Strategies for harnessing the power of mentorship!

1. Setting clear expectations

This forms the initial part of mentor-mentee relationship journey. 

• Define the goals together by discussing what both mentee and mentor hope to achieve through mentorship.
• Discuss and agree on alignment, preferred channels of communication and availability.
• The relation mentee and mentor would like to share throughout the journey needs to considered.

2. Sharing aspirations

Next step is to openly discuss in-depth the goals, direction and roadmap. 

• Explore articulation of long term aspirations and professional/career goals.
• Discuss and agree on breakdown of achievable outputs in realistic timeframes.
• Laying of action plan, direction to work on, roadmap to achieve needs to acknowledged.

3. Ownership of development

The interactions and development work needs to be a pull model from mentee than a push model from mentor.

• The onus of achieving the aspirations and enjoying the fruits of it lies with the mentee. Mentor's role is mostly limited to advise, suggestion, steering direction, providing inputs and giving assistance when stuck.
• Essential to discuss things from personal experiences, highlight struggles, working on blind spots which mentee is missing.
• Foster a comfortable environment to seek guidance, share concerns and challenges.

4. Evaluate progress

Constant evaluation of progress is necessary to keep things in check. 

• Regular discussion and sync up of progress of tasks needs to be done.
• Delay or failure to achieve planned actionable items needs to be re-accessed.
• Scrutinising amendment of plans, modification of timelines and even shifting goalposts needs to be considered.

5. Trust and Success

Building trust amongst mentor and mentee, sharing success however small forms pivot to take up many challenges.

• Emphasis should be laid on building trust, rapport and to keep the conversations not just transactional in nature.
• Sharing of success, recognition and celebration of milestones helps in setting up a healthy environment and a push for more accomplishments.
• Foster a culture of reciprocity, appreciation, gratitude in the mentorship.

Join here to connect and have mentorship sessions with me - https://www.preplaced.in/profile/nishchal-manjanbail