Mentoring programme

Mentoring announced by email is not a programme

The usual script runs like this: an announcement, a list of volunteers, pairs matched by who knows whom, a first meeting full of good intentions. Three months later nobody remembers when the last one was. Nobody is at fault — there simply was no procedure, so the whole thing rested on the goodwill of two busy people.

This programme turns mentoring into a process: with a framework, a contract, dates already in the calendar, and somebody watching whether the relationship is actually moving.

A mentor is not a manager, and a mentee is not a spectator

Two habits break mentoring programmes fastest.

The mentor slides into handing out ready answers. They know the answer, so they give it — and at that moment the conversation stops developing anyone. The mentors’ workshop drills the tools that prevent this: managerial diagnosis through Henri Fayol’s five functions, paradoxical questions, messages built on a description of observed facts rather than a judgement of the person, and drawing conclusions through Kolb’s cycle.

The mentee turns up with no topic. The mentees’ workshop resets that at the source: the mentee owns their goals, prepares a managerial problem for the session, and learns to take difficult feedback without reaching automatically for an excuse.

Contract and calendar, before the first question is asked

At the joint opening workshop the pairs get to know each other, are officially announced, and sit down to the contract: confidentiality, contact channels, punctuality, the consequences of postponing a session. The same workshop ends with hard scheduling — the dates of every individual session go into the calendars for the whole duration of the programme.

This is not a formality. A session with no date in the calendar is a session that will not happen.

Somebody is watching whether it works

1:1 supervision, returning at the key points of the programme, means conversations held by the trainer separately with the mentor and with the mentee. They check concrete things: was the contract accepted, are the goals concrete enough, has the mentor started solving things on the mentee’s behalf, is the mentee preparing topics regularly.

At the mid-point there is a recalibration workshop: a retrospective, a check on the goals and the schedule, corrective actions and a remedial plan. A programme with no moment of correction can only end the way it began.

What is left afterwards

Pairs who have worked through a contract and have run sessions to a procedure. Development goals written with the WOOP method, together with implementation plans. Competency descriptions produced along the way across all the workshops. A report with recommendations for the client, and certificates for the participants.

The most important part, though, stays inside the organisation: a group of managers who can hold a development conversation without slipping into the manager’s chair.

A boundary worth knowing

A mentoring programme is a consulting service, not a training course. It has no level and no open enrolment date — it is a sequence of stages spread over several months, set inside your organisation and carried by your own mentors. If what you need is to build mentoring and coaching skills in a workshop format, the trainings linked from this page are the right path.

Let’s talk about who you want to prepare for the mentor’s role — that is where the strategic session begins.