Mentoring

Mentoring is one person sharing their knowledge, skills and experience to assist others to progress in their careers. Mentors are prepared to offer help as the need arises - within agreed bounds. Mentoring is rather more than ‘giving advice’, or passing on what your experience was in a particular area or situation. It's about motivating and empowering the other person to identify their own issues and goals, and helping them to find ways of resolving or reaching them - not by doing it for them, or expecting them to ‘do it the way I did it’, but by understanding and respecting different ways of working.

Mentors can:

• Act as an impartial sounding board
• Create valuable space and time for you to ‘stand back’ and review where you are now, where you want to get to, and how best to get there
• Contribute viewpoints, advice, and information from their own knowledge, experience and expertise
• Assist you to achieve changes and goals to enhance your professional and personal life

Mentoring is not counselling or therapy

What's in it for you?

As mentee

• Being able to change/achieve your goals more quickly and effectively than working alone
• Building a network of expertise to draw on can benefit both yourself and others

As mentor

• Mentoring is voluntary but extremely rewarding, and can benefit your own skills development and career progression
• You need to be the sort of person who wants others to succeed, and have or can develop the skills needed to support them.

There are two main types of mentoring:

Induction mentoring:

A mentor can be assigned to you as a new member of staff, to help you orientate yourself to the School and its procedures, policies, sources of help and information, location of key equipment — and to help you ‘survive’ your first few weeks in a new post.

See; Induction mentoring for professional services staff

If you, as a new member of support staff, decide that you would like to take up the offer of a mentor, or would like the opportunity to find out more before you decide, please email Human Resources: humanresources@lse.ac.uk.

Developmental mentoring:

Mentoring can provide individuals with role models and may be a means of providing information about career and training opportunities (internal and external). It can widen support networks, provides motivation and can improve confidence.

With developmental mentoring an experienced mentor helps you to develop your strengths and potential, and identify your changing needs, values, aspirations, and what's most important to you.

To find a developmental mentor yourself you can:

• ask around for a suitable ‘match’
• identify someone you may have come across whom you think would be a good person to approach
• maybe look for an mentor, external to the University

It isn't always easy to approach someone especially if they're ‘very busy’, so take a deep breath and ask if they'd meet you for coffee to discuss how you'd like to work with them as a mentor. If they agree to mentor you, you both need to agree the ‘ground rules’:

Then you will both know where you are, what to expect from the other person and when the arrangement will end.

Here are some suggestions for items that may be included in

• Time: Agree when the mentor relationship will end: three months would be a reasonable length of time but it could be shorter — or longer. You can always decide to extend the relationship if you both wish — again a finite time is best — or just to continue as friends. Agree how often and how long you'll meet, perhaps over coffee or lunch.
• Flexibility: Agree, too, whether it is OK to be phoned up or called on if the person if you have a particular question.
• Confidentiality: Agree that neither of you will disclose to anyone else what you discuss.
• Boundaries: a mentor is not responsible for the person they are mentoring, or for his /her formal development. They can easily answer questions, fill in the odd small gap, allay anxieties and give friendly guidance.
• Review and evaluation: At the end of the arrangement, look back over the time and list what went well and what you might do differently another time. Comment constructively on each other's handling of the role.