© David Clutterbuck Partnership 2013

Mentoring Train the Trainer’s Workshop

Exercises

Course map

Train the Trainer Workshop

· Trainer’s guide

· Making the most of developmental mentoring booklet

· Exercises

· Powerful questions for coaches and mentors booklet

· Slides

· Trainer introduction

· Diversity mentoring basics

· Executive mentoring basics

· Mentoring review session

Programme Manager Workshop

· Programme manager’s manual

· Case studies

· Appendices including ISMPE standards and self assessment guide

· Facilitator’s workshop notes and exercises

· Slides – Making developmental mentoring work

Introduction

The exercises in this workbook are designed to complement initial mentor and mentor training, with some additions relating to review sessions, when participants come back together to share experiences and maintain the momentum of their relationship. Some exercises are specific to certain types of mentoring programme (for example, diversity mentoring). Where slides or handouts are mentioned, these are to be found in the DCP Train the Trainer Manual.

This resource contains around 70 exercises, including some pre-work before a mentoring workshop. It will become immediately obvious that there are far too many to include in a single mentoring workshop, even if spread over several days. The rationale for this is that every mentoring programme is different, so it’s useful to have a high degree of flexibility in the choice of which exercises to include. Timings against the exercises are recommendations only – you can reduce or extend as you feel fit.

Many of them are designed to be fun, as well as to promote learning. When we evaluate a workshop, I sometimes find it useful to ask “Did you have fun?”. I’d be very disappointed if anybody – participants or facilitators – said no!

This is a living document, which we expect to revise continuously, adding new exercises as they arise. Your experience in using the exercises can be of great value to colleagues within the trainer network. So please provide feedback and also inform us of successful variations you have tried, or new exercises that you experiment with.

Contents

Pre-workshop exercises

· Frustration-elation log

· Motivation to be a mentor/ mentee

1. Ice-breakers

1.1. Learning from previous mentors

1.2. Improv

1.3. Truth or lie

1.4. Stepping through a sheet of paper

1.5. Catch the egg

1.6. Two degrees of separation

2. Definitions

3. Benefits and downsides

4. Building rapport

4.1. Bringing out the passion

4.2. Values elicitation triangle

4.3. Identifying values

4.4. What do we have in common?

4.5. 7 kinds of trust

5. Environment for mentoring

6. Listening

6.1. Holding attention

6.2. What did they say?

6.3. Five levels of listening

7. Giving feedback

8. Using questions

8.1. Question style

8.2. Stepping in, stepping out

8.3. Powerful questions

9. Disclosure

10. Guiding/ giving advice

11. Summarising

11.1. Content, emotion and intent

11.2. Simple practice

11.3. The four I’s

12. Using silence

13. Mentoring practice

13.1. Being non-directive

13.2. Let the mentee do the talking

13.3. Role play

13.4. The mentoring conversation

14. Acknowledging another person’s perspective

15. Setting and pursuing goals

15.1. Logic tree

15.2. What need does this goal meet?

15.3. Big goals and little goals

16. Role modelling

16.1. What kind of role model are you?

16.2. Your mentor as a role model

17. Reflective space

18. Raising self-awareness

18.1. I am the person who

18.2. Seeing ourselves in others

19. Commitment

19.1. Stages of commitment

19.2. Scale of commitment

20. Reflecting back emotions

21. Behaviours:

21.1. Toxic mentor and mentee

21.2. Changing behaviour

22. Managing boundaries

22.1. Where not to tread

22.2. Conversations with stakeholders

23. Giving encouragement

23.1. The Pygmalion effect

23.2. But & and

24. Roles of the mentor

25. Challenging and supporting

26. Managing expectations

27. Diversity

27.1. Diversity awareness ladder

27.2. Assumptions

27.3. Values analysis

28. Mentee exercises

28.1. What do you want in a mentor?

28.2. Your career path

28.3. Building your networks

29. Review exercises

29.1. Our relationship so far

29.2. Drama triangle

29.3. Making choices: Change balloon

29.4. Making choices: Conjoint analysis

29.5. Making choices: Extremes

29.6. Making choices: Separate selves

29.7. Scripting

29.8. Issues mapping

Pre-workshop exercises

Title

Description

Comments

0.1 Frustration-elation log

Purpose: To ensure that participants bring a number of real issues for mentoring practice sessions

Process: Participants take time to reflect each week on the things that have happened to them – either at work or outside work. They identify two or three they feel really good about (for example, tasks where they felt really “in flow”) and a similar number, where they felt disappointed or frustrated. They write a short descriptive paragraph about each: what happened, who was involved, how they felt, how they prepared etc. Once they have two or three weeks’ worth, they can begin to look for recurrent patterns. Inviting trusted others to review the log may also throw up patterns they had not noticed. These patterns – and sometimes specific instances in the log -- now become the basis for fruitful mentoring conversations.

Lessons:

· If we want to make improvements in some aspect of our work or lives, then being aware of positive and negative patterns is an important starting point

Ensure that people have several weeks to do this and emphasis in the pre-workshop instructions how valuable the exercise will be, both in the workshop and more generally. You may also wish to offer some one-to-one guidance for anyone, who finds this difficult.

0.2 Motivation to be a mentor/ mentee

Purpose:

· To encourage participants to be honest with themselves about their motivations

· To alert the facilitator to any inappropriate expectations by participants

Process: Ask mentors and mentees to fill in a simple questionnaire and reflect upon their answers.

The mentor questions are:

· Which of the following motivations apply to you?

· To develop my networks

· To learn from my mentee

· To practise developmental skills and behaviours in a safe environment?

· To share my great experience

· To help somebody more junior avoid the mistakes I made

· To help retain talented people in the organization/ profession

· To build reputation as a developer of others

· To put something back

The mentee questions are:

· Which of the following motivations apply to you?

· To develop my networks

· To learn from my mentor’s experience

· To develop my self-confidence

· To learn about the organization

· To learn about myself

· To have greater clarity about my career plan

· To find a sponsor

Now they must rank these in order of importance, with 1 being highest. Ask them to bring their answers and their reflections to the workshop. Alternatively, put the questionnaire on-line and collate the responses. This a) tells you who has actually done the pre-work and b) gives you an indication of any mis-expectations.

Lessons:

· Motivations can be multiple and complex, but some are more valid than others. Mentees expecting a sponsor are likely to be disappointed. Mentors, who place more emphasis on putting back (the altruistic instinct) are likely to be less effective than those, who emphasise learning motivations.

The research into mentor motivations is clear that altruistic mentors tend to be overly directive in their approach, and are more likely to want to relive their own career through the mentee. Similar, relationships, where the mentee expects sponsorship, are likely to have less open and honest dialogue, because the mentee needs to sell themselves to the mentor.

Exercises

Title

Description

Comments

1.1

Ice-breaker: Learning from past mentors

Purpose: to explore their experience of mentor-like relationships

Process: Ask participants to think of someone, who has taken a positive interest in their career or learning, and/or who has been a role model for them in some aspect of their life or work. What did this person do that stood out for you? What feelings do you towards them? Collect these one by one around the room. Ask every third participant, when they have finished their description, to nominate someone else to identify common themes so far. Write these on a flip chart and add your own observations at the end.

Lessons:

· People aren’t always aware that mentoring is happening – it just seems a natural process

· Not all mentoring is benign

Some participants may not be able to think of anyone, who has been a mentor to them – so don’t ask them to think of a mentor. Pretty much everyone, however, has had someone, who influenced their career positively.

Some people may refer to negative role models, or negative mentoring relationships. Capture this data to refer back to later.

1.2

Ice-breaker: Improv

2 minutes

Purpose: to stimulate creative thinking

Process: There are many exercises that can be incorporated from comic improvisation. One of the simplest is to ask people to walk around the room, pointing at things randomly and rapidly but calling out a different name. For example, pointing at a window and saying “teapot”. They should not use the same word twice.

Lesson: The more you think about this exercise, the harder it becomes to do rapidly. The mentoring conversation is typically much more fluid and creative, when both parties have their intuition turned on.

Some people will find this quite difficult, because they have to suppress the normal working of their mind. Be prepared to walk around with them, demonstrating what to do.

