Mentoring

MENTORING APPROACH

Mentoring is a particularly cost effective means of developing capability and simultaneously delivering targeted business outcomes, with ownership and accountability residing with the individual being mentored. It is also an effective alternative to contracting temporary expertise, where the organisation gets to keep and cultivate the know-how within.

Mentoring Specialities

Clients engage us as mentor to access our extensive experience in the following areas:

• Organisational or divisional strategy development and execution

• Organisation design and reporting arrangements

• Strategic human resource development

• Internal consulting and stakeholder engagement

• Organisation and leadership development, including business wide transformation, capability uplift, and culture renewal

• Leading and facilitating complex change.

In common with our approach to coaching, with mentoring, the focus is on performance improvement and achievement of organisational outcomes that enhance the effectiveness of the individual and the organisation.

Unlike coaching, mentoring is often content-rich with practical tools and advice. The emphasis is on up-skilling and knowledge transfer to enable independent thinking and action.

Whilst the Maximise approach to the mentoring relationship is far from prescriptive, key assumptions include:

• Mutual concern for setting objectives and achieving outcomes.

• Mutually agreed time commitments, including frequency duration and location of meetings. The client mentored would be expected to hold full hands-on accountability for project planning, management and outcomes.

• All discussion content between mentor and mentored client would be strictly confidential, unless agreed otherwise.

The initial meeting with the client to be mentored would typically involve:

• Contracting terms of the mentoring relationship and personal objectives.

• Developing a shared understanding of the nature and objectives of the client’s assigned work and initial assistance with project scoping.

• Distinctions and agreement on roles of client, client’s manager, and mentor.

• Clarification of client project start and end dates and of projected elapsed as well as actual project work duration.

• Understanding client’s capability and capacity constraints to deliver on the assigned work.

The agenda for subsequent meetings with the client typically involve agreeing session objectives, reviewing progress, discussing issues or challenges, and deciding plans and next steps.