Who Are Your Mentees?
A lot of attention is paid to selecting the right mentors for your programme. I certainly focus extensively on this in my mentoring workshops, including the importance of deciding on organisational criteria and completing a comprehensive mentor profile. But how do you decide who your mentees are?
There are several methods you can use to identify the people in your organisation who would benefit from mentoring. Here are a few ideas for you to consider using in your context:
- Shoulder tap department heads/team leaders as they know their staff and who would benefit from receiving mentoring support;
- Complete a staff skills assessment, or gap analysis, to identify any gaps between the individual staff member’s current skills, knowledge and attitudes and what they require to meet organisational objectives;
- Consider your future staffing requirements and the skills and knowledge people need to develop in relation to these;
- Conduct a survey, asking staff what is working well in their job role, what needs improvement, what are their career goals……… This can help you identify people who would benefit from updating their current skills to meet the demands of the job, or help with their career progression;
- Performance reviews help you and the staff member work out how well they are managing the job, meeting expectations in the job description, contributing to team outputs (for example);
- Create a comprehensive Mentee Application Form, in which the potential mentee has to identify why they want to be a mentee in the programme and what support they are looking from a mentor. Here is a snapshot of questions you could include in the application form:
| 1. Why would you like to be involved in the programme as a mentee? | |
| 2. What do you see as the benefits of participating in the programme? | |
| 3. What would you like to achieve from participating in the programme? | |
| 4. What specific areas would you like support in from your mentor? | i. Upskill in job capabilities
ii. Increase networking opportunities iii. Become familiar with internal processes and procedures iv. Improve interpersonal and communication skills v. Improve time management vi. Career planning and progression vii. Strengthen leadership capabilities viii. Develop professional practice ix. Other |
| 5. What are your career goals? | |