Understanding your role and responsibilities within the mentor/mentee relationship will better enable you to reach all of your desired goals.
Mentor Roles & Responsibilities
Phase 1: Identifying Roles
- Have a clear understanding of why you want to be a mentor
- Mentor with a realistic assessment of your skills and experience
Phase 2: Communicating Expectations
- Have a clear understanding of your expectations for your mentee
- Clearly communicate those expectations
- Stay flexible in changing expectations or plans
- Create goals with milestones and deliverables
- Adapt your feedback to your mentee’s learning style
- Be realistic about setting timelines
Phase 3: Working Together
- Advise, don’t dictate
- Advise on what you know and admit the things you don’t know
- Give good examples
- Recognize your mentee’s weaknesses and build on his/her strengths
- Offer constructive feedback
- Evaluate progress
- Be your mentee’s supporter when he/she reaches his/her goals
- Be consistent and reliable
Phase 4: Meeting All the Goals
- After mentoring is completed, follow up on successes
- Provide an evaluation of the experience
- Repeat the mentoring process with others
Mentee Roles & Responsibilities
Phase 1: Identifying Roles
- Have a clear understanding of why you want to be mentored
- Select a Mentor based on criteria relevant to your goals
Phase 2: Communicating Expectations
- Have a clear understanding of your expectations for your mentor
- Clearly communicate those expectations
- Stay flexible in changing expectations or plans
- Create goals with milestones and deliverables
- Inform your mentor about your preferred learning style
- Be realistic about setting timelines
Phase 3: Working Together
- Listen and contribute to the conversation
- Understand that your mentor will not have all the answers
- Accept constructive feedback
- Set time aside for self-reflection
- Evaluate progress
- Celebrate success
- Be consistent and reliable
Phase 4: Meeting All of the Goals
- Provide your mentor with updates after the mentoring is completed
- Provide an evaluation of the experience
- Say thank you
- Give back to the profession and volunteer to become an AMTA mentor