 We are delighted to be supporting National Mentoring Day for the third year as one of their official partners. Mentoring adds value in so many ways and it is great to see the UK recognising that value with the day. 
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 Tips for Great Growth Leave
Listen Lightbulb Being a great Mentor is a journey in itself. As soon as you think you’re getting there then you discover more that you want to improve. 😊 These three rules though are always relevant whether it’s Career Mentoring, Personal Mentoring or Enterprise Mentoring that you are supporting. Leave - So often to achieve good things we need to let go of unhelpful thinking rather than actually do something. One of the most important starting points for this in your mentoring practice is to leave your ego at the door. Your experience and knowledge are only valuable as tools to ask the right questions and to help your mentee explore their own thoughts, behaviours and actions. As soon as you feel you ‘must’ share something ask yourself why. Check it’s truly adding independent value to help your mentee think as opposed to telling the mentee what they should do or sharing: This is the way. I have done it and I am right because of my experience. When you start mentoring check your motives. Are you wanting to share your experience or to help others make sense of their own experiences. If it’s the former then your role helping others will be better positioned as an experienced colleague to check work with, a specialist trainer or a guest speaker rather than a mentor. These roles add immense value just in a different way to Mentoring. When we work with organisations to support the set up or running of their Mentoring Programmes the Mentor role area is often one we spend the most time on. This Mentor role clarity and related Mentoring protocols for Mentoring Programmes are critical. It means Mentoring risks are mitigated and that the Mentoring scheme works well long term for both the individuals involved and the organisation. Having the right Mentor who has willingly volunteered for the role for the right reasons and been given the right training and support makes all the difference. Listen - The most valuable investment as a mentor is listening to your mentee. Truly practising active listening to check understanding and reflect back the mentees issues and opportunities. The trouble is us humans aren’t very good at active listening as opposed to hearing words. To make it harder we also tend to think we are way more skilled at listening than we really are! So it’s always going to be work in progress for any Mentor to practice with. Using reflective practice techniques and undertaking Mentor training is really valuable in this regard. Lightbulb - The lightbulb moment when insight is gained or great ideas spark belongs to your Mentee. As a mentor your role is to support and challenge so they reach that point not to do their thinking for them. This can be quite tough especially for experienced managers who are used to getting results. It’s about being focussed on the mentees timeframes and their space so what might seem like an obvious solution to you may need time to filter through and develop for your mentee. With mentoring we are developing the mentees capacity to solve their own problems. It’s not for the mentor to take over that capacity as it will inhibit progress and create dependency which is the opposite of a successful mentoring relationship. The Code of Mentoring Practice can be a very helpful tool to discuss together at the start of your relationship to lay the right foundations. I hope you have fun with your Mentoring. We would love to hear from you if you would like support or training for your mentoring programme or your mentoring. Find out more about our Membership options here.  Spring Forward! April is a great time to check in with yourself. Holistically, it’s the first few weeks of the Spring which began this year on 20 March. Practically, we have more daylight hours. In business terms, it heralds the start of quarter 2 and the new tax year. So it’s all to go for! So we have been exploring this month with our members and clients top tips on how best to ‘Spring Forward’ towards your goals. It’s interesting to see how often people haven’t thought about their goals. If they have then the next challenge is often that they are not balanced across all areas of their life. We often see people simply focus on one area they ‘feel’ concerned about without realising. With that negative bias they miss opportunities to grow in other areas.
It can be especially powerful to focus on areas you are already good at and bring those on to another level as opposed to the traditional way of focussing on areas you struggle with to improve. That’s not to dismiss those areas you struggle with, as simply having awareness of this in itself is a great tool. It’s just that building confidence and ability in themselves often act as positive catalysts in other areas. It’s about focussing on knowing and leading yourself so you can lead others effectively. So the ways we have been supporting and training these areas this month are: Sharing Our Meet-Up Events These are open to our South West members and those interested in finding out more as facilitated networking. We explore key topics through hosted tables and then there is space to spend time with people. Next month, our event is in Bristol and we are exploring managing healthy conflict in the workplace, leadership skills of resilience and personal development with stress management. Find out more here. We would love to see you there. Supporting Our Members Our members are entrepreneurs, mentors and business leaders that believe in staying connected and ahead in their plans. It simply means keeping in touch with a positive community, receiving learning updates and insights on best practice to support your personal and professional goals. In other words making your development journey more fun. 😊 Read more about this here. Delivering Bite-sized Training We’ve always found one of the best challenges is tailoring training and there’s been a definite demand this month for bite-sized training as part of a longer programme rather than a one day course. So mini workshops have ‘Sprung Up’ on several growth areas for our clients including mind-set on networking in the creative industries, marketing strategy for community, Linked-In profiles for accountants, meditation for many, stress management for finance professionals, leadership in construction and costings for a very maths adverse creative. To find out more about our training programmes click here. Giving Guidance on Mentoring Programmes Mentoring is simply an amazing way to create growth as it delivers just that for the people mentored - the mentees, the mentors plus any organisation involved. Further information about our mentor training programmes can be found here. Our top three criteria for a successful mentoring programme to grow are: Voluntary - All mentors and mentees need to voluntarily commit their time and energy to the programme. Mandatory or expected mentoring causes numerous issues and disengagement. Training - The first focus for happy mentoring is mentor training for the mentors to fully prepare them for this important role. In organisations this is critically important as people need to understand the differences between being a senior experienced colleague and being a mentor. Support - Ongoing guidance, training, support and community for the mentors. Without this, mentoring issues will occur and mentor drop off rates will be significant. With this, the whole mentoring programme will grow in so many positive ways. Growth comes from all areas of your life and connections and bringing them together in the right way for you = your Spring Forward. 😊 Wishing you a season of amazing growth and lovely Spring weather for us all! |
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