1.3

Ice-breaker: Truth or lie

30 seconds per participant for each part of the exercise i.e. one minute per participant overall

Purpose: to build rapport within the group, to stimulate creative thinking and to demonstrate that we often only see what others permit us to.

Process: Each person introduces themselves in a few sentences. Two statements are lies. Once everyone has spoken, the facilitator asks participants to guess what the lie was for each person in turn. There can be a small prize for each “smuggled” lie (i.e. one that no-one identifies).

Lessons: On average, people tell one lie every three minutes of conversation. Most of these are inconsequential (white lies, or slight massaging of the truth) and/or involve lying to oneself. The more deliberate a lie, the more difficult it is to carry off.

This exercise has to be pacy!

You may wish to point out that knowing there is a buried untruth makes us more attentive to what is being said and stimulates our curiosity about the other person. How could we bring that same level of attentiveness and curiosity into mentoring conversations generally? What would be the pluses and minuses of so doing?

1.4

Ice-breaker: Stepping through a sheet of paper

5 minutes

Purpose: Stimulating creative thinking and group collaboration

Process: Split participants into groups of up to 4. Give each a sheet of A4 paper and tell them they have 5 minutes, during which each of them has to step through that paper. Have sufficient pairs of scissors around for each group to have one.

The solution is quite simple – cut strips to form a paper chain, which will stretch out into a frame about a metre wide.

Lessons: With a little ingenuity, many problems become quite simple to solve

Do not use this exercise if it might cause embarrassment to anyone (for example, if they will struggle because they have a physical disability or are obese).

1.5

Ice-breaker: Catch the egg

30 seconds per participant

Purpose: To introduce participants to each other without the “creeping death”

Process: Ask everyone in turn to say who they are, what experience they have of mentoring and what they want to get out of the workshop. Limit them to 30 seconds. Use a gong to keep them to time. Explain that you will choose the first person at random, by tossing an egg (or ball, or other light object) for them to catch. When they have finished their introduction they must throw the “egg” to a colleague, who must be at least two seats away – this prevents people simply handing it to the person next to them. And so on, until everyone is finished.

Lesson: Better stay awake and attentive!

This exercise comes from a Greek fishermen’s game, where they use raw eggs. While it can be done in the same way (and in at least one company, has been!) it can be rather messy – hence the use of a ball. Hard-boiled eggs are an option (and rather fun for the first few minutes, if you let people assume they are raw!) You may need more than one!

Ask people to be careful not to knock over drinks or cause injury by throwing too hard!

1.6

Ice-breaker:

Two degrees of separation

10 minutes

Purpose: To illustrate the remarkable wealth of learning resources around us

Process: Ask participants to think of something they have wanted to learn for some time, but have not got round to doing anything about. Ask them to find someone else in the room, who can either help them directly with that learning need, or knows where to go to. Give enough time for most people to have toured the room, then ask who hasn’t found a learning resource. Ask them to shout out their learning need and wait for offers from other members of the audience. (There always are.) Point out that one of the consequences of this exercise is that people often do go on to take up their learning challenge!

Lessons:

· For almost anything that we want to learn, there is usually a resource within “two degrees of separation”

In all the dozens of times I have done this exercise, with groups from 15 or so to 2,000 people, not once has anyone not found a link to a learning resource on the topic they chose. This includes the very first time, when one person in a room of about 20 wanted to learn about traffic light management!

2.1

Definitions

10 - 15 minutes

Purpose: to draw out preconceptions about mentoring

Process: Ask participants what words and phrases they might associate with mentoring, to put each onto a post-it and to bring their post-its to the front. Ask two participants to sort the words and phrases into common themes, such as “support” “challenge”, “advise”. Steer them gently, if needed.

Use these themes to explore the difference between sponsorship and developmental mentoring.

If you wish to extend the exercise, you can repeat it, but for words and phrases they associate with coaching. Then draw out how much similarity there is between developmental mentoring and developmental coaching.

Lessons:

· There are two main models of mentoring, with different perspectives and expectations

This exercise is particularly useful in introducing the topic of developmental v sponsorship mentoring. It can also be adapted to explore the differences between mentoring and coaching, and the two main models of each.

3.1

Benefits & downsides

15-20 minutes

Purpose: To help make the personal and business case for mentoring

Process: Divide participants into four – each to consider the potential pluses and minuses of mentoring for one of the following: mentee, mentor, line manager, the organization. If you wish to add other groups (e.g. customers, patients, society) you can do so but this will add time to the exercise. Gather the results on separate sheets of flipchart paper. Refer to the handouts or manual pages on this topic, to add further pluses and minuses.

Downsides may include:

· Unrealistic expectations by the mentee, or by others on their behalf (for example, about promotion opportunities)

· Mentors passing on yesterday’s values and desired behaviours, rather than tomorrow’s

· Mentees may decide they are in the wrong job and leave. (Not necessarily a bad thing for either them or the organization.)

Lessons:

· Mentoring provides a wide range of benefits for all parties involved

· Many of the benefits are mutual between mentor and mentee, especially those related to learning and networking.

This is an exercise that benefits from personal anecdotes from the facilitator. It’s also a good opportunity to refer to issues, such as dependency, which affect sponsorship mentoring more than developmental mentoring. Other issues include:

· What happens to the career of a protégé when their sponsor leaves, or is pushed aside?

· Risks that the mentor tries to (micro-)manage their protégé’s career – known to be a reason for talented people to leave organizations

4.1

Building rapport: Drawing out passion

10 minutes

Purpose: To illustrate how to build rapport swiftly

Process: Participants work in pairs; ideally with someone they don’t know well. One asks the other “What do you feel passionate about?” then gives encouraging noises and gestures to encourage the other’s response. As they listen, they attempt to draw what they hear. They can write words only as a last resort, or to complete an image. After three minutes, they reverse roles, without sharing the picture. When they have both had a turn, they do share the pictures and talk through them.

Pull them into plenum to discuss:

· How much rapport did you find you had?

· What did you see in the picture that surprised you?

· What did you see that particularly resonated with you?

· What did you learn about yourself?

Lessons:

· Rapport tends to be stronger when you don’t write things down; drawing reduces the quality of attentiveness but by much less than writing

· When someone is passionate about something, it is hard not to be infected by their enthusiasm

· Visual (drawing), auditory (listening) and emotional (talking about things you are passionate about) input lays down much stronger neural pathways and so is much more likely to be recalled later

Many people are self-conscious about their drawing skills. Reassure them that squiggles and stickmen are fine. If they find that drawing gets in the way of their listening, suggest they first listen, then try to capture what they have heard while they both sit in silence for a minute.

4.2

Building rapport: Values Elicitation Triangle

20-30 minutes

Purpose: To help someone become clearer about

Process: This exercise comes from Julie Hay, an expert in both mentoring and transactional analysis. It is best done individually, then shared in small groups. The instructions are:

1. Choose three key values and place one at each side of a triangle.

2. What is the connecting value between each of these? [Creates a new triangle inside the first.]

3. What is the connecting value between each of these values?

4. Continue until you have the same thing on all three sides; or one or more values are repeated again and again. This is (or these are) your core value(s).  

Lessons:

· We have many values, but some are dominant.

This can be quite a challenging exercise. Be prepared to work with some pairs to break through their initial hesitations.

4.3 Building rapport:

Identifying values

20-30 minutes

Purpose: To provide insight into personal values and values alignment

Process: This is an alternative to the Values Elicitation Triangle. Ask participants in pairs to discuss:

· What are your values towards others?

· What are your values towards yourself?

· What are the connecting values between these?

This can be represented most easily as two lists, with a space between for connecting values. When both have completed their lists, they should discuss the commonality between them.

If you wish to take the exercise a step further, you can list, at the bottom of the sheet, organizational values. (You can even divide these again into espoused values and demonstrated values.) This permits a discussion around how the person’s personal values align with the values of the organization.

Lessons:

· The importance of being aware of our values

· How sharing values can increase rapport

This can be quite a challenging exercise. Be prepared to work with some pairs to break through their initial hesitations.

