Mentoring Skills in the Workplace

The person with the most experience is often the worst-placed to mentor well, because the answer is always right there and it is faster to just say it. Mentoring is advice out of your own experience that still leaves the decision with the other person — which means most of the skill is in what you hold back.

This course puts you across the bench from someone three weeks in, over months rather than one week. It is about the arrangement as much as the conversation: what you agree at the start, what stays private, and what to do when it stalls — no preparation, no progress, or too much leaning on you.

You will practise:

• Telling mentoring apart from managing, coaching and sponsoring — support out of your experience, not orders and not doing the job for them
• Asking before you answer, so the decision stays with the person you are mentoring
• Agreeing the goal, the rhythm and what stays private at the start, and measuring the ending against that same goal
• Naming the pattern and changing the arrangement when it stalls