Mentoring Training

SETA accredited Mentoring Training Course: Facilitating, implementing and administrating a Mentoring programme in your workplace.

This accredited course can be used for applications, for example an application to the Department of Mineral Resources for a Mine Engineer’s Certificate of Competency requires the applicant to include a certificate of competence as a mentor.

The problem with mentoring programmes:

Good mentoring relationships have the potential to change people’s lives for the better, forever. Yet, these vital relationships often flounder before they have had the chance to have their effect.

Here are some reasons why:

  • Day to day work pressures see Mentors and Mentees stop meeting after a while and the personal and professional goals they hoped to achieve don’t materialise
  • Mentors and Mentees go through the motions of completing the administrative requirements of their relationship without getting into a dynamic results-producing phase
  • Mentors and Mentees lose their way and it becomes unclear what they are supposed to be doing

 

So what needs to be done?

One proven way of making mentoring work is to:

  •  
    • Appoint a professional mentoring programme facilitator, and thereby ensure you avoid the common mentoring mistakes;
    • Continuously discover and nurture talent within your organisation.

Why clients like working with Executive Coaching and Facilitation:

Our experienced facilitators work easily and comfortably across all levels within an organisation. They are helpful in facilitating a mentoring programme that works well and delivers expected results.

Executive Coaching and Facilitations was founded in 1999 and we have been working in the field of mentoring ever since. We have dedicated ourselves to assist organisations to create powerful, easy to maintain and effective mentoring programmes.

FAQs

What are the duties of the mentoring programme facilitator?

  • Ensures the objectives are stated quantifiably and determines to which extent they are being achieved or not
  • Provides guidelines, which mentors and protégés use to determine the way of working and expectations for their own relationship.
  • Ensures the relationships are working and achieving productively
    Communicates knowledgeably and continuously to the programme champion/sponsor
  • Is available as an information /materials resource (time management, negotiation skills, influencing strategies, conflict management skills, empathy, assertiveness, stress handling, diversity sensitivity, confronting skills, giving recognition, creating motivational environments, listening skills. Etc.)
  • Is a courteous reminder for meetings, commitments, objectives, deadlines, milestones, checkpoints and corporate values.
  • Participates in review meetings to track progress
  • Encourages
  • Provides coaching and mentoring and giving feedback skills where needed.
  • Helps word agreements
  • Facilitates team building, or joint events and workshops with all mentors and mentees
  • Challenges partnerships to stretch
  • Notices if partnerships are faltering and proposes alternative arrangements in such cases
  • Assists with evaluation at the end of the period

How does your organisation stand to gain by introducing a mentoring programme?

  • It’s a cost effective way of developing company-specific skills without the cost of training courses
  • A less experienced person can become productive quickly by a overcoming a protracted learning curve
  • Costly mistakes can be avoided when mentors point them out proactively
  • New recruits stand better chance of being vested well
  • The organisation enjoys better communication through its different layers
  • Healthy networks and friendships are formed which lead to better co-operation
  • Jaded experts can enjoy a resurgence in motivation when their skills and know-how are used and appreciated by others
  • Good staff can be retained better
  • Specific targeted groups can be identified and developed at a fast pace
  • An organisation can become a learning organisation with pooling, growing and transferring its wisdom
  • The gap between training courses and degrees can quickly be transformed into something of value by real world application
  • Talent is not wasted but nurtured, developed and retained
  • It can help individuals in an organisation overcome their reluctance to change
  • Succession plans can continuously form
    Benefiting participants can develop a sense of loyalty to their organisation

What motivations are there for mentors to participate in a mentoring programme?

  • ​Personal and job satisfaction
  • Being recognised for their experience and knowledge
  • An enhanced feeling of self worth as they help develop others
  • It’s an opportunity to ensure the mentor is indeed at the forefront of his or her game, or if not, it’s a wake up call to update
  • The opportunity to encounter fresh perspectives

What kinds of people make good mentors?

People who:

  • Have a positive mindset towards being a mentor
  • Who have skills and experience to pass on to others
  • Like interacting with others
  • Have strong interpersonal skills
  • Are patient
  • Have respect in the organisation
  • Have good communication skills
  • Have a good knowledge of the organisation and are bought into its values and strategic objectives

What is expected from the mentees?

  • To carry out tasks, assignments and projects within agreed upon time frames
  • To seek guidance in his or her professional development
  • To set out to achieve new skills
  • To apply the skills
  • Act on expert advice
  • To maintain confidentiality

What are the risks to watch out for?

  • A lack of commitment from managers, mentors and mentees
  • Mentees who see being mentored as a right to which they are entitled
  • An absence of a system with accountability and monitoring
  • Burdening participants with a paperwork overload
  • A lack of training
  • A lack of consultation during the evaluation stage of a mentoring programme
  • Ineffective consultants and facilitators
  • Unclear goals and expectations
  • A resistance to change
  • Inflexibility and with diversity
  • Poor selection of Mentors
  • Gatekeepers such as PA’s, supervisors
    Line managers who resist their reportee spending time with a senior person
  • A culture of mistrust and suspicion

Considering that there is seldom a perfect match, who works best with whom?

People who are geographically close

  • People who can work together easily
  • Personalities that click
  • When both parties had some choice in the matching arrangement
  • Cross functional mentoring makes for more relaxed relationships than career specific mentoring which can be to be stressful

What considerations need to be taken into account when introducing a mentoring programme in an organisation?

  • Is there a senior manager who will actively champion the project, and possibly be a mentor as well?
  • Is there agreement by necessary stakeholders that mentoring activities will be taking place across reporting lines and across departments?

Which stakeholders need to be consulted to ensure a successful mentoring programme?

  • Exec
  • Line managers
  • HR department

How do mentors and mentees decide which are the key areas to focus on?

  • Ask: What are the strategic areas the organisation wishes to excel at?
  • Which skills will enable that the organisation to achieve its strategic goals?
  • Mentors and mentees need to focus on those key, high leverage skills and work out specific objectives to enable the organisation to achieve its strategic goals

To what extent are the processes documented?

To a great extent, Documented events include:

  • Strategic objectives as communicated to mentors
  • Records of goals agreed upon
  • Records of meetings and review meetings

Who are the mentors accountable to?

  • Exco
  • The senior Mentor Champion

If mentors are selected for their expertise and experience, what do they need to learn from a facilitator?

  • How to conduct the goal setting conversations and review
  • A skill set grouped as “Emotional Intelligence”
  • How to foster discovery and growth in the mentee
  • Skills relating to giving recognition, assertiveness
  • Coaching skills
  • How to work within the limitations and parameters of a mentoring programme
  • Maintaining rights of mentees and mentors

Does it make financial sense: What is the possible return on investment?

  • Compare the cost of just one bad appointment and the need to make a reappointment
  • Try and put a number to the cost of a labour dispute, low morale, high absenteeism, high wastage and high mistakes
  • Try and put a Rand value to the protégés being a bottom line expense, versus being contributors to the organisation achieving strategic outcomes and goals

What are the next steps?

  • Establish a steering committee of managers and interested stakeholders to whom mentors will be accountable
  • Decide on implementation structures
  • Approve a budget
  • Appoint a programme facilitator
  • Clarify the strategic expectations from the mentoring relationships
  • Identify mentors and mentees
  • Match mentors and mentees
  • Train all the necessary participants
  • Mentors and mentees jointly agree upon specific goals they will achieve and plan for learning needed
  • Implement the plans and monitor the process
  • Regularly communicate and evaluate and fine-tune the process
  • Where appropriate, publicize achievements
  • Conclude the project
  • Evaluate the outcomes of the project against the declared goals
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