10 Professional Mentoring Activities that Boost Mentee Engagement
Mentoring activities can be structured or unstructured. The most important thing to remember, however, is that whatever mentoring activity you engage in should be fun for you and your mentor, while also serving the goals of your mentoring human relationship.
1. Kickoff your mentoring relationship with coffee (or tea)
A great way to begin your relationship with a mentee is to take them out for coffee. The focus of your first mentor meeting should be to found a baseline for your relationship. Getting to know each other in a casual setting will help your mentee release some tension. It's not uncommon for mentees to enter the relationship feeling stressed, specially if you're more a more senior individual in the organization.
And then why coffee or tea? Aplenty enquiry shows that caffeine does more just give us energy, it can actually aid relieve stress. Combined with a less formal environment like a local coffeehouse or tea store, and your mentee will experience far more comfortable with you and with your mentoring human relationship from the start.
While we suggest you do some goal planning during your showtime mentoring session, information technology may be a good thought to spend some time just getting to know each other. Keeping on the theme of casual, try focusing on informal discussion topics focused on building trust.
2. Have a goal planning session
Every good mentoring relationship should take measurable goals. That doesn't necessarily mean you need to pull upwards a spreadsheet and start gathering hard data. Qualitatively-measured goals are often just as proficient every bit those tin can be measured with numbers. But you and your mentee will have a hard fourth dimension tracking any kind of growth if y'all don't begin the mentoring relationship with a articulate set of goals.
In that location are multiple ways to establish goals, but we recommend you try Existent goals. These are goals that are:
- Relevant
- Experimental
- Aspirational
- Learning-based
Try to let your mentee lead the style in developing these goals. It may assist if you requite them some thinking questions if they're struggling to create acceptable goals. Y'all may even propose some yourself. Chiefly, work together to create a timeline for each of the goals yous create. Just make sure you and your mentee are realistic regarding what is achievable inside the timeframe of your mentoring relationship.
3. Create a vision argument When Bill Gates helped institute Microsoft in the 1980s, his vision argument for the company was elementary: "A computer on every desk in every home". Elementary and elegant, right? What's more, it was certainly realistic, fifty-fifty if difficult to attain. Much like goals, vision statements are something to be achieved. But they're more than that. For a mentee, they should encompass the totality of what that mentee wants to reach as a total sum of the mentoring relationship. The individual REAL goals may be the keys toward achieving that, but the vision statement is the terminate result of all of those goals working together. | 
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Much like goals, vision statements are something to be accomplished. Only they're more than that. For a mentee, they should encompass the totality of what that mentee wants to achieve as a total sum of the mentoring relationship. The private REAL goals may exist the keys toward achieving that, but the vision statement is the end issue of all of those goals working together.
Creating vision statements is a fun action for you and your mentee to work on together. Yous can even share yours (or create your own with your mentee). The vision statement should be aspirational, but realistic. Importantly, information technology doesn't have to be something that can only be accomplished through your current mentoring relationship.
4. Do a mutual job shadow
Job shadowing is an interesting mentoring strategy that hands predates structured mentoring programs. The format for job shadowing is elementary: Have your mentee "follow" you throughout the mean solar day to run across what work looks like from your perspective. For younger employees, this kind of experience can be invaluable. They'll gain more respect for your office and the work involved in information technology, and gain valuable insight into the skills and behaviors necessary for success.
This activeness works well with targeted mentoring formats, likewise, such as onboarding programs, succession planning, and high potential employee programs. That said, it'due south besides perfect for reverse mentoring programs, too, allowing more senior-level employees to meet their work environment through the eyes of junior-level employees.
As with any activity, job shadowing should be more only a looking activity. Go in with questions you want answered, then take a follow-upwards conversation that takes into consideration how what yous or your mentee observed tin work toward existing mentoring goals.
In case yous're wondering: Job shadowing still works in remote environments! Simply add together your mentee to your coming together schedule (on mute and equally an observer, of course) so they can see you in action.
5. Roleplay
You'll find roleplay is a bang-up fashion to help your mentee exercise skills they want to acquire through the mentoring relationship. Roleplaying is a long-established and well-researched pedagogical practice that helps the learner stride outside of themselves and helps the instructor get a better view of how the learner has progressed or where improvements may be needed.
For example, in a reverse mentoring relationship where an executive is attempting to larn more most DEI from a inferior-level employee, roleplaying conversations can go a long mode to helping the executive better sympathise how to accept sometimes difficult conversations about race or gender.
The biggest hurdle to roleplaying can be the comfort level of the private being asked to roleplay. Try to proceed the scenario simple, and every bit all-time you can, work inside the comfort level of the individual. Ultimately, though, the goal of roleplaying is to get someone out of their comfort zone.
