A Process to Support Mentoring

There are different activities and stages that naturally occur as you mentor someone. These stages of a mentor’s involvement will be especially relevant if you view your mentor relationship as an assignment, i.e. a series of conversations with an intended duration. For example, you may agree an assignment to provide mentoring support for a period of 18 months and meet your mentee, in person, every 6-8 weeks, for 90-minute conversations.
If your approach is less defined, then the following process can still improve the impact of your mentoring. It will help you to decide where you need a little more structure and which activities you may not require. The journey will describe the stages (or milestones) from setting up all the way through to parting ways.
If you mentor as part of a program, it’s likely that a supporting process and principles are already available to you. The amount of structure used in mentoring programs varies: most appoint coordinators to match mentees to mentors, while some encourage mentees to find and approach their own mentors.
Some programs have formal reviews and assessment mechanisms, such as structured interviews or electronic questionnaires, while others are happy to gather anecdotal feedback as an indication of effective relationships. In organizations, potential mentees are often people identified as talent/high potential or requiring development.