Once you have built your rapport and established your mentoring agreement, it is time for setting direction! This fast-paced 60 second video briefing highlights the key points mentors and mentees need to consider when setting direction in mentoring. Continue reading
Mentoring Archives
The Fish Site, Women in Aquaculture Mentoring Programme
Following the enthusiastic response to the Women in Aquaculture interview series in 2018, and the success of its inaugural Setting the gender agenda event at Aquaculture UK, The Fish Site has launched an innovative global pilot programme with Coach Mentoring Ltd’s support. It will offer professional mentoring to women and men in the industry. The majority of mentors are established female aquaculture professionals to enable female-led experience sharing, support networks and career advancement. Continue reading
A celebration of women’s mentoring for IWD2019
Once again in 2019, we’ve been supporting International Women’s Day with a variety of new blogs on women’s development and mentoring. However, there are some previous very relevant women’s mentoring articles that you might have missed. So here’s a summary of some of our favourites. Enjoy! Continue reading
Five ideas to develop male mentors for female mentees
In the first of our series of blogs for International Women’s Day 2019, here are some ideas to use in briefing male mentors to mentor in a female mentoring programme. Research shows there are pros and cons to using female and male mentors when mentoring your female talent. Some male mentors are just naturally brilliant when mentoring a woman. Others need a little more support to really blossom. Here are some ideas to support them: Continue reading
Agreement Setting in Mentoring – 60 second briefing
Once you have established your rapport, begin to agree how to work together. There are two critical aspects you must cover in your Agreement Setting conversation – expectations and confidentiality. This fast-paced 60 second briefing video gives you the basics you need to consider when agreement setting in mentoring.
Continue reading
Matching mentors and mentees — get tough!
There are a number of factors to consider when matching mentors and mentees in a programme. Matching can get complicated at times when stakeholders in the scheme have very clear views of who the mentoring pairs should be. Matching criteria need to be in alignment with the purpose/business objective for the programme. If a senior leader wants to choose their own protégée to mentor, you may need to be tough and reinforce your matching criteria. So make sure you are clear what they are! Continue reading
Benefits of mentoring — evaluation of the evidence
The most comprehensive literature review of the benefits of mentoring that I have ever read was by Dr Bob Garvey and Ruth Garrett in 2005. They used over 100 studies of mentoring evaluations, case studies and research projects to produce their report for the East Mentor’s Forum supported by The East of England Development Agency.
In brief, this is what they found:
Continue reading
Mentor Selection — avoid ego strokers
Don’t choose the Ego Strokers!
So how should you organise mentor selection for your mentoring programme and actually what makes a really great and effective mentor?
These are two critical questions I get asked frequently. Here is the wisdom of over twenty years supporting mentoring programmes. It cuts through some of the mystique and confusion around mentor selection and gives my view of what makes a really great mentor. Continue reading
Abandoning goals in favour of emerging principles
I’ve always been a goal-setter in life, generally successfully or I tend to give up quickly and relegate the goals to the bin of ‘bad ideas’. However, in 2019 I decided to take a different approach to my life in favour of emerging principles and a more mindful route through the year, noticing what is important to me and creating some principles I want to live by instead of setting goals. We are now 10% through 2019 and already I am feeling good about my new approach. Continue reading
Building Rapport in Mentoring – 60 second briefing
It is extremely important to spend time at the beginning of your relationship to build the rapport and trust required to have meaningful and open and honest mentoring discussions. This fast-paced 60 second briefing video gives you the basics you need to consider when building rapport in mentoring. Continue reading

Mentoring is one of the most powerful learning and change interventions our clients use within an organisational setting. Some organisations see it as an activity, which can take place within the line of command; other organisations see it as incompatible with the fundamental openness of the relationship. Similarly, some cultures see the exercise of authority and influence on the part of a protégé as appropriate; others see mentoring as primarily a developmental activity, with the emphasis on empowering and enabling people to do things for themselves. Some people view mentoring as synonymous with coaching, or teaching; others see it as a form of counselling. Certainly others view it as a kind of godfather relationship.