6. Talk over goal-related news or events In most cases, your mentoring human relationship and your mentee's goals are non totally unique. News, studies, surveys, and more may striking the headlines and be fantabulous provender for mentoring human relationship discussions. We recommend you scan the news (and have your mentee do the aforementioned) for information related to the mentoring goals that can aid bolster the success of your relationship and give you more to think virtually. Technology has come a long way, so you don't have to do this the difficult way. Set upwards topical RSS feeds using tools similar Feedly so yous can let the topics come to you lot, allowing yous to pick and choose what to talk about with your mentee when something interest pops upwards. |  |
seven. Read a book together
Similar to reviewing interesting news and research together, reading a book together is a skilful learning activity for you and your mentee. You lot'll probably have no problem locating books that fit inside the learning goals of your mentoring program, or that your mentee has stated are important to learn as part of your mentoring human relationship.
To help keep the conversation flowing and expand on what can be learned through the book, effort reading ahead and creating discussion questions . Depending on how much further ahead you are than your mentee in the book, you lot may even want to send your mentee topics to expect for or chapters yous recollect they'll find interesting or useful, or supplementary material for them to consider as they work through the volume.
8. Attend a virtual or physical conference together
Reading a book together is a long-term goal. In the brusk term, you and your mentee can engage in a common learning action through virtual or physical conferences. Inquiry conferences that align with your mentee'south goals, and offer up a few suggestions. And so, work together to fit omnipresence into your schedule and attend the conference together.
Equally a follow-up, have meetings that give your mentee a take chances to talk over what information was gained from the conference, how it aligns with their mentoring goals, and how that data tin be put into exercise.
The type of conferences you attend will depend on a big number of factors, including time commitment, cost, and alignment with the purpose of the mentoring programme or mentoring goals. To that cease, yous may need to be highly selective of the conference you select.
9. Conduct a résumé revision session
One time your mentoring relationship nears its finish, your mentee should hopefully have obtained some verifiable skills, experiences, and knowledge that can transfer well to a résumé. A adept way to commencement closing out your mentoring relationship is to have a résumé revision session that assesses what needs to be added to or updated on your mentee's résumé to reflect this growth.
Studies still indicate that hiring managers spend less than 10 seconds on each résumé. How can what you and your mentee worked on exist incorporated into their résumé to maximize this small corporeality of time?
In case you're wondering, helping your mentee update their résumé is non counterproductive to reducing turnover. Yes, some workers volition accept what they learned through professional person mentoring activities and leverage that to get a chore elsewhere. Merely many will instead employ the updated résumé update as a manner to boost their own confidence and every bit a reflection activity that helps put a bow on their personal and professional growth.
What's more, résumés remain important for young professionals applying for internal positions inside their company. Assuming your organisation does a fair amount of internal hiring, you may want to assist your mentee create an internal résumé from scratch instead of simply attaching what was learned during the mentoring relationship to an older résumé.
10. Create a networking effect for your mentee
Helping your mentee expand their network is probably one of the nearly valuable things y'all tin can do as a mentor. That'due south especially true for younger employees. Around 35% of Millennial and Gen Z workers who quit shortly after getting hired did so because their visitor didn't requite them a clear pathway for career advocacy. Office of that comes downwardly to having access to a larger network and career pathing.
Creating a networking effect can is a good fashion to send off your mentor in the best way possible. Introducing them to your network:
- Puts them on the radar of other executives and managers
- Establishes relationships betwixt them and potential future mentors
- Allows them to put some of their newly-acquired skills into practice
- Boosts their conviction
- Helps them visualize a clearer pathway for their own career
At that place are some generational differences when it comes to networking that may be important to understand, too. The whole concept of networking can feel dirty or sleazy to younger workers, leading many to avoid information technology altogether. By creating a networking event on their behalf, or making the networking more subtle and coincidental, you tin help them overcome many of these challenges.
Additional Action Ideas for Mentors and Mentees
As a bonus, here are a few additional action suggestions that you may want to consider adding to your regular mentoring engagements.
1. Ted Talks There's a reason whyTed Talksuses the tagline "Ideas Worth Spreading." These quality videos provide good insights and approaches on topics of all types. I feel pretty confident you tin can find a Ted Talk on a subject that relates to your mentoring relationship goals or involvement areas. - Mentors: Practice yous take a favorite Ted Talk? Suggest that your mentee sentinel it, and and then discuss it together. What made it then special to y'all? How tin can information technology pertain to your mentoring relationship?
- Mentees: Don't wait for your mentor to point y'all to a specific Ted Talk. Get explore the options available and picket some that interest you. Use them as a starting point for a chat with your mentor. Focus on what resonated with you and how that could impact the piece of work y'all are trying to do through mentoring.
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2. Professional Networks
Become it out of your caput right now that a single mentor can provide all the information and wisdom that a mentee needs. This is a fantasy. People needmultiple mentorsthroughout their lifetime; different people can provide advice on unlike aspects of the mentee's work and life.
- Mentors: Use your professional person network every bit a resource for your mentee. Is in that location a particular person yous know who is great at X, Y, or Z? Could they provide your mentee with some wonderful insights into an area that might be outside of your comfort zone? Consider connecting the 2 of them and so that they can talk.
- Mentees: Use your mentoring human relationship as an opportunity to build your professional network. Is there someone in your mentor's network who might exist an expert on a topic related to your mentoring goals? Enquire your mentor for an introduction. The worst they tin say is no.
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