About Lis Merrick

Lis Merrick is Managing Director of Coach Mentoring Ltd, was EMCC UK President from 2015 to 2018 and was voted ‘Mentoring Person of the Year 2011/12’ by Coaching at Work magazine in the UK; in November 2021 they presented her with a ‘Lifetime Achievement Award for Contributions to Mentoring & Social Change’. Her experience in mentoring programme design and development is now internationally acclaimed, with over 300 mentoring programmes to her name.

Mentoring in a VUCA world – ‘Future Proofing’ your people

In an era of VUCA (volatility, uncertainty, complexity, ambiguity) what makes an organisation fit for the 21st Century? And what impact has the global financial/economic crisis had on organisational cultures?CM mountain top

Sadly some organisations have gone backwards and become more “controlling” culturally, whilst other organisations are courageously and riskily doing things differently hoping this will lead to survival and better things longer term. This requires a different mindset for the people, and mentoring can support that mental change.

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Skills Training Videos for Coaching and Mentoring

Skills-Training-Video How wonderful it would be to have that little ‘nugget’ of coaching or mentoring knowledge available to watch just when you needed it?  If you are responsible for delivering a coaching or mentoring programme then we have a range of these ‘nuggets’ available within our ‘off the shelf’ standard skills training videos, ready and waiting for you to use.  Alternatively we offer a bespoke product, where the subject matter and content of videos can be personalised to meet your specific needs.

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Does a Woman need a Sponsor rather than a Mentor?

Sponsorship for Women

A woman protégéeFormal and informal mentoring relationships exist in many organisations. Within these mentoring relationships the mentor may take many roles: being a role model, a sounding board, helping build networks and career support, sometimes simply being there to listen and challenge. However, linked to mentoring, but with clear differences is the role of a sponsor. Is it actually more beneficial for a woman who is seeking to break through the ‘glass ceiling’ to have a sponsor rather than an organisational mentor? Or perhaps she should be greedy and have both!

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Women’s Mentoring and making a crack in the ‘Glass Ceiling’!

Breaking through the glass ceilingSupporting women talent specifically requires a further lens on how you look at your talent mentoring design, so here are some pointers for when you are developing mentoring programmes specifically to allow female talent to break through the glass ceiling.

In our initial experience of designing mentoring to develop senior women, the outcomes included one wedding, five promotions, several large pay increases, cosmetic surgery and a bullied mentor! So with the benefit of a number of women only mentoring programmes under our belts, use this checklist when designing a women’s mentoring programme: Continue reading


Mentoring – Virtual Programme Manager

Virtual Programme Manager Mentoring Services

Jacki Mason - Virtual Programme ManagerAt Coach Mentoring Ltd we understand it is difficult to support your own mentoring programmes alongside all the other demands on your working time. So we offer a virtual programme manager service.

Jacki Mason and her team provide this program management outsourcing service on a global basis. You can benefit from these dedicated mentoring specialists, each with proven track records in mentoring. Continue reading


Designing a Mentoring Programme – Training Participants

Coach Mentoring ApprovedI have developed an eight-step approach to designing a mentoring programme with my clients. In this blog I am going to cover step 4, training participants in a mentoring programme.

Preparation can involve anything for a short face to face briefing to a two day training programme, with many organisations opting for short virtual training webinars these days which can ensure a global talent mentoring programme for instance can be run on a very cost effective basis.

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