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Being asked to mentor someone can feel like an honor-but it can also feel overwhelming and intimidating, especially if you've never had a mentee before. You might question whether you're even qualified to guide this person in their life or career. However, every expert must start somewhere.

We asked 14 members of Forbes Coaches Council to share their best advice for first-time mentors on how to take on a mentor-mentee relationship. Here's how they recommend becoming a successful role model to your new mentee.
1. Get To Know Your Mentee Well
Get to know your mentee. Ask them a lot of questions. Take the time to take note of what makes them tick. What are their challenges? Goals? How can you support them? It's easy to want to tell someone what to do, but that's not your role as a mentor. The more you get to know them, the more you can build on the foundation of a successful and productive relationship. - Joyel Crawford, Crawford Leadership Strategies, LLC.
2. Understand What The Mentee Wants To Learn
As a first-time mentor, get to the core of what your mentee wants to learn. Mentors sometimes fall into the trap of doing more talking than listening. Understand why they picked you. What do they see in you that they want to develop? Talk about those objectives and then invite them to prepare the next time you use that skill. For example, they love your presentation style. Work on it together! - Christine Mann, MANN Consulting, LLC
3. Help With The Little Things
Often mentors want to provide big insights and give general advice. The best mentors are willing to help with little things that are actually big things. Mentors should be willing to speak to the mentees about how to craft an appropriate email, create a great presentation in PowerPoint and how to dress for different events. Mentors who are willing to get in the detail muck make a huge difference. - John M. O'Connor, Career Pro Inc.
4. Know Yourself
Take time to assess exactly what you have to offer as a mentor-your skills, strengths, experiences, knowledge and networks. Go into the relationship knowing what you bring to the table and then partner with your mentee to see how that aligns with what they want to learn and share. Then you both can work together to make it a mutually engaging relationship. - Tonya Echols, Vigere
5. Remember Your Mentee's Situation
It's difficult, but important to balance the huge amount of experience (that qualifies you as a mentor) and the situation the mentee is in. A mentor has to remember what it was like when they were in this early stage, because not everything they can do now is also suitable for a mentee. The main question is: Is this advice (e.g. what I would do) also applicable in this very different situation? - Felix Beilharz, FelixBeilharz.de
6. Establish Expectations
As a mentor, it is important to set very clear expectations of what a thriving mentoring relationship looks like to your mentee. Firstly, the mentee needs to have a purpose for the mentoring relationship to be impactful. Secondly, the onus of taking notes, setting action items, learning and applying are on the mentee. As a mentor, you are there to provide guidance and support to further their goals. - Erin Urban, UPPSolutions, LLC
7. Let The Mentee Lead
Much like coaching, mentoring is about guiding and empowering, not directing. Making the mentee the star-giving encouragement, helping identify skills and resources they both have and need, exploring ideas to reach their goals-is more meaningful than being prescriptive. Know what the mentee seeks from the relationship and let them lead. Use your expertise only to inform your questions. - Sheryl Lyons, Culture Spark LLC
8. Stop Judging Yourself
"Get over yourself" is the best advice I was given to become a great mentor and leader. Self-critique is often the roadblock keeping you from being great, because self-judging leads you to question every decision. But your mentee is focused on their own development. You only need to do your best, teach from experience and know you will always be working on what you teach. You're ready! - Whitney Mullings, Whitney Mullings
9. Practice Active Listening
One of the most important things one can do for a mentee is to listen. Let them talk. Don't feel like you need to have all the answers. To be honest, no one knows better about what is best for them than themselves. Many times, it just takes talking through things. If you can provide that sounding board, you are a valuable resource. - Jill Huggett, Bridgepath Career Advisors, LLC
10. Shift Between Coaching And Mentoring
A successful mentor uses both coaching and mentoring skills. Mentoring involves drawing upon the mentor's own skills, knowledge and experience to advise the mentee, whereas coaching incorporates open-ended questions in order to create awareness on behalf of the mentee. Toggling back and forth between pulling and pushing is the best way to provide a quality mentoring experience. - Kirsten Meneghello, Illumination Coaching LLC
11. Build Rapport And Empower Them
Create a safe space and demonstrate a genuine interest in your mentee. Be supportive and honest, honor agreements and keep appointments. Always do what you say you'll do, wherever possible. Share your experience, challenges and wisdom, but don't intervene too quickly to solve their problems. Ask guiding questions rather than advising. Encourage them to find their own solutions. Praise and empower. - Palena Neale, Ph.D, unabridged
12. Ensure The Relationship Is Reciprocal
A trusting, collaborative relationship is foundational for mentoring partnerships. One vital element of the relationship is reciprocity. Each partner contributes to the relationship and learns from the other. Without the presence of learning, mentoring doesn't exist. As a mentor, it's key to engage and guide your partner appropriately to create and maintain a climate that supports learning. - Jonathan Silk, Bridge 3 LLC
13. Share The Good And The Bad
As a first-time mentor, it's important to realize you are not expected to be a superhero with every answer and every accomplishment. It's truly more important to be authentic and allow your mentee to learn from your mistakes, growing pains, good choices and best practices. Share the good with the bad, be OK with saying "I don't know" and introduce your mentee to your network for further growth. - Laura DeCarlo, Career Directors International
14. Get Excited
People like to feel good. Charge yourself up with great memories or music before the interaction. Then imagine you are "throwing" positivity at your mentee. Emotion rubs off, and they will remember you for it. - Laura Berger, Berdéo Group

