Mentoring: Do You Have What It Takes?
Availability and Time
The third essential qualification is for the mentor to make himself always available—to do mentoring sessions at the most mutually convenient time. The mentor must be able to systematically schedule his sessions with the mentee and that ample time should be allocated to achieve the best results. In planned or formal mentoring, time management is vitally essential. Interruptions must be anticipated and appropriately addressed in order to control the pace of the mentoring processes. Mentoring is not a one-day affair. It would take weeks, months, or even years. Thus, the mentor should be ready for longer engagements. No matter how skillful and knowledgeable the mentor is, or how intense is his desire to help, without time and availability, mentoring is expected to fail.
Building Confidence, Personal Rapport and Relationships
An excellent mentor knows how to build personal rapport and trust with the mentee. It requires respect mutual, understanding each other’s strengths, weaknesses and limitations, personal idiosyncrasies as well as the mentee’s potentials. The mentor should be able to build upon the mentee’s capacities and weaknesses in the partnering relationship. This will encourage openness that is vital in the design and execution of the mentoring services. Openness provides a more accurate determination of mentoring needs and wants, feedback on periodic results of the mentoring, and ease of the delivery of the mentoring services.
Job Security Confidence
A mentor must be secured in his position. He must be confident in his or her career and should take pride in his or her mentee’s accomplishments. A mentor should be proud in developing the mentee’s strengths and competencies without being threatened, especially so when the mentee is a subordinate. A secure mentor should be appreciative of the mentee’s achievements and truthfully enjoy having played a part in the mentee’s professional growth.
Mentor-Mentee Relationship
The mentor-mentee relationship can take any form that fits the individuals involved. The relationship however must be essentially grounded on two solid foundations— trust and confidence.
Ethics dictate that confidentiality should always be observed. The relationship must be based on trust and openness. Openness develops trust that eases the flow of communication, a basic requirement in the mentoring process.
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