What is the Mentorship and Mentoring?

Mentorship is to develop a personal and professional relationship between the mentor and mentee that requires engagement and empowerment, development of creating a culture of continuous learning, and cultivating individual career planning.

Mentoring is a stimulating journey of self-discovery and development which provides opportunities for personal fulfillment and achievement. Mentoring can be both energizing and motivating making a Mentor feel satisfied and content.  

What is the Mentorship Program?

Mentorship programs are designed to assist mentees in becoming confident, productive, to strengthen their leadership competencies, and to enhance their communication, professionalism, critical thinking, and other skills important to the transition to a successful future and good career. Additionally mentoring provides the mentees to develop an emotional bond with the adult mentors.

Types of Mentoring

1. One-on-One Mentoring: It is the traditional model of mentoring, where one mentor and one mentee agree to enter a mentorship to help the mentee develop, improve, and achieve their goals. In this type of mentoring, the mentor has more experience in an area that the mentee is interested in and so can act as an advisor and guide. Additional benefit of one-on-one mentoring is that a long-term relationship is built and nurtured over time. This can have a profound impact on confidence, mental health, and other areas of personal development for both parties.
2. Peer Mentoring: Like one-on-one mentoring, peer mentoring is when two people come together in a mentorship but both parties are from a similar age range. They may take turns acting as ‘mentor’ and ‘mentee’ or arrange sessions more fluidly. The aim is to share experiences and expertise, learn together and hold each other accountable.
3. Group Mentoring: This style of mentoring involves one mentor working with several mentees in a group. The mentor will lead the sessions with the group of mentees all bringing in their own range of knowledge and experience. Group mentoring helps to reach and impact more mentees in a shorter amount of time than traditional mentoring.
4. Flash Mentoring: As the name suggests, flash mentoring refers to quick one-off mentoring sessions aimed at learning a key piece of information or skill. Flash mentoring is useful for creating space for impactful knowledge sharing, without the pressure to develop a long-term relationship. It can be used in conjunction with other types of mentoring too, such as group mentoring to really make the most of the session and reach a larger number of employees.

It can also be a helpful way to introduce new mentors and mentees. A flash mentoring session can act as a trial for a new mentoring relationship and help individuals to broaden their networks before committing to a longer-term mentorship.

5. Team Mentoring: Much like in sports, team mentoring involves a group of mentors and a group of mentees who carry out mentoring sessions as a team. The key difference between group mentoring and team mentoring is that team mentorship often involves multiple mentors working with the group instead of just one. You may use team mentoring for a group of mentees working on a shared goal or project. Mentees will have developmental goals that they can work on together with the guidance of several mentors. This type of mentoring can help to promote diversity and inclusion as it creates a space for several different people with different opinions and perspectives to come together and learn from one another.

6. Virtual Mentoring: Finally, as remote work has become and remains to be vital in our modern working lives, virtual mentoring is an important type of mentorship to offer your distant mentees. This type opens mentoring up to include people in different cities and even globally, as you can connect with people without the need to meet in person. Offering virtual mentoring can also make your mentoring program more inclusive of employees that are unable to travel to in-person meetings or that prefer to connect virtually. It is an important part of the support you can offer remote teams too.

DIFFERENCE BETWEEN MENTORING AND COACHING

Mentoring focuses on the long-term while coaching is more episodic in nature. Generally, mentoring is development oriented. It helps the Mentee develop greater awareness, concentrate on career goals, and make transitions from one occupational level to another.

Coaching deals with skills — it is heavily task-oriented or performance- oriented. Mentoring, on the other hand, is future-oriented. It establishes a vision of what could be achieved and lays the groundwork for the confidence and commitment to make it happen.