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| A mentor provides... |
Well, times
have changed and so have our needs. People, especially women, want more
flexibility and more options.
With that
said, I present to you several mentoring relationship options: emersion mentoring, peer mentoring,
e-mentoring, reverse mentoring, focused mentoring, MLM mentoring, and group
mentoring. I’ve come across these relationship types through research and
personal experience. Some I found outright, others I developed to better suit
the needs of entrepreneurial women. The descriptions below will help you decide
what kind of mentoring relationships will work best for your professional
development.
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| My mentor and I |
Emersion Mentoring focuses on using various activities
that the mentor and mentee can do together to help the mentee better understand
the mentors professional lifestyle. Networking events, small projects, and
shadow days are some good activities to try. Emersion mentoring is perfect for
the student or young professional who needs some career direction or would like
to gain some experience.
Peer Mentoring does NOT require a designated mentor
or mentee. Instead, the relationship consists of two people with a similar
level of experience, similar point in their career, or common personal trait
(heritage, single mother, disability, etc). Peer mentoring typically focuses on
work/life balance and overcoming common professional obstacles. A familiar
quote comes to mind: “Two heads are better than one.”
E-Mentoring is more of a way to carry out a mentoring relationship. In the past, e-mentoring
was primarily email communication, but the ever changing online world has well,
changed that. With all the online options available to us (Facebook, Skype,
GoogleDocs, etc), there’s no reason why everyone can’t find the mentor that’s
just right for them. When possible, I suggest supplementing e-mentoring with
traditional meeting styles such as telephone and in person meetings.
Reverse Mentoring primarily benefits the experienced
professional, but of course, in any mentoring relationship both parties benefit
to some extent. The usual mentor/mentee roles are switched; in reverse
mentoring the young professional is the mentor and the experienced professional
is the mentee. This set up is designed to help the mentee stay up to date in a
fast-changing world.
Focused Mentoring is usually characterized by a goal of
getting comfortable with a specific subject or skill. For example, you may be
apprehensive about networking at live events; with your focused mentor you can
attend events together to see your mentor in action or your mentor can critique
your actions! Decide what method works best for both mentor and mentee.
Mutual Learning Mentoring (MLM) focuses on matches that can lead to
mutual growth and development. Ideally (and this is only a suggestion), the
participants would be from the same industry and have complementing professions
(marketer and graphic designer, writer and photographer). Like peer mentoring,
there is no designated mentor or mentee.
Group Mentoring occurs when one experienced
professional (the mentor) meets with more than one young professional
simultaneously. Group mentoring is characterized by infrequent (monthly or
less), informal meetings; since meetings are less frequent than other forms of
mentoring, I recommend supplementing in person meetings with online communication
to help foster a more meaningful relationship.
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| Create your own perfect relationship! |
Mentoring
relationships are all about learning and growth through reflection and
feedback. You can try the above mentioned styles of mentoring as is or you can
pull different characteristics from each and create a relationship that works
best for you and the other parties of the relationship. For example, peer and
mutual learning mentoring can be done in the form of infrequent meetings of 3-4
participants, but still maintain the no mentor/no mentee characteristic; the
benefit here would be that although meetings are infrequent, you get more
feedback in one group meeting than you would from one one to one meeting.
Which of
these mentoring relationships would you like to try? Have you been in a
mentoring relationship before? What was your experience?
Share your
thoughts with us!
#ShesaBoss
and #theGB
Well, I have been involved in f2f mentoring which I don't see you mention or allude to. If mentoring implies role modelling then perhaps you could tell me what all those have over f2f mentoring in another post. I like your writing style.It is engaging.
ReplyDeleteThank you for reading!
DeleteF2F (Im assuming you're referring to Face to Face mentoring) is mentioned biefly in the last image (the chart).
I was viewing f2f as a way to communicate with the parties in a mentoring relationship, which I actually believe f2f is the most ideal way to communicate in a mentoring relationship (or any other relationship for that matter).
Mentoring is more than just role modeling and I don't think many people are aware of that. I think role modeling implies a single beneficiary, but in actuality all parties in a mentoring relationship should benefit to some extent.
With any of the relationships I described it is possible to carry them out with a f2f format, but not neccessary. Again though, I think f2f communication is superior to other forms of communication so whenever possible try to communicate that way.
I hope this helped! Let me know if it didn't or if you still have questions :)