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Council Post: Mentoring For The First Time? 14 Tips To Start Off On The Right Foot

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Being asked to mentor someone can feel like an honor-but it can also feel overwhelming and intimidating, especially if you've never had a mentee before. You might question whether you're even qualified to guide this person in their life or career. However, every expert must start somewhere.

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Preparing for your first meeting- Mentors

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The following Mentee activities have been provided as a starting point for your mentee to start discussing what they wish to get out of this mentoring scheme, we encourage you to use these to maximise your sessions!

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Previous mentor and mentee pairs have found this a really useful task when getting to know each other!

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About your personality type- Mentors and Mentees

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A fantastic career resource for all university students

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Prospects for graduate jobs, postgraduate study, advice about work experience, internship opportunities and graduate careers

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This handbook contains further detail on the running of the scheme and our expectations of mentees and mentors

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Postgraduate Next Steps 2023 - Mentee Handbook

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This handbook contains further detail on the running of the scheme and our expectations of mentors and mentees.

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Postgraduate Next Steps 2022-23 Mentor Handbook

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Frequently Asked Questions by Mentors on our mentoring schemes.

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Mentor Briefing Slides and session recording

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Mentor Briefing Slides and session recording

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You can access the Mentor Briefing recording here, you can also download it directly from here. Please let me know if you have any issues with accessing this, by emailing epa.careers@leeds.ac.uk.

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Many of us aspire to be successful mentors and support our mentees as best as we can. Julie Starr is a leading thought leader in coaching and mentoring and has written the guidebook for good mentoring practice called The Mentoring Manual. In my latest LinkedIn article, I have shared the key bits of insight and advice in her book for anyone who wants to gain a summary of key mentoring skills needed to be a successful mentor.

Definition of a mentor:

Mentoring isn't about changing someone, or getting someone to do something differently, it's about waking someone up to who they really are. The mentor's challenge is to distill their own experience into bite sized chunks of wisdom, help or guidance in ways that ultimately help them to discover that' - Julie Starr

Overview of mentoring:

Mentoring is a distinct relationship where one person (the mentor) supports the learning, development and progress of another person (the mentee). A mentor provides support by offering information, advice and assistance in a way that empowers the mentee.

Effective mentor checklist:

How do you know you are an effective mentor?

Your handling of the process:

Your approach:

Your behavioural skill:

5 key mentoring skills:

1. Connecting through effective listening

2. Build a relationship of engagement and trust

3. Maintain an effective focus

4. Help overcome false limits, roadblocks or barriers to progress

5. Help someone grow

1) Connecting through effective listening

For you to be a really effective mentor you need to have a level of personal investment in the relationship e.g. to be engaged in the potential of the mentee to do well and prosper. Your relationship needs to have appropriate boundaries e.g. it needs to be one that blends warmth and commitment with objectivity and discernment. Your relationship may or may not feel like a friendship i.e. the quality of friendship does not define whether or not a relationship is a mentoring one or not. In other words, you may experience a sense of friendship within some relationship and those relationships may or may not have a mentoring element to them.

When you listen effectively you are able to:

Gain a clear sense of what an individual is saying e.g. identify the key points of facts being offered.

Connect with people personally e.g. as you increase your focus upon them.

Build rapport and relationship quickly e.g. as people sense they are being listened to, they feel valued by that.

