SEAONC SE3 Mentoring
Mentor Information Package
Here is additional information to help mentors prepare for the event, including potential questions from mentees, guidelines, and additional resources.
Potential Questions from Mentees
- What was instrumental for you in getting to your current position in your company?
- What skills should I try to develop or enhance if I want to become a leader in my firm (or in the profession)?
- How can I improve my professional visibility?
- How do you manage work-life balance? What are your suggestions
- Are there any groups or organizations that have been instrumental in shaping your career?
- Do you have any general tips for time-management? Professional development and/or soft skills that are particularly useful in becoming an excellent structural engineer or leader?
- What's been your biggest career struggle and how did you overcome it?
- What are your favorite productivity sites, tools, and apps?
General Guidelines During the Mentoring Session
- Maintain confidentiality; develop mutual trust, be authentic
- Create an environment where you can openly and candidly discuss “real” issues & obstacles
- Be present, stay engaged, ask thought-provoking, high-value open-ended questions
- Listen actively to mentees, look for meaning behind the words
- Speak from the heart, show passion and enthusiasm
- Draw on your own experience to share insight, wisdom, and knowledge; share challenges you have faced and strategies you have used in similar situations – both successful and not
- Respect each individual’s opinions - don’t be too quick to judge
- Help evaluate risks involved in decisions/actions, try to look out for best interest of each mentee
- Help focus on action strategies to handle challenges; identify options for continuous improvement.
- Provide constructive feedback and advice that is specific, descriptive, and non-judgmental.
- Have fun!
Benefits of Mentoring
- Increased engagement, career satisfaction
- Potential for accelerated career mobility
- Exposure to new ideas, empowerment, nurture talent
- Greater professional competence, increased productivity, performance, meaningful contributions
- Improved professional identity, integration into professional life and community
- Exploration and realization of potential strengths and barriers to advancement
- Enhanced communication, commitment, and motivation
- Emotional support through dialog, with potential for decrease in job stress and conflict
- Mentors gain strategic benefits (communication, leadership and management skills, a better understanding of employee issues) while passing on knowledge, skills and experience from one generation to another, development of future leaders
Best Practices for Mentoring
Generally, use the reflective observation approach. Reflective Observation is a process that is based on prompted reflection:
This contextual realization would stay with the mentee as an awareness in the long term.
It is Mentor’s responsibility to keep the mentee on track through proper interventions in the process. In other words, try to help the protégé figure it out for themselves:
There will not be one right answer for every person in every instance - try to lead the protégé to the answer/situation that is right for them.
- It starts with a contextual comment/statement from the mentor
- Mentor would then invite a reaction from the mentee
- Mentor would now prompt the mentee to reflect on the statement he has made
- Mentor leads the realization process of the mentee through proper guidance
This contextual realization would stay with the mentee as an awareness in the long term.
It is Mentor’s responsibility to keep the mentee on track through proper interventions in the process. In other words, try to help the protégé figure it out for themselves:
- Focus on: asking questions
- Give examples from your own experience, or what you’ve observed in friends/colleagues
- Use words like, “in my experience, I’ve found…and chose to..” OR “in my opinions…”
There will not be one right answer for every person in every instance - try to lead the protégé to the answer/situation that is right for them.
- AVOID - “you should do..” “you must..”
- Don’t push your own personal agenda or values on your protégé
- Commit to what is in your protégé’s best interests
- Put the relationship before the mentorship.
- Focus on character rather than competency.
- Focus on helping to shape other people’s character, values, self-awareness, empathy, and capacity for respect.
Additional Reading & Resources
What the best mentors do:
https://hbr.org/2017/02/what-the-best-mentors-do
Active Listening: Listen to what people are saying
https://www.mindtools.com/CommSkll/ActiveListening.htm
5 steps to becoming an amazing mentor:
https://www.fastcompany.com/3043553/work-smart/5-steps-to-becoming-an-amazing-mentor
Four key benefits of Work place mentoring initiates:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/julie-kantor/four-key-benefits-of-work_b_9432716.html
The Working Life: The importance of work place mentors
http://www.careerstonegroup.com/z-media/wp-mentoring.pdf
How to use mentoring in your work place:
http://chronus.com/how-to-use-mentoring-in-your-workplace
NCWIT Mentoring-in-a-Box: Technical Women at Work
Mentoring Basics - A Mentor’s Guide to Success
http://www.bc.edu/content/dam/files/centers/cwf/individuals/pdf/MentorGuide.pdf
Learn how to be an effective mentor.
https://alis.alberta.ca/succeed-at-work/explore-ways-to-improve-your-work/learn-how-to-be-an-effective-mentor/
7 habits of highly successful mentors and mentorees.
http://www.management-mentors.com/resources/june-2010-mentor-mentoree-habits
What the best mentors do
https://hbr.org/2017/02/what-the-best-mentors-do
Four types of questions to ask
http://www.beleaderly.com/four-ways-make-mentoring/
https://hbr.org/2017/02/what-the-best-mentors-do
Active Listening: Listen to what people are saying
https://www.mindtools.com/CommSkll/ActiveListening.htm
5 steps to becoming an amazing mentor:
https://www.fastcompany.com/3043553/work-smart/5-steps-to-becoming-an-amazing-mentor
Four key benefits of Work place mentoring initiates:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/julie-kantor/four-key-benefits-of-work_b_9432716.html
The Working Life: The importance of work place mentors
http://www.careerstonegroup.com/z-media/wp-mentoring.pdf
How to use mentoring in your work place:
http://chronus.com/how-to-use-mentoring-in-your-workplace
NCWIT Mentoring-in-a-Box: Technical Women at Work
Mentoring Basics - A Mentor’s Guide to Success
http://www.bc.edu/content/dam/files/centers/cwf/individuals/pdf/MentorGuide.pdf
Learn how to be an effective mentor.
https://alis.alberta.ca/succeed-at-work/explore-ways-to-improve-your-work/learn-how-to-be-an-effective-mentor/
7 habits of highly successful mentors and mentorees.
http://www.management-mentors.com/resources/june-2010-mentor-mentoree-habits
What the best mentors do
https://hbr.org/2017/02/what-the-best-mentors-do
Four types of questions to ask
http://www.beleaderly.com/four-ways-make-mentoring/