Your First Mentoring Meeting | Article

Being a mentor is a rewarding experience. It can help you learn, share your experiences, widen your horizons, advance your career, and help others. As with many projects, getting started with mentoring is often the hardest part. Based on The Whitehall & Industry Group’s decades of experience coordinating mentoring relationships, our talent team has outlined four steps you can take in the first meeting to help you start your mentoring relationship successfully.  

1. Listen Actively

Listening and making sure your mentee feels heard is one of the most important parts of your role. Active listening involves more than hearing someone speak. When you practise active listening, you fully concentrate on what is being said as well as non-verbal cues. Some useful techniques for listening include adopting a neutral and non-judgmental stance, giving both verbal and non-verbal feedback to show signs of listening, and asking open questions.  

Mentoring relationships where the mentor does all the talking rarely work for either party. We are regularly told of previous experiences of mentees where this has been the case, and they do not benefit as much as is possible because of this. 

2. Determine your chemistry

In your first meeting with your mentee, assess your chemistry as a pairing. Ask questions and get to know each other so you can get a sense of whether this is the right match for you both. It is important that you are both able to communicate easily and honestly, and knowing about an individual's set of values and beliefs can help this process.  

3. Agree high-level goals for the mentorship 

Once you both agree to become a mentoring pair, it is tempting to start discussing specific issues. Consider using your first mentoring session to set the framework for your time together as a whole instead. This initial discussion can help you to build a more productive relationship in the long term. 

As a mentor, your goal for this first meeting will be to find out what your mentee wants from the relationship and decide together if that is achievable.  

4. Agree practical next steps 

Now that you have your mentee's big picture goals in mind, it is important to also agree on practicalities. Set your ground rules. Determine practical agreements such as when, how, and how often to meet. Decide and prioritise objectives. Agree a process to set a few objectives for each time you meet that align with your mentee's overall goals. Remember that some of the most useful discussions will be talking through in the moment challenges, decisions and ideas, so make sure that time is set aside for this.  

Mentors also often take as much from the experience as the mentee, not only from learning about a new area of business or individual, but also reflecting on techniques used but forgotten or remembering tools and practices that have been beneficial in the past and may well be again soon. 

 

 

WIG's mentoring programmes support mentors and mentees to develop fresh perspectives and gain insight from another sector. 

  • Mentor Match is our self-service online platform that uses a matching algorithm to help you find a mentor, mentee or a reverse mentor. Free to WIG members. Explore here.
  • Our bespoke mentoring service is where our specialist talent team will work with you, on an individual basis, to find you a dedicated senior mentor for up to a year. Fees apply. See here for more information. 

 

Written by

Katy manages our Talent function, designed to maximise cross-sector learning through operational exposure and one-to-one coaching. Within this she helps co-ordinate and run the Charity Next programme, arrange and facilitate both secondments and mentoring opportunities between sectors. She also directly recruits as part of NED and Trustee recruitment.

 

Before joining WIG, Katy worked as a Director for Badenoch & Clark, a specialist professional services recruitment company, personally specialising in senior level recruitment to Social Housing, Not-For-Profit and Local Government, as well as sitting on their operational board.

 

She sits on a customer committee for a Housing Association, and as a Trustee for a Grant Giving Charity. And in her spare time, when not looking after her three children, she enjoys swimming, running and skiing.

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