If either mentor or mentee leaves the organization, it is not a calamity – in fact, it can be an opportunity. People seek new opportunities all the time and it’s not always possible to find the right opportunity within an organization. If the mentor leaves, it’s common to continue the relationship, even at a distance (more…)
Effective mentoring requires intimate sharing of hopes, fears and inner feelings that doesn’t happen in normal conversations. So it’s not surprising that people become drawn to each other. Most of the time, this simply results in creating a strong and often long-lasting friendship. Occasionally, however, the friendship risks developing into something unintended. Sponsorship mentoring, with...
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One of the mistakes many coaches and mentors make is to assume that every formal conversation should result in a clearly defined plan of action. Indeed, “solutions focus” is a whole school of coaching. In practice, very often all the mentee wants is to advance their thinking around an issue, with a view to finding...
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The mentoring conversation provides a safe space to experiment with learning behaviours. As such, it’s to be expected that occasionally, within the context of a challenging learning conversation, either mentor or mentee says something, which causes a negative reaction in the other person. Part of the contracting process at the beginning of the relationship should...
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If we really attend to what someone else is saying, it’s not that difficult to pick up significant words or phrases. There are four main clues here: If it’s significant, it carries a particular, often emotion-laden meaning for them. Make a mental note (or jot down the word or phrase) and wait for a pause...
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Being noticed in a positive way is a vital part of career progress. There are five main ways in which mentors can help mentees do this: Track record comes only partly from doing your primary job well. Being noticed is much more closely related to the activities you undertake over and above this. Mentors can...
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Authenticity is one of those irritatingly vague qualities expected of modern leaders – generally seen as desirable but difficult to define or demonstrate. Worse, because it is supposed to be a natural quality, the idea of developing authenticity seems artificial and manipulative. Dictionary definitions tend to describe authenticity as the quality or condition of being...
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Of all the conflict situations between managers and their direct reports, the controlling boss is arguably the most common and one of the most difficult to deal with. People, who are creative and independent, are often either crushed by their boss or quit. This is also one of the most common situations that people bring...
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Values elicitation triangle This technique helps people work pout their core values. It comes from Julie Hay, an expert in both mentoring and transactional analysis. The instructions are: 1. Choose three key values and place one at each side of a triangle. 2. What is the connecting value between each of these? 3. What is...
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This simple tool provides a structure for thinking about goals and intentions, from the perspective of current and desired identity. The key questions that arise from the matrix below are: • What do I want to be but will never be? (Limitation) • What don’t I want to be and will never be? (Boundary) •...
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