Ideal steps to be a good mentor

Mentoring is not all about just sharing your life experiences with mentees, it involves a great deal of understanding human nature and behavioural patterns, excellent communication skills, and it needs you to be motivating, inspirational and someone who can be looked up to. Definitely, not everyone has these qualities. However, there some other important steps that a good mentor takes while mentoring someone. 

Efficient communication: You must have excellent communication skills in order to inspire and motivate your mentee. Your thoughts, ideas, and solutions should be well defined and communicated in a coherent manner for them to reach out to the mentee effectively. Communication also means you need to be a good listener. Listen to your mentee, let him/her finish the pit forward your opinion, thought or solution. You must not thrust your ideology as it may have a negative impact on the mentee’s psychology. 

Quit judging and blaming your mentee: You should keep in mind that everyone has a history, a reason to do what they do and what they don’t do. Whatever your mentee has done in the past or is unable to do in the present and future there must be a reason for that. Instead of judging and blaming, understand why he/she did it or is unable to do it in the first place. We all have our reasons, and so does your mentee.

Understand the nature and behavioural pattern: Every person is different and so has a unique nature and behavioural pattern. To become an ideal mentor you should first understand what kind of human being you are dealing with. Ask your mentee general question and get to know your mentee’s nature and choices.

Have the patience to understand the problem: As a mentor, you must have the patience to completely understand your mentee’s problem. Sometimes only a session is enough to understand the area of problem, sometimes more than three sessions are required for the same.  

Set small achievable targets: Setting small targets does two things. First, contributes towards achieving the major goal. Second, boosts the confidence of the mentee as it gives a sense of accomplishment. Using MENTit, milestones can be easily developed by the Mentee, in consultation with the Mentor.

Different problems, different solutions: Well, as discussed earlier, every person is different and comes to you with a different problem, you cannot deal with everyone with the same solution. The solution to the problem should gel with the mentee’s problem and his or her human nature. It shouldn’t be something that is totally out of the mentee’s league. Give your mentee small tasks to do from time to time, because along with classroom studies, homework and self-study are always required.    

Celebrate: After the achievement of each small goal, a little celebration is significant. It gives confidence to the mentee, as well as a hope to be able to get to the final goal. Praising your mentee once in a while also takes out his or her negativity and fills in a positive attitude towards him/herself and towards life in general, as well.          

Maintain a progress report: MENTit platform has built in feature to write regular progress reports. Also, the mentee provides regular comments to the mentor using the in-built forms at regular intervals. Mentors need to maintain a progress report of the mentee. Because report cards are the evidence not only of the mentee’s progress but also of the mentor’s achievements.