Help people communicate more clearly e.g. as they notice they are being listened to, they can relax and speak naturally.

Read the subtle qualities of someone's conversation e.g. what is not being said here.

Build and display greater empathy as you are able to notice someone's feeling or values e.g. that seems like something that's naturally very important to you.

Adapt conversations to increase relevance and efficiency e.g. so from what you've said maybe we need to help you refine where you ultimately want to be rather than dwelling on your current role.

What forms your ability to listen is a combination of attention (what we focused on) and your intention (what your motivation is in the moment). Effective listening is like a muscle you develop over time.

The effectiveness of your listening relates to what is important in the conversation. In the context of mentoring what is important includes:

2) Build a relationship of engagement and trust

Here are some simple things you can do to encourage engagement and openness in your mentoring relationships:

Discuss the topic of confidentiality up front e.g. confirm that the content of your discussion will be shared with no external party except by prior agreement.

Outside of sessions, maintain integrity e.g. use the principle I won't say anything about my mentee that I wouldn't be comfortable to have them hear afterwards.

Be willing to share some personal information and data e.g. about your partner, family, interests, hobbies etc.

Understand what drives and motivates your mentee, get to know them, their likes, dislikes etc. Existing profiling can help e.g. Myers-Briggs or similar.

Review effectiveness of the mentoring discussions regularly e.g. How are these discussions meeting your expectations? What's working / not working? What else do you need?

The purpose of any mentoring conversation is to benefit the mentee in some way and the link or relevance back to them must be maintained.

3) Maintain an effective focus

By effective focus we are talking about:

Help to identify what is important for your mentee to work on i.e. their priorities.

Facilitate conversations with your mentee in a way that helps them to gain the most value from those conversations.

Keep sight of the overall assignment themes e.g. career development, building confidence etc. within individual mentoring conversations.

Notice distractions or conventional wandering that are likely to be counterproductive or unsupportive of your mentee's progress.

Encourage a focus on topics that benefit your mentee's ultimate success, including those that might be challenging e.g. your mentee's tendency to procrastinate, or avoid confrontation.

Stay flexible and creative within conversations, to maintain challenge and progress (avoid unhealthy repetition or routine).

Mentoring does not happen in a vacuum, it happens as part of real life. Mentoring assignments often begin well. They then continue against a backdrop of everyday events, challenges, and change. These unexpected elements may then cause the conversation to shift emphasis, or alter in nature. This is not a problem but merely a potential pitfall you need to be comfortable with. Also as warmth and ease within your relationship build, there is an opportunity for your conversations to wander, drift or simply become cosy. For example, your discussion gets distracted by story telling or as you both try to fix everyday issues. In the diversion, the initial intentions of the relationship can get lost.

As a mentor you have a balance to maintain:

It's also likely that everyday events present enablers of learning to which you can make links in the mentoring conversation. For example:

4) Help overcome false limits, roadblocks or barriers to progress

If a mentor is a travelling companion for part of the mentee's journey, then some of the function they perform is to help remove roadblocks to the mentee's progress along the way. Examples of the block and barriers that you might want to help them overcome include:

Your role is to help them make progress in their current situation with their current goals. Your role is to empower them, i.e. equip them to deal with future challenges. The most significant risk to their progress appears to be their lack of experience of a business that has individual customers at the heart of it (and you're not sure how that risk may present itself). Their success will rest upon their ability to sustain positive communication and engagement with their team (as they are relying on their team to make this work). If you are to help them, they need to engage with and trust your view.

5) Help someone grow

One of the principal functions of a mentor is to help someone grow. By grow we mean through the process of being mentored a person can:

For example:

If you enjoyed and valued this article you may also like my other article around key coaching skills needed to be a successful coach according to Julie Starr

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Many of us aspire to be successful mentors and support our mentees as best as we can. Julie Starr is a leading thought leader in coaching and mentoring and has written the guidebook for good mentoring practice called The Mentoring Manual.

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NHS advice about healthy living, including eating a balanced diet, healthy weight, exercise, quitting smoking and drinking less alcohol.

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A step-by-step tailored career tool for students

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Welcome
to your
Career Coach

The Career Coach area will teach you how to be an Alpha Candidate.

It features career advice from our employers gathered from a range sources - Gradcracker Webinars, Insight Days etc. - and we have organised this advice into sections to guide you step by step through the application process and beyond.

For each of these sections, Hannah from Gradcracker has summarised the key points. You can find these summaries in our e-book, 'The Alpha Candidate'.