4.4 Building rapport: What do we have in common?

Purpose: To demonstrate how to see and appreciate another person more holistically

Process: In pairs, each reveals in turn three things, which they perceive they will have in common; then three they think they other person will not share. Having checked these and discussed them briefly, they repeat the exercise as many times as they have opportunity, before being pulled back into plenum. It’s important for this exercise to have pace, so encourage them to keep the discussion to a minimum. If you wish, you can identify which pair had the most “wrong calls” – this will be the pair that learned most about each other!

Lessons:

· We rarely know other people as well as we think

· Sharing what we have in common builds trust and rapport

This exercise works best with people, who do not know each other very well. But it always provides unexpected revelations, even among people, who have worked together for a long time.

4.5

Building rapport:

7 levels of trust

15-20 minutes

Purpose: To think about how they will build high quality of trust in the mentoring relationship

Process: Introduce the exercise by explaining that one of the big problems in large organizations is lack of truly honest dialogue around careers issues. Development mentoring, and to a lesser extent, sponsorship mentoring, provide a safe environment where honest conversation can take place. But it doesn’t happen automatically, especially in diverse mentoring relationships, where cultural and other stereotypes can take time to overcome. In my experience, mentors and mentees need to take time up front to develop the habit of openness and disclosure, as the key to establishing seven types of trust:

· Trust in each other’s goodwill — that they care about you as an individual

· Trust in each other’s values — that, while they may express their values differently, at root they have the same beliefs about what is important in relationships between people

· Trust in the confidentiality of the relationship — knowing that, with obvious exceptions of legal obligations and duty of care, what is said in the relationship remains in the relationship

· Trust in each other’s willingness to learn from the other

· Trust that each will do what they say they will do

· Trust that each will air any concerns they have about the relationship

· Trust that each will be appropriately tough on the other, when it is needed — knowing that a critical friend is the most trustworthy friend of all.

Ask participants in small groups to discuss how they will build and sustain each of these types of trust. Regroup and collect their thoughts on the flipchart.

Lessons:

· Trust rarely just happens. You have to work at it.

This exercise is particularly effective when used with a mixed group of mentors and mentees.

5.1

Environment for mentoring

10 minutes

Purpose: To raise awareness of how environment can affect the quality of mentoring conversations

Process: Split into groups, each assigned the task of drawing on a sheet of flipchart paper either an environment most conducive to intimate, open conversation, or one least conducive. Each group shares its drawing with the others and talks through the issues it has illustrated. Draw the exercise to a close with a discussion around the pluses and minuses of different environments (e.g. a noisy restaurant, the mentor’s office, the mentee’s office).

Lessons:

· It’s important to select an environment that is “power-free” and promotes relaxed, creative dialogue

6.1

Listening: Holding attention

15 minutes

Purpose: To raise awareness of good listening skills

Process: In pairs, one person talks about something of interest to them (for example, their plans for their next holiday). The other listens. Each time their attention wanders – for example, when a comment makes them think of something similar in their own life), they make a mental note (tapping their knee with one finger can help). After two minutes, the conversation ends and the listener reveals how many times they lost complete attention, while the speaker feeds back how well they felt listened to.

Lessons:

· Making eye contact helps listening (though not in all cultures), because we read unconsciously the micro-movements of the eye

· Being attentive means more than just listening to the words

· Drifting slightly in our attention is natural and beneficial, because it allows us to contextualise and empathise with what we hear

· However, drifting off too far into our own thoughts stops us listening at all

Some participants may feel a little self-conscious about “listening to themselves listening”, but it is good practice and something they can take into other environments. Use the exercise alongside handouts on Five levels of listening.

6.2

Listening

What did they say?

15 minutes

Purpose: To practise active listening

Process: In groups of up to five, ask them to discuss an open question, which will generate a continuing conversation. For example, “How practical is it for a company to live up to its values?” Once the conversation has gathered momentum, stop them for a moment and issue the following instruction: From now on, before you make your next contribution, you must first summarise what the previous person said, and they must agree with your summary. After five minutes or so, bring everyone together to discuss their learning.

Lessons:

· Listening for key words and phrases helps absorb what the other person says

6.3 Listening:

Five levels of listening

Purpose: To help shift participants’ “centre of gravity” in listening

Process: Introduce the 5 levels of listening and talk them through. Split participants into two groups. People in Group A each choose a controversial topic to discuss. Then they select the person from Group B, who they think will have the most different views from their own, on this topic. They then have a 10 minute conversation, during which they will:

a) try to be aware of which of the five listening modes they are in

b) experiment with trying to move into other modes

Bring them into plenum to discuss their experiences.

Lessons:

· The more aware we are of our listening mode, the easier it is to move into more productive modes

· Trying to stay in the same mode isn’t easy and may not be productive – it’s better to aim to spend most time spread across modes 3, 4 and 5

This exercise would normally be used either for people, who have already had a lot of training in listening skills; or as a skills upgrade in review sessions. It can be quite hard for people, who don’t have good listening skills already, to get their heads around! The most difficult for many people is “Listening to help someone else understand” – you may have to explain this more than once.

7.1

Feedback

10-15 minutes

Purpose: To emphasise good practice in both giving and receiving feedback

Process: Put participants into pairs. Ask A to write down five or more key characteristics of good feedback-giving; B to write down five or more characteristics of good receiving of feedback. They keep these to themselves and begin a role play, in which B gives feedback to A about a presentation A has given to an audience of peers and superiors. (Or substitute a scenario of your choice.) Then they share their lists and discuss their experience as giver and receiver of feedback. Bring everyone back into plenum for a general review of learning.

Lessons:

· Feedback is a process which requires from both the giver and receiver:

· Openness (a willingness to set aside stereotypes and limiting beliefs)

· Observation (seeing both the large and small picture; recognising what is not there as well as what is)

· Honesty and courage (in presenting and in absorbing comments and observations)

It doesn’t seem to matter whether people play their roles seriously or ham them up. There is lots of learning either way. An alternative approach is to split participants into two groups to generate the two lists. Then each group nominates one person from the other group, to perform the role play at the front of the room.

8.1

Using questions: Question style

30 minutes

Purpose: To help participants become comfortable with the cycle of mentoring questions, from probing, through challenging, focusing and confirming

Process: Talk through the slide showing the cycle and refer to the handout. Split the group into four, assigning each one of the four questioning styles. Their task is to identify as many questions as they can, using that style.

Now bring two volunteers to the front. Using either a real mentoring issue (real play) or one you offer (role play), ask the mentor to begin the conversation with some probing questions. (A real issue is usually more powerful.) After one or two, stop the conversation and ask the audience to suggest some further probing questions. Ask the mentee which question he or she would like to work with. The mentor then asks that question.

When appropriate, move on to challenging questions, using the same process, and gradually work through all four styles. If appropriate, you can change the mentor and mentee.

End by asking the volunteers about their learning and then opening up the discussion to the whole group. Emphasise that the cycle of questions is not fixed – you don’t have to mechanically follow from one style to the next. It’s much more important to have the flexibility to adjust style to the client’s immediate need.

Lessons:

· Adjusting questioning style helps the client progress in their thinking

Some participants may want to use the model as a structure for their mentoring conversations. While it’s fine for them to do so at a macro level, within the conversation any of the styles may be relevant at particular points.

This is a relatively long exercise, but it does focus participants minds on the variety of approaches they have available to them.

8.2

Using questions:

Stepping in and out

20 minutes

Purpose: To become comfortable with shifting question perspective

Process: Use the slide and handout Stepping In and Stepping Out to explain how effective mentors change question perspective to help the mentee with their thinking. Split into pairs, with each undertaking a mentoring conversation, using the SISO diagram as a background structure. Depending on space, there are three options:

· Hold the conversation without any visual aids

· Draw the SISO diagram on a sheet of paper. Mentor and mentee each use a coin to indicate where they are on the diagram

· Use large sheets of paper on the floor as stepping stones.

Bring everyone together to discuss their experience. Point out that, with practice, moving between one quadrant and the next quickly becomes instinctive.

Lessons:

· Solving difficult problems always requires a shift in perspective

It’s helpful to have some transition questions to hand. For example:

· “What’s the benefit of hanging on to that feeling?”

· “Who were the ‘hidden presences’ in that conversation?”

· “How important is making a profit compared to being consistent with the company values?”

· “If you continue to feel as you do now, how will that make you behave later?”

