up pairs are monitored and changed if the relationships do not prove to be successful. 

An enhanced understanding of the needs, aspirations and motivators of mentees. 

Relationships that focus on the long-term needs of mentees rather than short-term career goals. 

Is it compulsory that mentor and mentee meet as part of a larger organizational or govemment-fimded program If so, then the mentoring relationship may become artificial and unrelated to the real needs and interests of mentor and mentee. This in turn will affect motivation and commitment and, ultimately, the outcomes of the relationship. The issue of compulsory versus voluntary participation in mentoring relationships will be discussed in detail in Chapter 8. 

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