Gradcracker has been at the centre of STEM graduate recruitment for over 10 years, and many of our team members have been with us from the very beginning. Along with advice from our employers, you can also find our advice on everything career related.

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Career Coach | Career Centre | Gradcracker Home | Gradcracker - Careers for STEM Students

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Welcometo yourCareer Coach The Career Coach area will teach you how to be an Alpha Candidate. It features career advice from our employers gathered from a range sources - Gradcracker Webinars, Insight Days etc. - and we have organised this advice into sections to guide you step by step through the application process and beyond.

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Your Future Framework - to help students decide their next steps

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Your Future Framework - to help students decide their next steps

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Your career. Find out about what you can do on each step of your career search.

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Imposter Syndrome: How to support students

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Imposter Syndrome: How to support students

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Frances Abbott, Student Support Manager at Unite Students, shares her experience of Imposter Syndrome, what you need to know about it, and how it can impact on students.
As I write this, thoughts rush through my head: 'Who are you to claim you know about this?', 'What makes your input unique or interesting?' and - even more disturbingly - 'Will writing this make my colleagues and peers doubt my capabilities?' That's Imposter Syndrome talking.

Imposter Syndrome is well-documented. It describes internalised feelings of incompetency, despite evidence to the contrary. As with most things, it is experienced differently from person to person, and varies from a niggling feeling of inadequacy to being a factor in prolonged and debilitating mental health issues.

While reflecting on my own experiences, it occurred to me that many of the students I speak to in a professional capacity report experiences grounded in this very phenomenon. Although we don't know exactly what causes Imposter Syndrome in the student population, students feel pressures like perfectionism, social comparisons and a fear of failure - all of which have the potential to fester, and eventually swell into crippling anxiety. Certainly, feeling like an imposter can prompt some students to work harder and overcompensate - but it can similarly hamper academic success and life satisfaction due to anxiety, depression, disengagement and feelings of non-belonging.

It's thought that the transitional nature of this time in a person's life can make them more vulnerable to feelings of Imposter Syndrome. When identifying which students are most likely to be impacted, gender is considered a consistent predictor. Women, along with communities and groups that include students from minority ethnic backgrounds, those with disabilities, estranged students and care leavers, LGBTQ+ students and those from low-income households, are more likely to report indicators of Imposter Syndrome.

So, why are these groups disproportionately affected? Notwithstanding the leaps to foster a more inclusive and equitable student population, Higher Education's roots are firmly straight, white and male, and predominantly middle class. Widening access and participation are still relatively new concepts and the embedding of a diverse student community and voice takes time. Feeling you don't belong can be a direct implication of systemic inequalities, or a lack of representation in your field of study.

So, how can we support students experiencing Imposter Syndrome?

Talking: Feeling like a fraud or out of place is rooted in secrecy. Doing all you can to maintain the illusion can be exhausting, so talking to trusted family, friends, lecturers or support staff can make all the difference.

Acknowledging good work: Giving students praise and feedback can positively impact those struggling to control intrusive thoughts. Peer-to-peer appraisal and regular reviews can help quieten the noise that Imposter Syndrome creates.

Using failure to fuel progress: Learning to accept failure is normal. So support students to learn from their setbacks and to seek comfort in experiencing feedback and reflection, rather than hiding from it. Being able to separate feelings from fact can hugely help students build resilience and measured reactions to shortcomings.

Signposting: Imposter Syndrome, whilst not classed as a clinical mental disorder, can go hand-in-hand with ill mental health, such as anxiety and depression. A whole university approach is crucial to identifying students who are struggling for a variety of reasons - but in the case of Imposter Syndrome, it manifests entirely in the academic realm.

Environment: Finding your place in university life can be tough, so every part of the university experience is important. Transitioning from one existence to another can be a huge stress factor. Support with making friends, finding the right accommodation, and getting part-time work, can be just as important as the academics in creating a feeling of belonging.

Increased diversity and inclusive representation in Higher Education: Universities must continue to challenge and strive to represent the narrative of all students and professional minorities within academic study, at all levels.

Ultimately, what can we say to students who are experiencing Imposter Syndrome? Perhaps simply: "You do belong. You are worthy. It's okay to feel like an imposter - many of us do."
You can find out our top tips for making students feel like they belong here. Interested in Imposter Syndrome? Frances recommends the following sources as further reading:
Arnett JJ. Emerging adulthood. A theory of development from the late teens through the twenties. Am Psychol. 2000;55(5):469-480.