8.3

Using questions:

Powerful questions

15 minutes

Purpose: To help construct more effective questions

Process: This exercise builds on the handout What makes a powerful question. Share the slide and the acronym PRAIRIE. Ask everyone to think of one or two good questions they have recently, asked, or that has been asked of them. They can then help each other to explore how that question could have been made more powerful, by applying the elements of PRAIRIE. What do they think the difference in response might be, to the two versions of the question? Gather the highlights and good examples from their discussions.

Lessons:

· Taking time to sharpen up the question can greatly improve the impact

You may wish to demonstrate how you yourself have made a question more powerful. For example: “How ethical is this decision?” can become “How would you feel, if you had to explain this decision to a journalist/ to your parents or children?” The question has now become more personal, more directly focused on emotions and values; and about the same for acute/incisive, reverberant, and explicit. It may also be a bit more innocent, as it can be argued there is less of a sense of judgement in the revised version of the question.

9.1

Disclosure

20 minutes

Purpose: to practice appropriate disclosure

Process: introduce the three types of disclosure:

- empathetic

- manipulative

- emotional

Ask participants in pairs to have a conversation, in which one or both employs manipulative disclosure. This can get quite riotous and hysterical! Ask them to discuss what it felt like and gather some feedback in plenum, to give them time to calm down. Now ask them to experiment with empathetic disclosure, with one person talking about a difficult experience and the other deciding how much of their own experience to share. Again they discuss what it felt like and share with the group. Finally, they experiment with emotional disclosure.

Conclude with a general discussion about when they might make more effective use of disclosure generally – for example, being able to say in meetings “I don’t feel comfortable with this”.

Lessons:

· Used appropriately, personal disclosure can build trust and enhance the learning dialogue

In many corporate cultures, personal disclosure is not the norm, especially at the emotional level. Exploring the three types of disclosure in the order outlined provides a gradual build up to the most difficult.

10.1

Guiding/ giving advice

30 minutes

Purpose:

· To recognise when and how to give advice

· To distinguish between advising and guiding

Process: Talk through the handout Giving Advice. Ask participants to reflect on the following statements:

· I know what you want

· I know how you should think about this

· I know what you need to know

· I know what you need to do

Discuss in plenum: when they find themselves thinking in any of these ways, how does it affect how they behave and what they say? Capture these thoughts on a flipchart.

Emphasise the difference between advice (telling someone what to do) and guidance (using your knowledge to work together with them to understand the issue and find a solution). Ask for a volunteer, who would like some guidance on a topic they are concerned about. Ask the volunteer to state the issue and ask for advice. Ask the audience: “What are my choices here?” Discuss these with them and then ask the volunteer one of the following questions:

· “What thinking have you already done around this?”

· “What do you already know about this?”

When appropriate, you can also ask questions, such as:

· “What else can you tell me, to help me work out what parts of my experience are really relevant?”

· “How can I help you find your own solution, rather than tell you what I would do?”

Once you have sufficient information about the issue and what the mentee needs from you, use one of the following statements/ questions:

· “I think the information you are missing is…”

· “Would it be helpful, if I explained my own experience of this and we then discussed what is relevant for you?”

· “Let’s look at the pluses and minuses of different solutions….”

Conclude the mentoring conversation and ask the mentee for comments on his/here experience. Gather feedback from the audience and give them some reflection time to record their learning from the demonstration.

Lessons:

· Don’t rush into giving advice until you know what’s needed

· Engage the mentee as much as you can in deciding what information is of most use to them

This exercise tends to have best results when the facilitator demonstrates the process. If you get stuck for any reason, use this as an opportunity to emphasise how hard it is to steer a path between giving and not giving advice!

If you have time, you can then invite two more volunteers to work through the process, gathering feedback from the audience at appropriate points.

11.1

Summarising :

Content, emotion and intent

15 minutes

Purpose: To raise awareness and competence in summarising during mentoring sessions

Process: In trios – mentor, mentee, observer. (If the numbers don’t work, some groups can have more than one observer.) The mentee talks for five minutes, with questions from the mentor, about a topic of particular interest or concern to them. Only the observer takes notes during the conversation. At the end of five minutes, the mentor and mentee privately summarise in writing, bearing in mind the three areas of emotion and intent. Then all three share and compare what they have written.

Lessons:

· Summaries often tend to reflect the listener’s interests more than those of the speaker

· Giving the mentee a chance to summarise – especially at the end of the mentoring session – leads them to take ownership and helps avoid imposing the mentor’s perspective

Use this exercise along with the handout on summarising. Typically people summarise only on content (what has been said, or “the facts”), but an effective summary also captures emotion (what the learner feels and the values they are applying) and intent (are we/you still clear about what we/you want to achieve?)

11.2

Summarising : Simple practice

10 minutes

Purpose: to become more comfortable using summarising

Process: In fours or fives, one person interviews another for five minutes about a topic they have an interest in. (This can be work-based or relating to their life outside of work.) All take one minute to summarise in writing the key points from the interview. They then compare to establish how much commonality there is.

Lessons:

· What you make note of tends to reflect what stimulates your interest (not necessarily what’s important to the speaker)

· How we tend to substitute our own words for those of the speaker – and hence risk changing the meaning

·

Although summarising is a key skill for mentors, it’s equally important as a skill to cultivate in mentees. Getting the mentee to summarise – especially at the end of the mentoring conversation – keeps the responsibility for thinking onto them rather than on the mentor.

11.3

Summarising : The four I’s

Purpose: To demonstrate a simple but powerful way to summarise at the end of mentoring meetings

Process: Introduce the four I’s:

· Issues

· Ideas

· Insights

· Intentions

Ask everyone to write down at least two things under every heading. If time capture these. Ideally, collect everyone’s notes and agree to distribute them – so that they can support each other in carrying out their intents.

Lessons:

· A structured approach to summarising a conversation enables us to take away more than we might otherwise do.

The four I’s can be used in a wide variety of situations outside of mentoring. Many people now use them to wind up management meetings, for example. You can use this exercise at any point in a workshop, but it is especially powerful at the end of a day and / or the end of a workshop

12.1

Using silence

20 minutes

Purpose: To help participants become comfortable with using silence

Process: Ask participants how they feel in a conversation, when there is a long pause. When do they start to feel they need to fill the gap of silence? Ask them to reflect on why they feel this way. Ask them what could be the benefits of not filling the silence. Capture their thoughts on a flipchart and invite them to split into pairs for a conversation about something important to one of them. (It doesn’t have to be a mentoring conversation, though it’s fine, if that’s what happens.) For the person, who owns the issue, the instructions are that they should take at least three opportunities during the 10 minute conversation to reflect in silence about what either they or the other person has said. This reflection can be for as little as 5 seconds, or as much as 60 seconds (more, if it seems right). The other person is limited to speaking just three times, briefly (10 seconds or less).

Gather feedback from their experience – what have they learned? What could they do to make themselves more comfortable with using silence?

Lessons:

· Less is often more!

· Our urge to speak is more about our needs (for example, our need to be valued) than theirs

· Silence is an opportunity for both mentor and mentee to reflect

If appropriate, introduce the rule of three – before you ask a question or make a statement, ask yourself silently “How will saying this really help the other person’s thinking?” If you think it will be helpful, silently count to 10, before asking yourself the question again. And the same for a third time. Then, finally, you can pose the question – however, in most cases, the conversation and the mentee’s thinking have moved on and there is no need for the question anyway! If you are still convinced it will be helpful, revert to it at a subsequent and appropriate pause in the conversation.

In most cases, mentees will report that the conversation was more effective for them.

13.1

Mentoring practice – being non-directive

30 minutes

Purpose: To demonstrate the value of a non-directive approach in mentoring conversations

Process: Split participants into trios or quads – mentee, mentor and observer. Ask the mentee to bring an issue, which they need to think through. The mentor will help them with their thinking, but must not offer any advice. That includes “queggestions” – suggestions disguised as advice. The observer’s task is to see how well they stick to the rule and to give feedback at the end. Allow 15 minutes for the conversation; 5 for discussion within the trios and 10 for plenum review.

