You may never have really thought about the values you hold, but they will exert a strong influence on how you behave, the choices you make, who you feel comfortable being around and many other aspects of your daily life. Some (perhaps most) of these values you will have absorbed from family, friends and work (more…)
Using humour in a coaching or mentoring dialogue can be beneficial in a number of ways. Firstly, it helps to rebuild rapport at the beginning of a session. You might say, for example, “Tell me what has amused you most since we last met”. This helps to the client to relax and to switch on...
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Experienced coaches and mentors learn to use intuition, in parallel with more analytical processes, as a rapid means of sensing what is happening in the learner’s internal world. Intuition is important in situations, where people have to make rapid decisions without time for detailed analysis. Comparison with previous experience, at a generally superficial level, allows...
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NLP or Neuro-Linguistic Programming stirs very different responses in coaching and mentoring. On the one hand, it is seen as manipulative mumbo-jumbo by many academics and trained psychologists; on the other hand, it has a wide following and literature. The truth probably lies somewhere in between. NLP borrows most of its tools and techniques from...
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Although the experience of both mentor and mentee is an important component of developmental mentoring, in most cases a driver of the relationship will be the mentee’s need to tap into the mentor’s experience. That sounds simple, but how do you know what is there to be mined, when should you seek the benefit of...
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Many textbooks in coaching and mentoring advise against using questions beginning with why? The reasoning behind this advice is that why questions are more likely to be seen as critical or inquisitorial and to put people on the defensive – and hence get ion the way of their reflection. In Transactional Analysis terms, it tends...
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What kind of learning alliance do you need? The decision tree below will help you think through the options for developmental support. Do you have a clearly defined developmental need? Yes, >>> Could your learning need be met through a training course ? Yes >>> Is there an appropriate course available in the timescale you...
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The better mentor and mentee understand each other, the greater the level of trust and rapport, and the more effectively they can work together. Some of the areas of data exchange that can be most useful include: It can also be helpful to share: It’s important to spread out the sharing of this data –...
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Read More What kind of personal data should mentor and mentee share with each other
Losing a loved one, or being exposed to a traumatic experience (for example, a violent crime) can give rise to severe mental distress, which in turn can have significant physical symptoms. It’s a situation that requires expert support from a specialist counsellor or therapist, but as a coach or mentor, you can provide additional support,...
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Read More What to do if my coachee/ mentee suffers a traumatic loss
When people have high anxiety about a problem, they often instinctively seek someone else to tell them what to do. In the face of internal confusion and uncertainty, we seek confident direction from an external source. This can be very beguiling for a coach or mentor, because we want to be helpful and useful. However,...
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