Continuing the journey of designing and implementing a mentoring programme for female alumni in Papua New Guinea (PNG), I facilitated a webinar yesterday to provide prospective mentors and mentees in PNG and Australia with information about the initiative and how they can benefit from participating. Read my earlier post about this exciting project if you missed it and follow my journey.
Two central objectives of this mentoring initiative are:
- To support female alumni in building their confidence and capability to exercise their leadership and increase to effectively contribute to PNG’s social and economic development.
- Develop productive alumnae networks that can support each other to make development contributions to PNG. One mechanism to achieve this is the establishment of Communities of Practice, which will enable the mentors and mentees to collaborate, share ideas and resources, and fundamentally support each other.
During the webinar we discussed the purpose of mentoring and outlined the benefits of mentoring for the mentee and for the mentor. There are so many benefits for people who engage in a mentoring relationship; here is a summary of what we covered in the webinar:
What will I learn? Benefits for the Mentee
- Gain a greater understanding of your leadership style
- Recognise leadership as action, rather than a position
- Identify personal values, and implement a professional development plan
- Build your resiliency to manage change
- Use communication skills to develop positive workplace relationships
- Develop a sense of confidence and belief in yourself and your ideas. Confidence allows you to be challenged without feeling minimised
- Peer learning and sharing through participating in a Community of Practice (CoP)
- Learn how to constructively engage and collaborate with others
What will I gain? Benefits for the mentor
- Build your leadership skills: it helps you develop your ability to motivate and encourage others.
- Improve your communication skills.
- Learn new perspectives: by working with someone less experienced and from a different background, you can gain a fresh perspective on things and learn a new way of thinking.
- Advance your career: refining your leadership skills can strengthen your practice.
- Gain personal satisfaction: seeing your mentee succeed as result of your support is a rewarding experience.
- Peer learning and sharing through participating in a Community of Practice (CoP)
Are you in a mentoring relationship? What benefits are you gaining from this experience?