Bring them back into plenum and ask the mentees first, about their experience. Most people tend to have found some value in the conversation. Then ask the mentors for their experience. Most will have found it hard not to advise. Discuss with them why that should be so (it’s what managers have been schooled to do). Then ask the observers for their experiences. For them, it is even harder – they can’t even ask questions during the conversation (though some will still do so!). Emphasise that there are occasions when mentors advise (or rather guide), but that this is a last resort, when they truly understand the issue and when the mentee lacks essential knowledge or experience to work it out for themselves. Explain, too, that being overly non-directive can be very frustrating for the mentee – mentors need to use judgement and avoid saying things like, “If you did have the answer, what would it be?”

Lessons:

· Resisting the instinct to advise early on allows for a deeper conversation and avoids latching on to the wrong goal

This exercise is a valuable reinforcement for exercise 10.1 (Giving guidance). You can use it at any point in the training – for example, it makes a good opening exercise to get people into the mind-frame of mentoring

13.2

Mentoring practice: Let the mentee do the talking

10-12 minutes (one way)

20 minutes (two-ways)

Purpose

This exercise aims to demonstrate to mentors that less is more, in the context of giving advice or even asking questions.

Process: In pairs, one person as mentor and the other as mentee. If time, participants can reverse roles.

The mentor speaks only once in this exercise, to say: “Tell me about your issue.” The mentee then speaks for two minutes (the facilitator will need to provide a signal at 1 minute 45 seconds and another at two minutes). Then there is a two minute pause for reflection.

The mentee then restates his or her issue, but this time taking only one minute. The facilitator provides a signal at 45 seconds and 1 minute. They take another minute for reflection.

The mentee restates his or her issue in 30 seconds, followed by 30 seconds of reflection.

The mentor remains silent throughout this process. At the end, he or she is finally allowed to offer the mentee one question. This could be “What have you learned so far?” or it could be a question to open up another perspective in the mentee’s thinking.

Finally, the group discusses their experience in plenum.

Lessons:

· People have an amazing capacity to resolve their own issues

· Summarising an issue provides an opportunity for greater clarity and understanding

· Not asking a question can sometimes be as powerful or more powerful than asking it

The situation created in this exercise is, of course, highly artificial. However, it provides a very succinct insight into mentoring as “helping someone have the conversation whey need to have with themselves”. It also illustrates the value of having the mentee summarise, rather than the mentor.

13.3

Mentoring practice: Role play

40 minutes (20 minutes per role play)

Purpose: To provide a safe environment for practising mentoring skills

Process: Split the group into two or more teams, each tasked with identifying a number of potential scenarios, which a mentor might encounter. They must then choose one scenario to write up in the form of instructions to the mentor and instructions to the mentee. For example, the mentor may know that the mentee is being considered for a promotion, but can’t tell them at this point. While the mentee has just been offered a job in another company and wants the mentor’s guidance on whether to take it. The role players can be selected by:

· Nomination from the team that created the scenario

· Self-volunteering

· Random selection by drawing names from a hat

· Any other method that fits the environment (a paper, scissors, stone contest is the most bizarre we’ve encountered!)

The observers are asked to look out for:

· How quickly the mentor and mentee establish rapport

· How the mentor gets to the heart of the mentee’s issue

· The mentor’s use of skills such as listening, questioning, summarising and self-disclosure

· Where the power was in the conversation

· How honest the conversation was

· The quality of thinking that was stimulated in the mentee

· How the mentor balanced non-directive and guiding approaches

· What the conversation achieved

After the role play (maximum 10 minutes) ask the mentor and mentee first for their impressions. They may share their instructions at this point. Then gather feedback to the mentor and mentee from the rest of the group. Capture the common themes and summarise.

Lessons: How easy it is for the mentor to jump to wrong conclusions, if they don’t spend enough time gathering information about the issue from the mentee, or aren’t sufficiently challenging at the beginning.

There seems to be growing resistance among executives to role plays. However, some cultures embrace them freely and prefer them to “real plays”. It also happens that participants don’t have (or don’t want to share) sufficient issues for all the practice sessions in a workshop. So role plays provide a convenient way of getting round this difficulty.

13.4

The mentoring conversation

20 - 30 minutes

Purpose: To see the whole pattern of the mentoring conversation

Process: Talk through the key stages of an effective mentoring conversation:

· Creating the right atmosphere for creative learning

· Understanding the issue as fully as possible

· Summary by mentor

· Reinforcing self-belief

· Finding solutions that work for the mentee

· Summary by mentee

In small groups, ask them to flipchart how they would go about making sure that each of these stages worked well. (To save time, you can split the stages between groups).

Ask each group to present their thoughts to the rest of the participants in plenum. Comment and ask for comments from other groups as appropriate.

Lessons:

· It’s hard not to get value out of the mentoring conversation, if it follows the template

· It probably isn’t a good idea to work mechanically through the template – but it is useful to review it before and after mentoring sessions, when learning to be a mentor

The template of the mentoring conversation comes from observing a wide range of mentors (from the superb to the dreadful!) in the early 1990s. All the most effective mentors followed this general pattern, though few did so consciously.

14.1

Acknowledging the other person’s perspective

10 minutes

Purpose: To emphasise that our view of the world isn’t necessarily the only one

Process: Ask participants to write down four words/ phrases:

· Money

· Status / recognition

· Job satisfaction

· Work-life balance

Now ask them to divide 10 points between these, in terms of how important each of these are at the moment to their sense of personal success. They must use whole numbers (no fractions). Ask them to think back 10 years, then forwards 10 years. How will those scores change? Ask them to share their scores and discuss within groups. What other factors would they include in their personal definition of success? If they have a mentee from a different generation and/or different background, how might their sense of success be different?

Lessons:

· Our definition of success changes over time and so does our perspective on many things

· It’s important not to assume that our current perspective is the right one for the mentee

This exercise can be adapted to any set of factors, which influence how we interpret the world around us. For example, we tend to mature in who forms our opinions or our sense of self-worth from authority figures, through peers, through placing more emphasis on our own opinions, to being aware of multiple influences.

15.1

Setting and pursuing goals: The logic tree

30 minutes

Purpose: To demonstrate a practical technique of helping a client tighten up goals and become aware of what is needed to achieve them

Process: Ask participants to think of a goal they have been going to get round to for some time, but haven’t yet seriously started on. Talk through the basic concept of the logic tree, then ask them to work in pairs (or small groups) helping one person create a logic tree around their goal. They may need a full sheet of flipchart paper to capture all the information in normal writing.

When most of them have got to the “Things I could do tomorrow” point on at least two streams of the diagram, bring them together to discuss the experience. Explore in particular:

· Whether they now have a clearer idea of how to achieve the goal

· Whether this is likely to motivate them to get started

· How they might use the logic tree to measure their progress

· How they would use the logic tree to help a mentee

Lessons:

· When we create a “project plan” for a personal goal, we are more likely to make progress

· Sometimes clarifying what will ne needed to achieve the goal makes us reconsider it in terms of effort v reward

The logic tree provides a map of the journey towards a clearly defined goal. It involves:

· Expressing the goal in clear, simple terms (“I want to…”)

· Posing the question: “If I had achieved that, what would have had to happen beforehand?” – which should lead to a number of sub-goals.

· Asking the same question of each of those sub-goals, generating a series of additional steps

· Continuing along each path until it ends in “Things I could start on tomorrow”

15.2

Setting and pursuing goals: What need does this goal meet?

15 minutes

Purpose: To demonstrate a practical way to ensure that the mentee has selected an appropriate goal

Process: Ask participants to think of a goal they have, then to reflect for five minutes on:

· What will achieving this goal do for me personally? (My income, my reputation, my promotion opportunities, my job satisfaction, my learning etc)

· What will it do for my team?

· What will it do for the business?

· How much will achieving this goal matter in a year’s time?

· How important is it compared to other goals I might set?

· Is it really my goal, or one imposed on me?

Ask them to share their reflections in pairs, then gather their comments in plenum. Discuss the question, “If you have found this reflection useful, how would you stimulate similar reflection in your mentee?” If appropriate, explore any differences they observe in towards goals (ones they are attracted to) and away goals (ones where they are trying to avoid negative consequences).

