Becoming a Better Mentor

Last year, the National Mentoring Partnership, published Becoming a Better Mentor. This excellent handbook goes through many elements of improving your mentoring skills and relationship. It’s available for free here:

www.mentoring.org/resource/becoming-a-better-mentor/

Chapter 1, Providing Emotional Support and Empathy covers the foundational component of any mentoring relationship – honoring your mentee’s unique feelings and experiences. Among other useful ideas, the chapter states:

…ask yourself how well you think you know your mentee. Do you feel like you have a good sense of who they are, how they see themselves, and what their interest and goals are? How challenged by this do you feel? Are you aware of how some of your own ideas about what you might think your mentee ‘should’ think, or do, or want may be different from what they actually think, or do, or want for themselves? Are you open to these differences, and do you shift some of your own ideas and expectations to more fully appreciate your mentee as they are? And how much do you draw from this knowledge and use it to shape how you engage in your relationship with your mentee?