What exactly is mentoring?

Mentoring is a powerful, personal, empowerment and development tool. To put it simply, it’s a partnership between two people (mentor and mentee) normally working in a similar field or sharing similar experiences.

Mentoring helps the mentee recognise their abilities, limitations and highlights areas for future development as a result. Mentoring can allow the luxury of talking to an independent, impartial confidante who is not your manager. A mentor will have the ability to listen to your issues, offer support, insights, perspective, wisdom based on experience and assist you in achieving your goals.

Free mentoring is available to all staff at any level if you are an employee within a partner organisation of SCMP.

What’s the role of a mentor?

A mentor will share their professional knowledge, skills and expertise. They’ll exhibit the specific behaviours and personal attributes needed to be productive and successful in your area of interest.

A mentor may set ongoing personal or professional goals that will foster the mentee’s development resulting in a feeling of accomplishment in their area of interest.

As well as support and advice, a mentor will also provide guidance and constructive feedback. Quite often, this is where the mentee will grow the most - by identifying their current strengths and weaknesses and learning how to use these to make themselves successful in their chosen field.

Overall, the mentor will empower their mentee to develop their own strengths, beliefs and personal attributes.

What’s the difference between coaching and mentoring?

Coaching and mentoring are quite similar as both are based on achieving specific skills and goals. The main difference is that coaching typically lasts for a relatively short and defined period of time whilst mentoring tends to be longer term than coaching arrangements.

Coaching is a partnership that helps the individual work out what they need to do themselves to improve and, in the process, what motivates them and what gets in their way (attitudes, preconceptions, assumptions).

Mentors can be more ‘directive’ and provide specific advice where appropriate - a coach would not offer their own advice or opinion, but help the individual find their own solution.

Is mentoring for me?

Here are a few examples of questions that you can answer with the benefit of mentoring:

“I’m technically capable in my job but how can I build productive working relationships and effectively influence others within my role”

“As a new manager who has recently taken on a significantly different role, how can I find my feet in this new situation?”

“I’m new to this organisation, how can I get a better understanding of my directorate and how my role and contributions fits into what others are doing?”

“I want to progress, how can I get to where I want to go in real terms and what do I have to do to get there?”

“As a young manager, how can I get guidance and advice about how to develop my potential so I can go far within this organisation?”

 

Who are these mentors and how do I get myself one?

Mentors are individuals who work within one of the nine partnership organisations that make up the Suffolk Coaching and Mentoring Partnership (SCMP). As a mentee, you’ll have the freedom to choose a mentor that you feel would best suit your needs by looking through their profiles on the Coach-Mentor Match online system.