Lesson:

· The goals we hold and the attitudes we have towards them are much more complicated than we normally think

For a deeper understanding of the complexity of goals in mentoring, see the new book Beyond Goals, by Susan David, David Megginson and David Clutterbuck

15.3 Setting and pursuing goals:

Big goals and little goals

20 minutes

Purpose: To show how to link long-term and short-term goals

Process: Talk through the concept of long-term, over-arching purpose and how that differs from what we normally think of as goals. Purpose relates to the kind of person we want to become and how we want to contribute to society, to the organisation and other key stakeholders in our lives. Ask participants to reflect upon the questions:

· The major contribution I want to make in the next five years is…

· The major change I want to bring about in my (life) circumstances is…

Let them discuss these for a few minutes in pairs or trios.

Now ask them to think about and write down the goals they have for the next 6-12 months. Ask them to reflect on the question:

· How can I relate those goals to the purposes I have just defined for myself?

After a minute or so of reflection, encourage them to share their thoughts in their dyad or trio. Gather the main themes from their discussions and explore how they would feel about going through this same exercise with a mentee.

Lessons:

· If we can link immediate goals with long-term purpose, we are more likely to achieve both

· If an immediate goal doesn’t support long-term purpose, it may be less important than we thought

A good metaphor for this concept is to think of a coat rail extending into the future. At the far end of the coat rail is a big sign with the purpose written on it. Today’s issues are like coat hangers we hang on the rail. When we hang them, we can choose only to look at the hanger, or to look forward to the purpose. One of the benefits of the latter is that it encourages us to ask ourselves: “What can I learn from the things I do today, that will help take me where I want to go?”

16.1

Role modelling:

What kind of role model are you?

15 minutes

Purpose:

· To emphasise the importance of being a proactive (rather than passive) role model

· To learn the skills of being an effective role model

Process: Ask participants what kind of role model they think they are, to their children (or nephews / nieces), to their team etc. Most won’t know. Point out that, as a mentor, they will be a role model whether they like it or not – so wouldn’t it be useful to be confident they were a good role model?

Now ask them to write down three things it would be good for a mentee to use them as a role model for; and three things it probably wouldn’t. Allow up to five minutes for this, then ask them to discuss their results in small groups.

After another 5-10 minutes, bring them together for a plenum discussion. Start by asking if any of them had the same thing on either side. Explain that this is common, because our weaknesses are often our strengths overused, or used in the wrong place.

Ask what would happen, if the mentee used them as a role model uncritically, without adapting what they see to their own circumstances and personality. If appropriate, use anecdotes to illustrate the dangers. (One that is particularly powerful concerns a young graduate mentee, nicknamed Mouse by her colleagues, because she was so shy. Her mentor was a very senior, female executive with a reputation for being positively assertive. After six months, this relationship had to be stopped, because the Mouse had become a Tigress! She took the mentor’s instructions not to let men get away with dismissive behaviour too seriously, shouting at a senior male executive in the staff restaurant in front of a large crowd of people – a career challenging move!) Use the anecdote to draw out participants’ thoughts about what had happened:

· The mentee was trying to be like the mentor, not like herself

· What might have been fine for the mentor to say to a peer in private was not appropriate for the mentee to say in public to someone much more senior than herself.

Draw out the lesson that mentors need to ensure that the mentee learns not just the behaviours but the judgement and understanding of context to use them wisely. Emphasise that this is a key responsibility for mentors.

Now ask whether they think they can be of most help to a mentee in terms of their positive role model list or their negative list. Most will opt for the positive list. Rephrase the question: “Would you, as a beginner in something, rather learn from someone, who was a world champion, or from someone, who can remember what it’s like to be at square one?” After further discussion, refer to the concept of “coping strategies” – ways in which people learn to be good enough. Point out that sharing your coping strategies with a mentee, in order to help them develop their own coping strategies, is one of the most useful things a mentor can do. So the items on the negative list (which, because they are aware of them, they will have worked hard to develop coping strategies for) can be the most useful for the mentee.

Lessons:

· It’s important to be aware of your impact as a role model and to discuss it openly with the mentee

· Your areas of weakness may be areas, in which you can be of most help to the mentee!

Few people have thought of themselves as role models before, so this exercise can be quite challenging.

Interestingly, women tend to jump first into the things they would not be a good role for, while men for the ones they would. It can be fun to point this out before they start writing. It also happens from time to time that some (mainly male) participants say they can’t think of any negatives. You can pre-empt this by suggesting that, if that is the case, they start with “self-awareness”!

When doing this exercise with intact teams, it is common for people to say “I didn’t see that as a weakness in you”. This is because the person has developed solid coping strategies.

16.2

Role modelling:

Using your mentor as a role model

Purpose: To help mentees exercise judgement when they use a mentor as a role model

Process: This exercise is based on the five stages of using a role model:

· Acceptive awareness – identifying someone who represents values or achievements you identify with

· Admiration – learning more about them and comparing oneself to them

· Adaptation – adapting to conform to their values or behaviours

· Advancement – integrating the role model’s mental models with their own

· Astute awareness – seeing the role model as a whole and deciding what to absorb into and reject into their own views and behaviours

With practice, people can speed up their progress through the early stages dramatically.

Ask participants to think of someone they admire. Explain the five stages and ask them to reflect on where they think they have reached in their relationship with this person. Then in pairs, taking turns, ask them to discuss what would help them move as rapidly as possible to astute awareness with this person or another, who they admire. Among typical responses:

· Get them to talk about their mistakes and failures, as well as successes

· Use other people you trust to test out you hear from your mentor

· Be conscious of your own values

· Don’t under-value your own experience and knowledge in comparison to that of the mentor

Gather feedback, with an emphasis on: “What are you going to do differently as a result of this insight?”

Lessons:

· Effective role modelling is a pro-active process – the mentee needs to make choices about what they will absorb from the mentor

This exercise can also be used with mentors, to help them understand role modelling from the mentees’ perspective.

Research suggests that developmental relationships involve substantially more unconscious transfer of behaviours than almost any other kind of relationship, outside the home. Moreover, the larger the power distance between mentor and mentee, the stronger the unconscious role modelling that occurs.

In general, the more strongly a mentee associates with the mentor in the first three stages (the more they feel drawn into being like them), the greater the disappointment, when reality kicks in.

For more detail on this, see pages 39-46 of Learning Alliances (1998, David Clutterbuck, CIPD, Wimbledon)

17.1

Reflective space

Purpose: To put the mentoring conversation into context, with regard to the mentee’s thinking around an issue

Process: Ask participants where they do their most significant thinking. Most will give responses like: at home, walking the dog, in the gym, when I’m asleep, ironing, commuting and so on. Very little deep thinking happens in the office. Explain the importance of taking regular time to work through SUIs, then talk through the model of reflective space. Emphasise that, when the mentee brings an issue, the mentor doesn’t at that point know where they have got to on the curve of reflective space – so it’s important to find out, rather than jump to assumptions. Ask them what they think the results would be of assuming the mentee is at one point on the curve, when they are actually at another.

In small groups, ask them to identify at least three questions that would help the mentee, at each stage of the curve. (It time is short, split the steps on the curve amongst the groups.) So for example, for Framing: “What do you know about this issue and what do you just think you know?” Or for Action: “So what are you going to do about this once we’ve ended this meeting?”

The most difficult step for most groups will be Insight. You can offer examples, such as:

· What has shifted in the way you see this?

· If half of what you assumed was wrong, what would that half be?

· What’s the unthinkable solution here?

· What does your gut instinct tell you about this?

· What is important that you are aware of, but haven’t noticed?

Share the responses in plenum and deal with any concerns or questions about using reflective space.

Lessons:

· A mentor can help the mentee progress around the curve of reflective space faster than they can do on their own

The journey through reflective space is a basic model of the mentoring process. It starts with a Normal state of mind – with lots of SUIs (significant unresolved issues) parked, waiting for quality time to think them through. People in knowledge worker jobs typically can have as many as 25-35 SUIs before they begin seriously to lose efficiency and become stressed.

Step 2 is Framing, in which we try to work out what the issue is and why we need to deal with it. Then comes Implication analysis – exploring the context in more detail. Then comes Insight – the sudden shift of perspective that enables us to understand the issue differently. That frees us up to Reframe (define the issue in a more productive way) and to use our creativity to identify new solutions or ways forward, giving us new Options. When we come out of reflective space, we are often energised and ready for Action.

