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American Planning Association | City Planning & Management Division
This page outlines the goals of the Mentorship Program and offers suggested activities to help mentors and mentees make the most of their time together. These ideas are designed to encourage meaningful conversations, shared learning, professional growth, and stronger connections throughout the mentorship journey. Visit References and Planning Disciplines pages for more learning opportunities and discussion prompts.
Program Goal 1. Educate mentees about leadership challenges.
Program Goal 1. Educate mentees about leadership challenges.
Activity Prompt 1.1: Create activity related to leadership challenges – mentor can share a real-world challenge, mentee can create solution, large group discussion on whether the solution is practical in real world application, mentor can give feedback (and the outcome of the actual challenge).
Activity Prompt 1.2: Watch a Ted Talk on leadership and discuss the applicable information.
Program Goal 2. Teach effective communication for both in-person and virtual settings.
Program Goal 2. Teach effective communication for both in-person and virtual settings.
Activity Prompt 2.1: Have the mentee create a presentation on a topic and have the mentor provide feedback on information, style, etc.
Activity Prompt 2.2: Mentees and Mentors create a list of jargon used in the planning profession to clarify meaning and usage while attenuating cases where effective use of communication tools (i.e., words, drawings, imagery, and technological systems) leveraged successful outcomes.
Program Goal 3. Help mentees identify and attain necessary skills to become an effective planner.
Program Goal 3. Help mentees identify and attain necessary skills to become an effective planner.
Activity Prompt 3.1: Identify a book, journal article, etc. to have both the mentor and mentee read, and discuss applicability to modern challenges in planning.
Activity Prompt 3.2: Watch a webinar together, discuss how to improve knowledge and further career goals through webinar training.
Activity Prompt 3.3: Create a skill-share activity where the mentor is sharing a necessary skill for working in planning, such as how to present to the public, how to overcome your own bias to embrace what the community is expressing is important to them (even if it’s not to you), what to do in a public meeting, acclimating to a new work environment, managing the differing expectations of boards vs the public, etc.
Activity Prompt 3.4: Helping mentees understand how we use software programs that are commonly used in planning (larger group activity).
Activity Prompt 3.5: Practical application of development review.
Activity Prompt 3.6: Mentor presentations describing short work problems met: (i) problem breakdown, (ii) related methods/solutions, (iii) outcome, and (iv) skills required & lessons learned.
Program Goal 4. Create networking opportunities to improve skill-set and connect with other planning professionals, either generalists or with specialized experience.
Program Goal 4. Create networking opportunities to improve skill-set and connect with other planning professionals, either generalists or with specialized experience.
Activity Prompt 4.1: Meet in person if geographically close, virtual networking, try to send mentees/mentors to state conferences if funding available.
Program Goal 5. Create active, engaging, and collaborative activities for mentors and mentees.
Program Goal 5. Create active, engaging, and collaborative activities for mentors and mentees.
Activity Prompt 5.1: For those able to meet in person, choose 2 days to job shadow. If not in person, share recorded public meetings of mentor doing their job and ask mentee for their observations about their conduct, knowledge, presentation, etc.
Activity Prompt 5.2: Mentor shares/includes activities/projects that mentee can work on.
Activity Prompt 5.3: List problems, issues, that we are facing as a civil society and discuss whether the problems listed can be solved through the planning profession. Include other disciplines required. Then, link data sources and issues to verify whether there are problem-solving avenues. Now question whether those avenues are the right paths in today’s world. This exercise helps to consider solutions with current state of the art knowledge, technology, and data. (Related to Actions for Goal #6).
Program Goal 6. How to work in challenging political climates.
Program Goal 6. How to work in challenging political climates.
Activity Prompt 6.1: Mentors can share an example of how the political climate has impacted their work and discuss strategies to overcome political obstacles when a project is valuable to the community.
Program Goal 7. Understand the role of how data influences decision-making processes.
Program Goal 7. Understand the role of how data influences decision-making processes.
Activity Prompt 7.1: Discuss how to translate data into a meaningful public discussion, and how data translates into public policy (lecture with Q&A session) (mentor has a project that needs national level data, mentee pull and analyze a small data set, teaching where to find data).
Activity Prompt 7.2: Have all mentors and mentees create a collective list of data sources categorized by use.
Activity Prompt 7.3: Come up with a way to upload data sources in open access repository or website.
Program Goal 8. Prepare mentees for job interviews and career promotion.
Program Goal 8. Prepare mentees for job interviews and career promotion.
Activity Prompt 8.1: Review mentee's resume.
Activity Prompt 8.2: Discuss resume concerns and create a resume or resume revision session for mentee.
Activity Prompt 8.3: Discuss resume concerns and create a resume or resume revision session for mentee.
Activity Prompt 8.4: Conduct mock interviews.
Activity Prompt 8.5: Discuss how to ask for a reference and/or create a reference list for mentees.
Program Goal 9. Conduct extra activities to have fun and enhance relationships.
Program Goal 9. Conduct extra activities to have fun and enhance relationships.
Activity Prompt 9.1: Have mentor and mentee play Cities: Skyline, Pocket City, Surviving Mars or similar game and discuss why things are placed as they are in the virtual city.
Activity Prompt 9.2: Create a role-playing scenario for mentee and mentor
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