PROCESS
MENTOR TRAINING & INDUCTION
The mentor training in October is critical to kicking off 21-month mentoring journey at Take Charge. This one day is designed to provide you, the mentor, with a 360° training on the program elements of mentoring with Take Charge and reinforce the tools you will need for effective mentoring, including communication skills and cultural sensitivity. In addition, it is a great place to start interacting with Take Charge, Mentor Me India team members as well as your fellow mentors.
During the induction phase in November, you and your mentee will meet for the first time and you will be a part of activities that will help you break the ice and form the foundation of your relationship. In addition to this, you will meet your mentee’s parents and get to opportunity to introduce yourselves.
ONE-TO-ONE SESSIONS
After the induction phase, you and your mentee will be ready to build your one-to-one relationship according to you and your mentee’s preferences and needs. What you do, when, where and how often (as long as it meets the minimum requirements of meeting at least once a month) is up to both of you. There are of course guidelines - see section 5.b Guidelines for meetings with your mentee.
In the beginning of your relationship, it is most important to get to know each other well and start establishing trust. This includes getting to know your mentee through various bond-building activities (please see the activity guide book) and spending time with your mentee’s family to understand the context of his or her personality. In the first few meetings, you should explore your mentee’s personality and find out which of the four program objectives your mentee requires special focus on. It is recommended that your first meeting should take place within the first two weeks of induction. Our experience has shown that it helps keep the excitement in the mentor and mentee alive and set a great pace for the rest of the program.
It is also crucial to set up ground rules for your future interaction as well as a basic structure of your meetings early on. Ground rules could contain elements of reliability (e.g. always be on time for a session) or communication (e.g. encourage regular interactions but set expectations on response time and access). A basic structure of your meetings could be starting off with talking about how the week has been and what you did since the last time you met. You go on with the activities you planned or discussion points and at the end, wrap up with your mentee outlining key take-aways and insights and deciding on the date and topic for your next session.
Before your next session, it is highly recommended that you plan out a more detailed session depending on their personal and professional developmental goals (for more details, see the Activity Guide).
OTHER ELEMENTS
In order to ensure that your relationship with your mentee is going smoothly, we will continue to be with you every step of the way. Your primary point of contact for the next 18 months will be a designated Program Coordinator who will not only check-in with you on a monthly basis, but will also be your guide in case challenging situations (small or big) arise.
We will introduce you to the Take Charge App at the induction program, which is an tool to help you to schedule and track your mentoring sessions and helps the Program Coordinator to have an overview of the progress being made in all the mentoring engagements.
Other than this one-on-one support provided by the Program Coordinator, you will also get the opportunity to share your experiences and give us feedback through periodic conference calls that will be set up by us. This platform will enable you to connect with other mentors, see how they are doing and receive creative solutions to any issues you may be facing. You will also stay connected with your fellow mentors and the Take Charge team through Google Groups.
We will also hold periodic workshops for mentees on topics that are interesting for them so that there is shared learning and they get to build bonds with each other as well. Mentors who have expertise on these topics will be encouraged to volunteer their time to conduct these workshops.