1. Mentoring Skills
Korin Grant
Marta Ulanicka
Alysoun Hancock
http://tinyurl.com/uolpeer
www.le.ac.uk/slc

2. Welcome!
• 9.30 – 9.45 Welcome and ice-breaker
• 9.45 - 11.00 Mentoring/Signposting
• 11.00 - 11.15 Break
• 11.15 - 12.30 Signposting/Mentoring
• 12.30 - 13.00 Individual Departmental Session
• 13.00 - 13.45 Lunch
• 13.45 - 14.45 Cultural Diversity/ Employability
• 14.45 - 15.00 Break
• 15.00 - 16.00 Employability/ Cultural Diversity
• 16.00 – 16.15 Final plenary / Evaluations
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3. http://tinyurl.com/uolpeer
10

4. Mentoring skills
• What is a mentor?
• Case studies and boundaries
• What skills does a mentor need?
• Active listening
http://tinyurl.com/uolpeer

5. Mentoring skills
• What is a mentor?
• Case studies and boundaries
• What skills does a mentor need?
• Active listening
http://tinyurl.com/uolpeer

6. What is a mentor?
In your groups spend five minutes discussing and
agreeing on a definition of a mentor.
You can start by trying to complete this sentence:
A mentor should try to…
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7. Definition of a Mentor - Feedback
set an example
good time management
approachable and accessible
reliable
should provide guidance
don't get too involved
don't tell them what to do
trustworthy
don't guess at answers to questions - find out!
don't help them do their work
don't be offensive
don't assume - stereotyping e.g. nationalities
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8. Definitions of Mentoring
Mentoring is a process for the informal transmission of
knowledge, social capital and the psychosocial support
perceived by the recipient as relevant to work, career, or
professional development.
Mentoring entails informal communication, usually face-
to-face and during a sustained period of time, between a
person who is perceived to have greater relevant
knowledge, wisdom, or experience (the mentor) and a
person who is perceived to have less (the mentee).
Source: Wikipedia
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9. Definitions of Mentoring
Mentoring is to support and encourage people to
manage their own learning in order that they may
maximise their potential, develop their skills, improve
their performance and become the person they want to
be.
Source: Eric Parsloe, The Oxford School of Coaching & Mentoring
http://www.mentorset.org.uk/pages/mentoring.htm
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10. Mentoring skills
• What is a mentor?
• Case studies and boundaries
• What skills does a mentor need?
• Active listening
http://tinyurl.com/uolpeer

11. As a group, take a look at the scenario on
your table…
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12. A mentee splits up with their boyfriend/girlfriend…
Direct them to the appropriate service and then check with them a few days later.
Mixture of C and D (tell them about support services and offer to meet up at a later date)
Make sure you have time to see them - don't change your plans to accomodate them
unnecessarily.
No one thought it was a good idea to let them get drunk at their house! Important to listen and
judge the situation.
Support Services might include:
Counselling
Nightline
Residential Advisors and friends in halls?
http://tinyurl.com/uolpeer

13. A mentee feels down…
C - Glad that they came to see you, offer to go for a chat but point them towards other services.
Support might include:
Personal Tutor
Family and friends
Counselling
Mentors concerns might include:
Could be quite a serious problem that needs further addressing
Don't want to give them bad or incorrect advice - especially as it could be quite serious
The difficulty is judging how much you can listen and talk with them within your role as mentor.
Confidentiality - will you talk about this with anyone else?
They might just be homesick and being 'passed on' to others might not be as helpful as a chat
with you might be.
Mentors can say that they are sorry that the mentee is feeling this way and that the mentor is not in
a position to offer advice.
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14. A mentee wants help with an assignment…
B & C - you should have thought about this earlier but would like to offer some help
Pointing them to the right resources (e.g. Learning Development team)
If it is something specific we might not be able to help and other sources of support would be
useful.
B (Telling them off) is not a particularily sensitive approach.
The first step would be to find out what the issue is - do they not understand the question or not
know where resources are etc...
Ask them if they have looked for help elsewhere, examples, discuss the topic generally...
Does it depend why they didn't do the work in the first place?
Where does our role as mentors stop?
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15. What we expect from you
• Stay in contact
• Regularly check your email and other agreed forms of contact
• Turn up on time
• Don’t give up on a mentee (but don’t harass them!)
• Maintain personal and professional boundaries
• Use appropriate clean language
• Respect group members – don’t force them to do anything
they don’t want to do
• Be aware of the limitation of your role
– If there are any questions you cannot answer refer your student
to someone who can help.
http://tinyurl.com/uolpeer

16. What we don’t expect from you
• To become best friends (but you might!)
• To solve your mentees’ personal/social problems
• To put yourself in a situation where you feel uncomfortable
• To look at, comment on or proofread your mentees’ work
http://tinyurl.com/uolpeer

17. Mentoring skills
• What is a mentor?
• Case studies and boundaries
• What skills does a mentor need?
• Active listening
http://tinyurl.com/uolpeer

18. What skills does a mentor need?
In your groups spend ten
minutes compiling a list
of skills that an effective
mentor will need.
10
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19. Communication Time
Skills Management
Self
Awareness
Meeting Skills
Empathy
Commitment/
Responsibility
Active
Listening Skills
Knowledge
Flexibility
Shared
Experience
http://tinyurl.com/uolpeer

20. Mentoring skills
• What is a mentor?
• Case studies and boundaries
• What skills does a mentor need?
• Active listening
http://tinyurl.com/uolpeer

21. There are three types of listening: Apparent Listening:
This is the kind of
listening we do most
Peripheral Listening: of the time. We look
This is done on a as if we are listening
subconscious level. For but in fact we are not
example, you may be in a really concentrating.
busy restaurant talking to
the people you are sitting
with, while also picking up
snippets of conversation Active Listening:
from another table. This is the type of
listening we should be
doing. This involves
really concentrating on
not only what is being
said but how and why
it is being said.
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22. Active Listening Activity
• Speaker: Tell the listener something frustrating that happened
in the last week or so. For example, being stuck in traffic,
difficulties with neighbours, or perhaps something to do with
your exams!
• Listener: You are not allowed to say anything more than two
or three syllables long to keep her/him continuing i.e. “uh-
huh”, “really?”, “tell me more”…
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23. Why is active listening important?
• It will help create good relationships with
the people you are listening to.
• It means you don’t miss any important
information.
Active listening is not easy!
We are all guilty for switching off in conversations at
some point. It is important that you concentrate on
what someone is saying. Don’t try and formulate an
answer while another person is speaking.
http://tinyurl.com/uolpeer

24. Mentoring skills
• What is a mentor?
• Case studies and boundaries
• What skills does a mentor need?
• Active listening
Thank you for participating!
Tell us what you have found helpful or useful…
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25. Information and online training resources available at:
http://tinyurl.com/uolpeer
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