A good mentoring relationship has a mentoring agreement in place to help ensure that mentees and mentors are always on the same page. It acts as a tool to help both mentees and mentors understand what’s expected of them as well as the specifics of their mentoring program and the program’s goals.

Program administrators can customize this agreement to outline both the vision and goal of the program as well as their expectations for how they would like the relationship to work. Is the goal of your program for mentors and mentees to meet only once? Or is it a longer-term mentoring relationship? Or, is a one-time meeting all that’s expected and, if there is good chemistry, then they can engage in a longer-term mentoring relationship? A mentoring agreement ensures that everyone involved knows what is expected of them when committing to being a mentor or mentee.

Outlining the length of the mentoring relationship in the mentoring agreement has its advantages. Doing so allows you to:

* Remind participants to book their next meeting at the end of each meeting to keep their relationship going

* Schedule a series of emails that are delivered throughout the mentoring relationship, such as a pulse survey and a conversation topic for each month

* Email everyone in a mentoring relationship about completing the program evaluation versus only the people who have set their relationship length

As the mentoring relationship evolves, both partners can easily update their mentoring agreement to reflect any changes in the relationship. When one person makes a change to the mentoring agreement, the other person will be notified by email.

By taking some time to customize your mentoring agreement, you are setting up mentoring relationships for greater success as participants have a better understanding of how their mentoring relationship should move forward.

Resources:

·      Download a sample mentoring agreement

·      Watch how to complete the mentoring agreement and set goals in MentorCity

We have taken our admin matching functionality to a whole new level with Speed Match. Here’s how it works:

 

1.      Set the search criteria that are important for your mentoring program such as the custom fields that you have created (values, gender, interests, etc.), specialized skills/development areas, job functions, industries, meeting locations, languages, and the competencies section. Speed Match will take everything into account when recommending matches.

 

2.      Click on Speed Match which is in the Match section of the Admin Dashboard, and we will get the matches ready for you to review. Once they are ready, we will send you an email.

 

3.      All the matches will have a compatibility percentage, the areas that they have in common will be highlighted, and a competencies rating – making the process very transparent.

 

4.      Review the recommendations and deselect the ones that you do not agree with. Your work will be saved, so you can always come back to where you are.

 

5.      When you are happy with the matches, click on Match Relationships, and we will send an email to everyone notifying them about their new mentoring relationship.

 

• Tip: You can customize the email that’s being sent in the Send Messages section’s System Generated Messages.

 

6.      The next time that you click on Speed Match, we will give you a whole new set of recommended matches to review.

 

Try this best practice for your mentoring program. Set a deadline for members to self-select their mentoring relationships and then use Speed Match to match the remaining people.

 

Would you like to give Speed Match a try? Ask us about providing your organization with access for 24 hours at no cost.

 

As an aspiring author, my goal is always to put my best foot forward when it comes to writing, in the hope I might become successful some day. When I first started writing, I wanted to get my stories written and published in just a day all by myself. I then started to realize that it’s more challenging to reach a goal.

To become successful, you need a great support system. A mentor can help you organize your thoughts so you will eventually achieve your goal, and it will be much better than how you would have done it on your own - this goes for everything in life. Your mentor can instill confidence in you to keep going, even when you don’t feel like it. Your mentor will be the guide that provides you with the knowledge that will help you your entire life.

Have you ever had a dream to do something, but you don’t know where to start? I know that’s how I felt before I reached out to other authors to learn from their experiences because they know how the game works, and how to change it.

MentorCity can help you to reach your goals, so you don’t spend your life wondering ‘what would have happened if I had taken that chance to become more than I am now?’ On the MentorCity website, all you must do is put in the field that you would like to explore, or the skills that you would like to work on such as marketing, presentation skills, etc. It will match you up with a perfect mentor already qualified with the skills you would like to learn. You can also be a part of improving someone’s life by becoming a mentor.

Thanks to MentorCity, I now know what direction I am going in. The amazing people in the MentorCity community have helped me to develop my character traits to become more relatable. How are you going to spend the rest of your life? It’s your decision, and a better life can begin with a single click of a button.

By: Kimmy Mintz, 12 years old

Join ASBMR on Thursday, April 18, 3:00 PM EDT for their next Career Development Webinar: “Making the Most of Virtual Mentorship”. Learn how to utilize ASBMR’s new online mentoring platform to network with fellow members. Drs. Lilian Plotkin, Ph.D. and Ursula Heilmeier, M.D. will share their experiences from their mentoring relationship with one another and tips to optimize your online mentoring experience. This webinar is free to attend, so register today!

About the presenters

Lilian Plotkin, Ph.D.

Lilian Plotkin, Ph.D. is an Associate Professor at the Department of Anatomy and Cell Biology, Indiana University School of Medicine (IUSM), USA. Dr. Plotkin’s research focuses on the role of connexins and pannexins as regulators of intracellular signaling in bone. Her mentoring activities include the direct supervision of 3 postdoctoral fellows and 3 PhD students; receiving over 40 students for short-term laboratory rotations; as well as mentoring early career faculty at IUSM and through ASBMR activities and mentoring programs. Because of her work with students, Dr. Plotkin has received the 2018 IUSM Office of Diversity Affairs Commitment to Diversity Award, which is given to a faculty member for making an impact at IUSM through a commitment to the creation, promotion, or advancement of diversity on IUSM campuses.

Ursula Heilmeier, M.D.

Ursula Heilmeier, M.D. is a resident in the Department of Geriatrics at the University Hospital Zürich in Switzerland. She studied medicine at the University of Regensburg Medical School in Germany, funded through a scholarship from the German National Academic Foundation (Studienstiftung des Deutschen Volkes) and performed her postdoctoral research at the University of California San Francisco, in the Musculoskeletal Quantitative Imaging Research Group. Her research work centers around bone and cartilage health and senescence, with an emphasis on diabetic bone disease and osteoarthritis. For her work on diabetic bone disease, she received several awards including the ASBMR Young Investigator Award and the ECTS New Investigator Award.

Please register for this meeting https://cc.readytalk.com/registration/#/?meeting=xnb8pr81lho&campaign=vmtgvfrt8ehn

The Human Resources Professionals Association (HRPA) Durham Chapter recently held a mentoring program orientation session for new participants of its mentoring program. MentorCity’s own Shawn Mintz lead a hands-on and interactive session titled ‘Moving Forward with Mentoring.’ Participants discussed the impact of mentoring, learned skills to be an effective mentee and mentor, and then put those skills into action by sitting on both side of the table as a mentee and a mentor. At the end of the session, participants were eager to have their next mentoring conversation.

The Congregation Darchei Noam launched the THRIVE Women's Mentorship Program and had a very successful kick-off event on November 4, 2018. Guest speaker, Fayge Safran Novogroder of the Jewish New Teacher Project spoke about effective goal setting and establishing productive mentoring relationships.

On behalf of MentorCity, we would like to congratulate program participants on a great start to their mentoring journeys.