How to "mentor"

[AliceinBunnyland]

Are you a mentor? How does this work for you?

I mean this in a professional setting e.g. senior or mid-level person mentoring someone junior or new to the industry on the same place of work.

Yes @AliceinBunnyland I am. I have done it through an industry body. They provided a couple of pages of guidelines. I have mentored a couple of ppl, they have been in the same industry but more junior.

They come with professional issues and we typically talk through them. I try to encourage them to come to the answers themselves, but I also provide feedback/mention relevant experience from my career. I think one of the main benefits, is to give them space outside of work to talk through issues and have somebody focus on them.

We have typically met every 6 weeks for 1.5 hours up to a year, often it has been shorter.

Does that help?

Thanks @Redstar99 Yes it does help. The person I mentor works with me in the same team that I work in and in the same office. I am about 10 years qualified in the profession she is trying to get into. I think that is different to what you do? But the the same principles probably apply in allowing them to lead and encouraging them to think for themselves.

What I find somewhat difficult is we work fairly closely anyway and we get along well but in my role I am very expose to the things she needs to work on and I think it is almost difficult to draw the line between being her mentor and her manager. I'm not her manager but I supervise her and I am finding I am having to be firmer or things like her attention to detail and time management (eg checking a letter four times as there are spelling errors each time) but also I'm trying to keep things light and friendly between us as we do get along very well.

I am her mentor but also have the role of training her which I think are two different things.

I meet with her every 1-2 weeks for an hour to discuss her workload, anything she should be working on and helping her get to where she wants in our profession like how to make her applications stronger.

@AliceinBunnyland gosh that does sound tricky. Very close to home to mentor her. It sounds like you are doing a good job considering the constraints.

Who decided you'd mentor her? I have to say it doesn't feel very fair on your or her. Who set out the expectations of what is meant to happen during the mentoring?

Could you perhaps have an hour a month where you talk about bigger stuff/the future? And the rest of the time you 'just' supervise her?

@Redstar99 Our manager asked me to mentor her and he did not really say what it should involve. I think it is an internal thing I think they try to do with junior people but I expect in some cases it doesn't involve both mentoring and supervision. Supervision falls to me due to my position in the team.

I think having a separate meeting about goals and bigger things is a good idea. There is something on our intranet about mentoring and the guidance is to let them guide it and arrange meetings and say what they want to talk about so I could suggest to her that we do that ie she arranges a mentoring meeting when she wants and otherwise I will set up weekly or fortnightly chats about her work.

I think I am finding it tough now as, a year in, she is still making silly errors (such as the checking a letter four times and it having silly errors in it - that was this week but not unusual) and I think it is frustrating for both of us. I will speak to her about it next week to ask what will help her as I don't think I am wrong for expecting her to get the basics right.