How can volunteers become effective mentors?

1 Understand your role

As a mentor, your role is not to tell your mentee what to do, but to help them discover their own strengths, interests, and challenges. You are not a teacher, a boss, or a friend, but a facilitator, a sounding board, and a role model. Your role is to listen, ask questions, offer suggestions, and share your insights and experiences. You should also respect your mentee's autonomy, confidentiality, and boundaries, and avoid imposing your values or opinions on them.

2 Establish a rapport

A good mentoring relationship is based on mutual trust, respect, and understanding. To establish a rapport with your mentee, you should communicate clearly and regularly, and show genuine interest and curiosity in their goals, needs, and perspectives. You should also be open and honest about your expectations, preferences, and limitations, and invite feedback from your mentee. Moreover, you should be supportive and empathetic, and acknowledge your mentee's achievements and challenges.

3 Set SMART goals

One of the main purposes of mentoring is to help your mentee achieve their learning and development goals. To do this, you should help them set SMART goals, which are specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-bound. SMART goals help your mentee clarify their vision, focus their efforts, and track their progress. You should also help your mentee break down their goals into manageable steps, and review and adjust them regularly.

4 Provide guidance and feedback

As a mentor, you should provide guidance and feedback to your mentee to help them improve their skills, knowledge, and performance. Guidance is the process of offering advice, suggestions, or resources to your mentee, based on your expertise and experience. Feedback is the process of giving constructive and positive comments to your mentee, based on your observations and evaluations. You should provide guidance and feedback that is timely, specific, relevant, and actionable, and that encourages your mentee to reflect and learn from their experiences.

5 Foster a growth mindset

A growth mindset is the belief that one can improve their abilities and outcomes through effort, learning, and feedback. A growth mindset fosters motivation, resilience, and creativity, and is essential for effective mentoring. As a mentor, you should foster a growth mindset in yourself and your mentee by embracing challenges, celebrating mistakes, seeking feedback, and praising effort and progress. You should also avoid fixed mindset statements, such as "you are not good at this" or "you have a natural talent for this", and instead use growth mindset statements, such as "you can learn this" or "you have worked hard for this".