Mentoring
Mentoring
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Mentoring is where one person provides advice or guidance to another, normally based on their higher level of skill, knowledge, experience or networks.
It is a way of an individual providing support to another, and using their resources to support them.
Mentoring can happen in the context of education, in employment, in entrepreneurship, and in the wider world.
Video Case Study
Video Case Study
How do partners boost employability through mentoring?
Watch this video to hear how Digital Innovators progress mentees' skills through their mentoring provision.
Using the Skills Builder approach to develop your mentoring provision
Using the Skills Builder approach to develop your mentoring provision
Mentoring can be a fantastic opportunity to provide one-to-one support and take a more personalised approach to the mentee's ongoing development.
Some organisations have focused mentoring on the development of essential skills. The mentor helps the individual to:
Reflect on their essential skills
Set goals for improvement
Understand what 'good' looks like for their focus area(s)
Identify and/or create opportunities to develop their skills
Stay on track (through regular catch-ups)
Reflect on, articulate and track their skill development
Alternatively, the mentor may support the mentee to work towards a particular goal, and in doing so support the mentee to apply and develop their Aiming High and Staying Positive skills. This self-management skill pair is all about setting goals and creating plans, and then being able to overcome challenges on the route to achieving them.
Achieving an impact level for your mentoring provision
Achieving an impact level for your mentoring provision
It is possible to achieve impact level 4 for mentoring provision. Below you will find actions to help you work towards achieving the full range of impact levels.
You can read more about the impact levels and the directory here.
Introduce the Universal Framework to mentees: introduce relevant essential skills and their definitions.
Discuss with mentees the links between essential skills and positive outcomes, e.g. research shows that essential skills are correlated with life outcomes, from increased wellbeing and higher earnings to a lower probability of being out of work or education.
Recommended:
You may want to identify and appeal to the motivations of your mentee here.
Follow the guidance to achieve impact level 1, plus:
Ask (reflective) questions and/or provide feedback to support mentees to reflect on their strengths and development areas in relation to the Universal Framework.
Keep track of the stage/step level at which mentees are working at and share this with mentees.
Recommended:
Try to encourage the mentee to share and document specific examples, using a recognised reflection method, such as STAR.
Follow the guidance to achieve impact level 1 and 2, plus:
Support your mentee to identify a specific skill step (or skill steps) to develop.
Work with your mentee to identify (or create) opportunities to practise their focus areas
Recommended:
Mentees focus on one skill and one step at a time.
Tell mentees the stage they are working at (Getting started, Intermediate,...)
Before mentees are expected to practise a specific skill step, explain the skill step and and check learners' understanding.
Follow the guidance to achieve impact levels 1, 2, and 3, plus:
Provide a skills evaluation/assessment at the start and end of your work with the mentee, so you can quantify if progress has been made. You may want to include more regular reviews.
We'd need to see evidence that you are tracking progress in at least 1 of the skills.
Supporting Resources
Supporting Resources
For a refresher on all the tools/resources mentioned below, see here.
Introduce the Universal Framework to mentees. It’s important the mentor and mentee take time to get to know what the essential skills are, their definitions, the different steps of progress, and how to build each step.
Mentees can filter for 'individuals' in the 'Build It' section of each skill step for information about why each step matters (in the workplace, as well as in education and wider life).
Mentors can use the reflection questions in the 'Build It' section of each skill step to structure development conversations.
Mentors can filter for 'educators' for guidance on how to teach each step to mentees.
Facilitate mentees' self-assessments - ask them to justify their assessments, and work with them to identify opportunities to build on strengths and improve weaker areas.
Signpost mentees to Launchpad, to learn more about and practise their skills. There's a space on Launchpad for them to record evidence of how they've applied their skills during their time with you.
Various resources on the Hub will be more/less useful for mentors, depending on what the mentee is working on alongside the mentoring support, and how long the mentor has with the mentee.
For example, if mentees are doing project work or work experience, you might want to use the skill workbooks, passports or the reflective log to structure your support. If mentees are preparing for employment, you may work with them to develop their CV using the skills-based CV guide. Other useful resources include the skill workshops, which you could use to build mentees' understanding of a skill and its importance, and/or the short lessons. You could use the skill certificates to celebrate progress.
If mentees are struggling to understand and/or develop a certain skill step, break that step down for them into 'stepping stones' using the expanded framework.
The Essential Skills Academy is a set of training resources that can be used by a mentor to support groups of mentees to make measurable progress in employability skills. It is a 10-workshop series supported by guidance for mentors to help facilitate essential skills development goals during 1:1 conversations.
Use our videos to introduce to mentees the skills and/or specific steps they will be working on.
Find support to discuss the positive outcomes related to essential skill development in our recent research reports.
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