This process happens naturally when people are alone – they talk themselves through an issue. It’s much more powerful when someone else joins this conversation, asking tougher questions and offering different perspectives. So the role of a mentor is to help the mentee navigate the journey through reflective space.

Sometimes, a mentee may loop around parts of the curve several times before they can move on – that’s natural and means that they gain increasingly deeper understanding of the issue.

18.1

Raising self-awareness: I am the person who…

25 minutes

Purpose: To practice using a simple tool for helping someone explore their identity

Process: Ask participants to write at the top of a sheet of paper “I am the person who…” Underneath this heading they should create three columns:

· Verb

· Subject

· Purpose/ value

They then construct a series of statements, such as:

· I am the person who cares about honesty because anything else is unworthy

· I am the person who believes that my family is the most important thing in my life

· I am the person who strives to excel in everything I do, because anything less is a waste of my talent

Give them 10 minutes to do this on their own, then invite them to share in small groups for 10 minutes. Conclude the exercise by asking them to reflect on: “What have you learned about yourself and about your colleagues?” Gather responses from those prepared to speak up.

Lessons:

· You can’t understand yourself without reflecting on your purpose and values

Many people have given little thought to their identity, so this exercise may be challenging for some

18.2

Raising self-awareness:

Seeing ourselves in others

10 minutes

Purpose: To demonstrate how we attend to qualities in others, which are also strong in ourselves.

Process: Ask participants to write and complete the sentences:

· The three qualities I notice most in the person I most admire are…

· The three qualities I notice most in the person that most irritates me are…

Point out that these qualities – both positive and negative -- will normally be applicable to them as well. We pay particular attention to them, because they mirror and exaggerate qualities in ourselves. Ask them to discuss the implications of this for their role as mentor or mentee.

Lessons:

· The more self-aware we are as mentors, the better we can help our mentees grow in self-awareness

Expect some resistance to this insight! Be clear that the comparisons are a reflection (and may therefore be more muted), rather than duplication. Stress also that it’s normal for people to put conscious and /or unconscious effort into overcoming the negatives.

19.1 Commitment:

Stages of commitment

30 minutes

Purpose: To demonstrate a practical way of testing mentee commitment to a stated goal

Process: Share the model of the stages of commitment. Ask them to think of a behavioural change they need to make (for example, giving up smoking, or losing weight). In pairs, mentor each other starting with establishing where are they in terms of the seven stages and what would be needed to help them move stage by stage through to confirmation.

Allow 10 minutes each way (you can shorten the exercise if only one of the pair works through their issue). Then bring the group together to discuss their experiences. In particular:

· What changed in the level of their commitment?

· How comfortable do they feel using this approach with mentees?

· Where can mentors be most helpful?

Lessons:

· Mentors can help at all 7 stages

· People normally need to move through all of the stages in turn before they achieve a behavioural change

Whether we achieve a goal depends on many factors, of which one is the level of commitment we bring to it. The seven stages of commitment are:

1. Awareness (knowing intellectually that an issue needs to be dealt with)

2. Understanding (internalising that knowledge at an emotional level)

3. Acceptance (admitting to yourself that you do need to tackle it in the near term)

4. Commitment (deciding what you are going to do and setting time scales)

5. Planning (firming intentions into specific actions you intend to take)

6. Acting (actually doing what you have committed to)

7. Confirmation (receiving positive feedback that keeps you on track)

19.2 Commitment:

Scale of commitment

Purpose: To introduce another simple model for testing commitment

Process: Sometimes called “The Meaning of Yes” after the book Never take yes for an answer, this exercise addresses the problem that people often think they are more committed to something than is really the case. Ask participants to think of something they have been going to get around to doing for some time. (For example, clearing out the attic, or learning Spanish.) What do they think are the chances they will ever do it? Once you have gathered their initial responses, offer them the following scale of commitment:

1. Over my dead body

2. I’m not keen

3. I don’t know that I really want to do this

4. I feel obligated to do this

5. It’s quite important to me

6. It’s very important to me

7. This will be a priority for me

8. I will make this my top priority

9. I am determined to do this and will make sacrifices to ensure I do

10. I am determined to achieve this whatever the cost

If they are honest with themselves, where are they really, on the task they have chosen? Point out that anything less than a six simply won’t get done, unless something (such as an angry spouse!) intervenes to change the priorities.

Conclude the exercise by asking them, “If you were going to choose to do this, what other priorities would you have to relegate to make it possible?” Having discussed this briefly, explore how they might use this process with their mentees (and more generally in their roles as managers).

Lessons:

· We only have time and space in busy lives to do the tings that we really feel are important to us

· If a mentee can’t muster up more than a six for a goal they bring, then either it is the wrong goal or they need some help in raising their commitment level

One of the negative aspects of modern workplaces is that they burden people with too many goals. Most people struggle to cope with more than two or three. We can, however, increase the number of priorities we have by linking them as sub-goals to a very few larger goals. (See also the exercise Big goals, little goals)

20.1

Reflecting back emotions

10-15 minutes

Purpose: to become more comfortable reflecting back emotions

Process: In trios (mentor, mentee and observer) mentor and mentee have a conversation about “My greatest fear” or “My greatest adventure”. The mentor is asked to listen both to the mentee and to their own emotions. At intervals, the observer asks the mentor and mentee: “What emotions are you aware of in you right now?”

Bring participants together and ask how they felt about the exercise so far. Then ask how they might reflect back their own emotions to help a mentee challenge their own thinking. If necessary, give some examples, such as:

· I hear what you say, but I don’t feel any sense of conviction

· When you spoke before, I felt your enthusiasm. Now I’m just feeling bored…”

· I feel angry on your behalf

· I can sense your disappointment

Emphasise that revealing their emotions can either build empathy, or jolt the mentee’s thinking.

Lessons:

· Reflecting back emotions is a powerful tool, if not the easiest to use

Reflecting back emotions is central to Gestalt therapy. In listening to their own emotions, the therapist senses what is happening in the client’s inner world i.e. what the client is unconsciously projecting onto them. For a deeper understanding of Gestalt, read Perls et al (1951 Gestalt Therapy, Souvenir Press, London

21.1

Behaviours:

Toxic mentor and mentee

10 minutes

Purpose: To establish what mentors and mentees should NOT do

Process: Split participants into two groups (more if the number is large). If you have both mentors and mentees, separate the mentors from the mentees. One group is to list the qualities of the world’s worst mentor – how they would behave, what attitudes they would have, what they might say. The other does the same for the world’s worst mentee.

Bring them together to share their lists – which of course turn out to be very similar. Ask them to convert their negative lists into positive qualities. Stress in particular the kind of things a toxic mentor or mentee might say and point out that the moment they hear themselves say something along those lines, it’s time to wake up! (Phrases like “If I were you”, “I remember when” “What you need to do is…”

If appropriate, give out the handouts Twelve habits of the toxic mentor & Twelve habits of the toxic mentee.

Lessons:

· Being aware of what not to do helps us develop good mentoring habits

It may seem strange to focus on the negative with regard to mentor and mentee behaviours. But experience shows that drawing up lists of positive behaviours tends to be both dull and unmemorable, compared to identifying the negatives, which are more vivid (and more fun). And of course most of the positives are the opposite of the negatives.

21.2 Behaviours:

Changing behaviour: SWISH technique

25 minutes

Purpose: To help people change a recurrent negative behaviour

Process: SWISH is a visualisation and reframing technique commonly used in NLP as a way to help people replace unhelpful thoughts and responses with helpful ones. It is claimed to work with any combination of senses (visual, auditory or kinaesthetic).

and to be particularly useful when stress that prevents someone performing at their best (or to sabotage themselves). The basic steps are:

1. Describe the negative experience in as much detail as possible. What aspects always happen?

2. What happens just before this? With eyes closed, try to visualise the scene as vividly as possible. What else is happening for you? (e.g. a sense of panic, physical sensations)

3. Keep your eyes closed, and create an alternative image -- how you would like to be at that moment. Move that image around in your mind so that it becomes distant and you feel disassociated from it.

