Mentoring Activities
Observe performance and provide feedback
Provide your Mentee with opportunities to practise the skills needed to achieve their career goal. These may include doing a practice job interview, role playing a difficult conversation with a colleague, chairing a meeting, making a sales presentation, or connecting with others at a networking event. After the Mentee has practised a skill, provide them with constructive feedback. You may want to practise with them again down the road to see how their skills have evolved.
As the mentor, you may observe behaviours that need correcting, such as not smiling or engaging in small talk during a job interview. It’s important to provide your Mentee with feedback about what you observe, because these behaviours may be holding your Mentee back from achieving greater success.
As the Mentee, listen to the feedback provided by your mentor with an open mind. After the meeting, you can decide whether you want to integrate their feedback.
Competencies mentoring activity
In your MentorCity™ profile is a list of competencies that can be used to create effective mentor-Mentee matches. During a mentoring meeting, the Mentee can discuss the skills or abilities they would like to develop, and the mentor can share the areas in which they feel comfortable providing support. Together, you can develop a plan to address competencies development during upcoming sessions.
Encyclopedia of Contacts mentoring activity
Encyclopedia of Contacts is an activity that involves the mentor brainstorming contacts whom they feel may be able to help the Mentee achieve their objectives. The Mentee should update the mentor on what they have gained from interacting with the mentor’s contacts.
Decision making mentoring activity
Draw an information table with a list going down the left-hand side of all the strategies that can help you achieve your goal (e.g. taking a professional development course). Across the top, write down all the factors that affect you making this decision (e.g. cost, location, career benefits). Once it’s completed, discuss with your mentor how each option relates to the various factors. For each strategy, check off the factors that work in your favour.
Assessment tools mentoring activity
Complete an online personality, strengths, skills or values assessment. During a mentoring meeting, the mentor and Mentee can discuss the results. This will help both parties better understand each other’s working styles, and enhance their abilities to make the mentoring relationship work. One site that provides a series of useful personality assessments is http://www.personality-tests.info/
Mind mapping mentoring activity
Mind mapping is a creative activity to help you think innovatively about how to come up with solutions to some of the challenges you are facing. You can use mind mapping to help solve any professional or personal issue. On a large piece of paper, write about, draw and attach pictures of your mentoring objective in the middle of the page. Around your objective, write down what you need to do to achieve it—start with broad categories, then branch out to specific details that can help you create a plan. Share the results of your mind map with your mentor for additional ideas and insights. To learn more about mind mapping, visit http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mind_map.
