Mentoring Masterclasses and a Thought Leader Seminar
Two weeks ago, I had the opportunity to facilitate mentoring workshops and a mentoring seminar with leaders, team managers and HR practitioners across the Queensland public sector. The events were sponsored by the Queensland Public Service Commission, who have a very robust model and approach to supporting leadership capability development at multiple levels across the sector.
What a tremendous experience that was, working with professionals who have a vested interest in mentoring as a professional development support mechanism in their organisations. For some of the participants the workshops and the seminar were an opportunity to consider – or add to – the effectiveness of their existing mentoring programmes whilst for others the workshops provided key information and resources to assist in establishing a programme. People were also encouraged to think about and evaluate their skills as a mentor plus identify who could be a mentor for them.
Some of the concepts we discussed across the three events included:
- Measuring mentoring ROI (return on investment) and establishing success metrics
- Conducting a programme needs analysis
- Confirming the purpose for mentoring in the organisation
- A framework for mentor selection
- The leader as mentor
- Finding the right mentor
- Skilful questioning
- A language framework for effective feedback
- Managing challenges in the mentoring partnership
- Programme evaluation methodologies
All three events engendered plenty of discussion and sharing of ideas across the groups, and created an environment of lively debate, learning, and lots of ‘takeaways’ for everyone. I felt privileged to be part of this experience.