Caselman, T. D., Self, P. A., & Self, A. L. (2006). Adolescent attributes contributing to the imposter phenomenon. Journal of Adolescence, 29 , 395-405.

Clance, P. R., & Imes, S. A. (1978). The imposter phenomenon among high achieving women: Dynamics and therapeutic intervention. Psychotherapy Theory, Research, and Practice, 15, 241-247.

Ferrari JR, Thompson T. Impostor fears: Links with self-presentational concerns and self-handicapping behaviours. Personal Individ Differ 2006;40(2):341-52.

Neal McGregor, L., Gee, D. E., & Posey, K. E. (2008). I feel like a fraud and it depresses me: The relation between the imposter phenomenon and depression. Social Behavior and Personality: An international journal, 36(1), 43-48. Volume 36 Issue 1 | e1683 | Published: February 2008

Lane, Joel. (2015). The Imposter Phenomenon Among Emerging Adults Transitioning Into Professional Life: Developing a Grounded Theory. Adultspan Journal. 14. 10.1002/adsp.12009

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A fraud amongst us: How Imposter Syndrome can impact university students

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Frances Abbott, Student Support Manager at Unite Students, shares her experience of Imposter Syndrome, what you need to know about it, and how it can impact on students. As I write this, thoughts rush through my head: 'Who are you to claim you know about this?', 'What makes your input unique or interesting?'

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University of Leeds student Support and Wellbeing homepage

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University of Leeds student Support and Wellbeing homepage

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Transferable skills: definitions and examples

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Transferable skills: definitions and examples

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University of Leeds Careers Service homepage

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University of Leeds Careers Service homepage

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With links to all the resources and support that the University offers to all students and graduates

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Leeds University Union Help & Support homepage

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Leeds University Union Help & Support homepage

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How to Approach your Mentor Meeting: Questions and Best Practices

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How to Approach your Mentor Meeting: Questions and Best Practices

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A useful article for your mentee on how to approach being mentored for the first time

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While we know from extensive research findings that mentorship is quite valuable to the mentee's career development, recent research also indicates that this relationship is beneficial to the mentor, too . It turns out that mentoring is valuable to both the mentor and the mentee. For the mentee, it seems that there are two categories of mentoring functions.

First, career functions assist the mentee in gaining corporate exposure, learning about organizational life and learning specific job functions. Second, psychosocial functions arise through role modelling and counselling, which result in an increased feeling of competence, effectiveness and self-worth at work . For the mentor, positive outcomes include higher job satisfaction, organizational commitment, job performance, career success and lower turnover intent .

Because mentoring is so beneficial to both mentor and mentees, Fellow has put together a guide on how to approach a mentor meeting, how to build your mentor relationship, how to further define your career path and how mentorship can contribute to your overall career development.

What is a mentor meeting?

A mentor meeting is when a mentor and mentee who have been assigned or who have committed to one another meet in order to build familiarity, set expectations for the relationship, and begin to learn from one another. Typically, it's up to the mentee or the protege to create the mentor meeting agenda, and to come prepared, ready to outline what they would like to discuss and really taking the initiative in the relationship.

In a mentoring meeting, it's important to put an emphasis on learning about one another. Discuss personal and professional history in order to establish a common ground. You can also talk about topics centered around leadership, situational advice and skills. In this type of meeting, it's important to set some expectations in terms of what the mentor relationship will encompass, set up recurring meetings, and highlight the mentee's goals.

How to prepare for a mentor meeting

It's vital to the success of the mentor-mentee relationship for both parties to prepare in advance. This is especially true for the mentee. It's important for both of you to research each other's professional backgrounds, to gain an overall understanding of the other person's skills, experiences and interests. As a mentor, it may be important to ask the mentee to come prepared to the meeting with some questions to initiate the conversation and relationship.

As a mentee, think about what your professional goals are and how you can translate them into a topic area that you'd like to discuss with your mentor. Prepare your meeting agenda in advance of the meeting and ask your mentor if they would like to add any topics for discussion. As a mentor, think about which experiences may give a valuable perspective to your mentee, and which tips and tricks may be specifically beneficial to their career development in the industry.

