It is good practice to spend at least 30 minutes and preferably more preparing for every mentoring meeting. Thinking through how you can support your mentee and how you can achieve that ensures you will get the most from that meeting. When diaries are busy and time is precious, this preparation also gives you both the opportunity to reflect in advance of being together and avoid wasting the first 20 minutes establishing what the issue is.
Some good preparatory questions to reflect on in advance of meeting are:
- What issues remain from our last meeting?
- How have I helped already?
- Review any agenda that your mentee has provided and reflect on –
- What sort of help does the mentee need?
- How can I best provide this help?
- What experiences do I have that would aid the discussion?
- Who else do I know that could help?
This process of reflection typically reveals a range of issues, which you may not have recognised before, and which are worth bringing to mentoring meeting.
© David Clutterbuck, 2014