How can you clearly communicate your mentoring goals to your mentee?

2 How to define your mentoring goals

Before you start your mentoring sessions, it is important to have a conversation with your mentee about your mentoring goals. This will help to ensure that you are both on the same page and can create an agreement that outlines the scope, duration, frequency, and format of your mentoring. To define these goals, you can ask your mentee about their current situation, challenges, aspirations, and needs. You can also share your own experience, expertise, and perspective as a mentor. Brainstorming together the possible areas of improvement, learning, or support that you can offer or explore is also beneficial. Then prioritize the most important and relevant goals for both of you and write them down in a SMART format: specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-bound.

3 How to communicate your mentoring goals

To establish trust, rapport, and accountability in your mentoring relationship, it is important to communicate your mentoring goals clearly and consistently to your mentee. Doing so can be done by reviewing your goals at the beginning and end of each mentoring session, using open-ended questions, active listening, and constructive feedback. Additionally, acknowledging your mentee's achievements, challenges, and feedback on your mentoring is important. It is also beneficial to review and update your goals regularly to reflect any changes or new opportunities. Lastly, documenting your goals and progress in a mentoring plan or log can be helpful.

4 How to overcome common challenges

Communicating your mentoring goals to your mentee can be difficult, as you may encounter some common challenges such as a lack of clarity or commitment to their goals, unrealistic or conflicting goals, disagreement with your advice and feedback, lack of communication or response to messages and requests, and dissatisfaction with your mentoring. To overcome these issues, you should clarify and confirm your mentee's goals and motivations, help them set realistic and attainable goals, respect their autonomy and preferences, communicate regularly and respectfully, and seek feedback from them and other sources on your mentoring.

5 How to measure and celebrate your mentoring goals

Communicating your mentoring goals to your mentee is not only about setting and discussing them, but also about measuring and celebrating them. This will help you and your mentee to recognize your achievements, learn from your experiences, and sustain motivation and engagement. To measure and celebrate your mentoring goals, you can use quantitative and qualitative indicators to track progress and outcomes, compare results with the baseline and expectations, identify factors that contributed to or hindered success, share stories, insights, and lessons learned with your mentee and others, and express gratitude, appreciation, and recognition to your mentee and yourself.

6 Here’s what else to consider

This is a space to share examples, stories, or insights that don’t fit into any of the previous sections. What else would you like to add?