Choosing the right mentoring topics

Whether you are meeting one-on-one or with group mentors, there are a multitude of mentor meeting topics that you can discuss, and this will depend on the interests of the mentee, as well as organizational needs. Here are some important topics that are worth covering in a mentor meeting:

Career development

Career development conversations are important and mentors can offer valuable advice in this domain, because they have likely worked through similar obstacles to the ones that the mentee is facing in their career. Although career development interests differ, the mentor tends to have a strong organizational knowledge to do with how to gain experience or exposure in particular areas, which can help mentees move in a particular direction in their careers.

As a mentor, ask the employee questions about their optimal career path and questions that might prompt them to think about if their current position aligns with that path. This will help you understand what kind of guidance is going to be valuable to your mentee.

Situational advice

Another valuable mentor meeting topic is to give or receive situational advice. Because a mentor tends to be more senior and likely has a great deal of experience in the industry, they're a great person to talk to about how to approach a specific situation and to ask for some advice.

It's a great idea to build situational advice into each meeting agenda for your mentorship meeting, because things tend to arise quickly in the workplace and a lot of the time, these things are unforeseeable. This way, there is always some delegated time to talk about an issue or roadblock the mentee has been facing. This type of topic can therefore be used time after time to address any immediate questions.

Pro Tip

Use a meeting agenda tool like Fellow to collaborate on meeting agendas, record decisions, and keep your mentee (or mentor!) accountable.

Skill-related feedback

Skill-related feedback has to do with specific job competencies. For instance, this could be feedback on a design for a designer, on code for a software engineer, on a campaign or email for a marketer, etc. As a mentee, think about which skills you already have, which skills you are seeking to gain and which skills you want to focus on developing the most.

For the mentor, this is a good opportunity to assess the overall performance of the employee and then help direct them to the right resource to gain some more experience where their interests lie. This could be in the form of job shadowing, on-the-job training or simply collaborating with other co-workers in order to learn more in a specific area.

Questions for your mentor meeting

It can be tough to identify which questions might be the most beneficial to a mentoring meeting. For that reason, we've provided some examples for you to use below:

Question ideas for mentors (to ask mentees)

Where do you see yourself in 3, 5, 10 years?

What are you passionate about?

What skills would you like to learn in the next months?

How can I help you achieve those goals?

Is there anyone in my network that I could introduce you to?

Question ideas for mentees (to ask mentors)

What courses / books / resources have made an impact on your career?

What's some leadership advice you'd share with another manager? Maybe an early lesson or mistake you learned from?

How do you measure your goals / professional development?

What advice would you give to a younger version of yourself?

How do you overcome feelings of doubt or imposter syndrome?

What are your expectations for me? How often would it be ok for me to check in with you?

Tips for your next mentor meeting

Here are our top 5 tips to implement for your next mentorship meeting:

1 Prepare in advance

Preparation is key for these meetings to be effective. As a mentor and a mentee, make sure you prepare in advance! The mentee should prepare the meeting agenda and send it ahead of time. They should also do their homework to understand the professional background of their mentor and understand where their mentor's specialties lie. Make sure to prepare some questions for your mentor so that you can make the most out of your discussion. As a mentor, it's also important that you prepare some questions for the employee so that you can understand how to best guide them and act as a role model to them.

2 Set milestones and objectives

The mentee and mentor need to collaborate in order to set some goals that you can work towards collectively. The mentee should highlight which areas they would like to develop and the mentor should think about how they can best support and guide the employee towards reaching their career development goals. This is a great way to track progress and to realign on tangible actions that can be made towards achieving milestones at each mentor meeting.

3 Mentees: Be open to constructive feedback

It's crucial that as a mentee, you're open to constructive criticism and feedback. Remember that your mentor has your best interest at heart and is putting a lot of time and energy into helping you realize your goals. Any kind of feedback that you receive is for your own benefit. You may not always agree with the feedback, but simply take note and consider it openly. While some feedback may not resonate with you, a lot of feedback will provide valuable guidance.

4 Mentors: Set expectations for your mentorship

As a mentor, make sure that you're setting expectations for your mentorship. Clearly explain that the mentee needs to take the initiative and put in the work if they want to see results and if they want to progress in their careers. Ensure that the mentee knows to come prepared to each meeting and is in the habit of sending the meeting agenda to you in advance, so that you are both prepared to have a productive and efficient conversation.

