Mentor Ambassador & Mentor Champion Roles

Mentor ambassador and mentor champion roles add huge value within any mentoring programme to make it work well long term for everyone’s benefit.

What is a Mentor Ambassador?

An ambassador encourages both mentoring itself and a mentoring approach in all their work. They truly recognise the value of investing in people. I was especially delighted to receive my OBE from HRH Prince of Wales, the now King Charles III, as he is a mentoring ambassador in every sense. He totally recognises the power of mentoring and has used every opportunity to encourage formal mentoring programmes in his charity work. Through all his work he encourages people to listen and support each other to gain perspectives and to give support.

What do Mentor Ambassadors do?

In any organisation whether it be charity, not for profit or corporate, the right mentoring ambassadors can act as a huge influence for starting programmes, maintaining engagement and helping share best practice.

The three key impact areas are:

• Creating an environment where mentoring part of what happens every day rather than a separate project.
• Sharing clear links to an organisations’ goals, values, vision and the mentoring programme.
• Leading the way in keeping the profile and recognition of the importance of mentoring high.

Who can be a Mentor Ambassador?

All mentors and all mentees naturally have the ability to be great ambassadors by sharing the experiences they have had. It also might be that someone (often a senior leader) recognises the value mentoring gives, however, cannot commit to the time needed to be a mentor. They can still make a real difference by supporting any mentoring programme as an ambassador. Ideally there will a team of ambassadors for different parts of an organisation to reflect the different stakeholders and bring everyone together for greater impact.

What is a Mentor Champion?

A mentor champion is an experienced mentor who supports other mentors. They are sometimes known as the mentor’s mentor.

What do Mentor Champions do?

Practically a champion enables a lesser experienced mentor to feel supported as they have someone to go to for support, help and guidance. As mentoring is confidential, building in this support means a mentor feels supported instead of isolated at high intensity or challenging times. A champion will have wider knowledge and resources that help the mentor’s signposting work, as well as creating engagement for mentors that are struggling or are less confident in their role to overcome challenges which reduces risk for all. It additionally increases mentor engagement and commitment to carry on mentoring. A champion will help ensure protocols are followed and appropriate hands offs and relationships are held and will share success story news and enables best practice sharing.

Who can be a Mentor Champion?

In most organisations we support, we often train experienced mentors to take on this role. This is flexible training for those that have existing mentor training and want to extend their organisational and their own professional impact by undertaking the work.

Some organisations also choose to outsource the mentor champion role to us. This works by us sharing with them a mentor champion expert who supports those mentors, either when needed, as a bespoke helpdesk option, or through regular one to ones, best practice or Q and A sessions. This support enables the mentor champion to cover any areas the mentors need extra help with. Both options have benefits. It is just so important that each mentor has this formal system of support and communication. A mentor champion role enables mentoring programmes to work long term for everyone’s benefit.

How does this Link to Mentoring Programme Design?

There are lots of areas to consider with programme design and whilst there are key principles across all programmes, some areas will vary according to each programme’s needs. So, we always support the design of a mentoring programme in a bespoke way. I always find it interesting that despite the very wide range of mentor programmes we support, that there are such key principles that are relevant to all.

Martin Lucas interviewed me on just this topic, and the podcast interview is here for you.

Happy Mentoring! 😊