4. Switch your attention between the two images, by, for example, moving them back and foreword between the foreground and hinterground. Do this several times.

5. Now think of something completely different but emotionally powerful, like “what I’m going to do on my next holiday”. Change your posture, too.

6. Continue the cycle of switching between the images several times and then thinking of something else. Gradually speed up these sequences – say, take 30 seconds the first time and bring that gradually down to five seconds.

7. Eventually, every time you think of the old image, the new one will also be there.

8. When you are back in the situation, where the negative stimulus was a problem, you should be able to recognise both images and choose which one to allow to dominate your thoughts.

Explain the principles behind the process and ask people to work in pairs. One presents the recurrent negative behavioural reaction they would like to change. The other is simply there to support them, by empathising and reminding them what to do. As facilitator, you are simply there to make sure people understand what is required of them.

When both partners have had a go, bring them together to discuss their experience. Ask them: “What are you going to do between now and when you are next facing the situation, where that negative behaviour comes to the fore, to make sure that the image you want dominates your thinking?”

Lessons:

· Changing how we think changes how we feel, which changes how we behave, which changes outcomes

Expect some scepticism about this exercise. You can help overcome this by pointing out that it is very similar to what elite athletes do to prepare themselves for competitions. It won’t work, if you do it half-heartedly!

See also exercise 27.5

22.1

Managing boundaries: Where not to tread

15 -20 minutes

Purpose: To clarify the boundaries that mentors and mentees should not cross

Process: Talk through with participants the various other helping roles that a mentor may overlap with. In particular:

· Traditional coaching

· Developmental coaching

· Sponsorship

· Counselling

· Friendship

Ask them in small groups to discuss the kind of boundary issues that might arise. For example:

· Getting involved in the detail of their job

· Giving them feedback about work performance

· Involving them in the mentee’s own projects

· Playing amateur psychologist

· Being asked for a personal loan

· Getting emotionally involved with each other

Ask each group to identify as many issues as they can and to propose practical ways to:

· Recognise that a boundary issue exists

· Avoid stepping over the boundary

If possible, have a store of anecdotes of your own to illustrate the dangers and tactics to avoid them.

Lessons:

It’s important for both mentor and mentee be sensitive to boundary issues

The most sensitive boundary issue that arises relates to intimacy. By and large, this is a problem more commonly occurring in cross-gender relationships within informal, sponsorship mentoring. The mixture of power and self-disclosure can lead to people getting very close – and it’s not surprising that some mentoring relationships end up as sexual partnerships. It’s important in a formal mentoring environment that participants recognise that it’s not appropriate to continue both a mentoring relationship and an intimate personal relationship.

22.2 Managing boundaries:

Conversations with stakeholders

10 minutes

Purpose: To ensure that mentors and mentees maintain the boundaries of confidentiality

Process: Ask participants to map the key stakeholders in their mentoring relationships, outside of mentor and mentee. These are usually line manager, HR, peers and family. Ask them in small groups to discuss what situations might arise, in which they might be asked to (or want to) talk about their mentoring conversations to any of these stakeholders. What boundaries should they be aware of and how should they handle them?

Gather their thoughts together and lead a general discussion around their conclusions.

Lessons:

· Having clear rules about confidentiality up front saves embarrassment / loss of trust later

Typical boundary issues here might be:

· The line manager asks what mentor and mentee have been talking about

· The mentor is asked by a line manager or by HR for an opinion on the mentee’s suitability for a job role

· A peer wants to know why they weren’t chosen to have a formal mentor

23.1

Giving encouragement: The Pygmalion effect

Purpose: To reinforce the importance of the power of belief

Process: In trios, participants have a conversation about something that one of them (Person A) would like to do – for example, learn the piano. The other person (B) takes either a positive belief (“They could really be good at that.”) or a negative belief (“Not a chance!”), but takes care not to express it. Person C observes. They continue the conversation for several minutes. At the end, person A says how motivated they feel to pursue this endeavour and what belief they thought person B had. The trio then discuss what it was that person said and didn’t say (for example, body language, tone of voice) that brought about the result.

Lessons:

· No matter how much you try to hide your beliefs about the other person’s ability and potential, it will leak through!

The Pygmalion effect basically says that people live up to (or down to) the expectations of an authority figure. Experiments with schoolchildren show that the strength of a teacher’s belief in their potential is enough to bring about substantial improvements in test scores (and vice versa).

23.2

Giving encouragement:

But & and

10 minutes

Purpose: to illustrate how much easier and more productive a conversation can be when it focuses on the positive.

Process: In pairs, participants have a conversation, in which A starts a sentence. For example, “I was really looking forward to coming to work today…” B completes the sentence with something negative, starting with “but” – for example, “But you soon found that knocked out of you”. They continue for three minutes or until they run out of steam. If time, they can do this both ways round.

Then they repeat the exercise, but this time using “and” instead of “but”. Bring them together to explore their experiences.

Lessons:

· Negative interruptions reduce creativity and rapport

· The opposite happens with positive interruptions

· It’s impossible to predict where the conversation is going when both parties adopt a positive, “building on” perspective

· A core skill for a mentor is to encourage the same kind of creative thinking in the mentee, with the minimum of input from themselves.

This exercise can be a lot of fun, but it needs to be kept short and pacy. Most people will get the message very quickly and impatient managers will want to move on!

24.1

Roles of the mentor

Mentor+ game

 

30 – 12o minutes

 

Purpose:

· To explore and the many roles a mentor can use in the mentoring conversations to facilitate the mentee’s learning process.

· To give mentors and mentees a common understanding and language to navigate the mentoring process.

Process: Introduces 10 situational roles of the mentor – each role is explained by a role card. Each participant receives a set of role cards to use in the exercise. In the classical way of running the exercise the mentors/mentees will work in groups around a number of situations that may come up in the mentoring conversations. Each person will have to choose the role they believe best for the situation and argue for their choice.

 Lessons:

· Mentors have a wide range of choices of how to respond to mentees needs and requests

This exercise can be used in workshops with mentors alone, with mentees alone or with mentors and mentees.

The card game can be used in many different ways and at many times in the mentoring programme to train mentors and mentees and to reflect on the mentoring process. For more information, contact Kirsten M. Poulsen www.kmpplus.com

25.1 Challenging and supporting

20 minutes

Purpose: To explore the balance between being supportive and being challenging in mentoring conversations

Process: Share the matrix of challenging v supporting:

· Empathetic support

· Empathetic challenge

· Objective challenge

· Objective support

In small groups, identify things you might say that would be appropriate to each quadrant. What might be the impact of saying those same things in another quadrant? If time, ask for two volunteers. They start a conversation (on any subject they choose) as normal, but from time to time the facilitator interrupts to invite the audience to determine which of the four styles from the matrix they should adopt. They then have to use that style until the facilitator interrupts again.

To make it more fun, split the audience into two. Point to one group, to indicate that they should choose and shout out a style for the volunteer on their side of the room. The other volunteer continues in the same style as they were before. The more arbitrary you make these shifts, the more fun. Stop when everyone is laughing too much to carry on.

Lessons:

· We can choose when to use each style, as long as we remain aware we have the choice

This is a fast-paced, fun activity with a serious message.

26.1

Managing expectations/ the learning contract

Purpose: To prepare for the contractual conversation between mentor and mentee

Process: Open with a discussion about the need for a contract. Capture comments and add to them as necessary. Key reasons would include:

· To manage expectations

· To set some groundrules about when to meet and other logistics issues

· To clarify what sort of issues the mentee would like to bring to the meetings

· To begin to define what success looks like

· To assign responsibilities (such as who sets up meetings)

· To establish any boundaries needed

Split into small groups to produce a list of what they would want to discuss in the contracting conversation. Ask them also to consider: “How formal should the contract be?” (For example, just a chat, or a signed document?)

Bring together to share their learning.

Lessons:

· The contract is normally very individual to the particular mentoring relationship

· Having a contract provides a touchstone, for occasions when the relationship isn’t working as well as it should. “What did we contract to do that we aren’t delivering on?”

27.1

Diversity:

Diversity Awareness Ladder

25 minutes

Purpose: To help people understand their hidden fears and biases towards people, who they perceive as different to themselves

Process: Introdu