5 Follow through and follow up

In the mentor-mentee relationship, it's important that you both hold each other accountable. This means following up on previous discussions. You can create action items at the end of each meeting and assign them to one another so that you are tracking the more tangible tasks. This is a great way to follow through on plans that you've made together and follow up on the progress of initiatives previously discussed. It's important that you are both willing and able to hold each other accountable and responsible for the commitments that have been made.

Free mentor meeting template

Parting advice

Mentoring and the mentor relationship is reciprocal, collaborative and beneficial to both the mentor and the mentee . This is important to recognize for organizations and Human Resource professionals, so that they can make potential mentors aware of the organizational and psychological benefits available to them, by providing guidance to their colleagues, and with the hopes of attracting more interest in mentorship programs.

Make sure that prior to your first mentor meeting you think about which topics you want to cover and put them into a meeting agenda. You can then add relevant questions to each section as a prompt for further discussion. Be sure to also review the 5 tips we've provided to think about before your next mentorship meeting. As always, thanks for joining us on the Fellow blog! We look forward to seeing you again soon.

References

Fowler, J. L., & O'Gorman, J. G. (2005). Mentoring Functions: A Contemporary View of the Perceptions of Mentees and Mentors. British Journal of Management, 16, 51-57. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-8551.2005.00439.x

Ghosh, R., & Reio Jr., T. G. (2013). Career benefits associated with mentoring for mentors: A meta-analysis. Journal of Vocational Behavior, 83, 106-116.

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How to Approach your Mentor Meeting: Questions and Best Practices

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While we know from extensive research findings that mentorship is quite valuable to the mentee's career development, recent research also indicates that this relationship is beneficial to the mentor, too . It turns out that mentoring is valuable to both the mentor and the mentee.

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Students can take a variety of online LinkedIn Learning courses to develop their online profile

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LinkedIn Learning

LinkedIn Learning is on an online learning platform providing 15,000 self-paced learning courses covering a diverse range of topics.

All current students and staff at the University of Leeds have free access via the University's subscription.

The links below take you to the single sign on access point for LinkedIn Learning. We recommend that you activate your LinkedIn Learning account before clicking through to the collections below.

s these recommendations are new, please help us improve by Feedback: a providing feedback or suggestions for other topics you would like use to include.

Graduate Access to LinkedIn Learning

If you're a graduate member of the Class of 2020 you now have access to LinkedIn Learning until the end of the year. To access this as a graduate, fill in a brief registration form on MyCareer and you'll receive an email from LinkedIn Learning inviting you to join the platform within five working days. You'll need to register as a graduate on MyCareer if you haven't done so already.

If you're a graduate from before 2020, please email Tom Davies.

Our curated collections

Understanding yourself; your strengths, values, interests and motivations, is a key component of successful career management. This collection brings together a few courses to help you get started that you can continue to use throughout your career.

Talking to people (aka networking) is one of the most useful things you can do to take control of your career. This collection includes some great tips and practical steps you can take to make it work for you, whether the idea is something you dread or an area you already feel confident in.

This collection includes courses and videos on CV writing, cover letters and tips for students and graduates on getting the most out of LinkedIn, including how to create a strong LinkedIn profile. There is also lots of advice on these topics over in our CVs, applications and interviews section

A collection of courses and videos curated to help you excel in interviews, develop and deliver strong and engaging presentation skills and improve your team-working skills. Group exercises often form part of assessment centre or selection activities. See our advice on interviews and assessment centres for further advice.

Throughout your degree and life experiences, you will have developed many transferable skills that employers are seeking. This collection covers some of the most important transferable workplace skills, and will help you reflect on what you already have, as well as develop in areas in which you do not feel as confident. Whilst this content will be useful to you at any time, we particularly recommend it to any students due to start a placement, internship or job.

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LinkedIn Learning is on an online learning platform providing 15,000 self-paced learning courses covering a diverse range of topics. All current students and staff at the University of Leeds have free access via the University's subscription. The links below take you to the single sign on access point for LinkedIn Learning.

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Students can access placement/job opportunities, book career appointments, sign up to career events and view lots of available career related opportunities

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A great starting point for students looking to create the perfect CV

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SPARK - Entrepreneurial advice for students at Leeds

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SPARK - Entrepreneurial advice for students at Leeds

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University of Leeds Careers Centres index of documents and pages organised within the following categories, Students and Graduates, What next? Options after your degree, Starting a business (Spark)

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Mentor Briefing Session - 26-27 Jan 2023 

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Mentor Briefing Session - 26-27 Jan 2023 

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Completed.

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Completed

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UPCOMING