Effective Mentoring Tips and Guidelines
Published: 2022-12-17 07:36:33

## Mentoring guidelines for mentor and mentee
Mentoring is all about listening, sharing ideas and suggesting actionable pointers, so the outcome of the session would be fruitful to both mentor and mentee.

Got a chance to interact with industry professionals as part of mentoring sessions and had really good conversations with them. 

I would like to share some effective mentoring tips which I use for all my sessions. This is purely gathered from my personal experience and works best for me and evolving as I do more sessions. 

## For mentor,

## Part 1: Mentoring schedule and join the session
- Once you get the mentoring schedule notification, keep a note of date and time for the session. Be mindful on the day of the session and join the session on time.

- If you think you're not able to make it to the session, then ask the mentee to reschedule the session well in advance or cancel the session. This will help the mentee to plan their day well.

### Part 2: Intro and Context setting
-  At the beginning of the session provide an intro about yourself, skills and expertise - This will help people attending our session to know what kind of help or input they can get from us. Also ask what is expectation out of the session

- Ask them to introduce, and let the other person speak about their need in which they seek help

### Part 3: Listening the need and confirm 

- Listen patiently without interrupting, then observe what kind of problem they are trying to solve or input expected from us

- Explain the abstracted understanding of need of the mentee and confirm is this what they are expecting us to solve

### Part 4: Sharing inputs for the problem statement

- After understanding the need for help in part 2, you can start sharing how to approach the problem

- Take examples from your past experience or similar problem statements you tried to resolve

- In case of career aspiration needs explain them what the mentee can do to achieve their aspiration

- There are chances mentee can also might need help in resume reviews, so if possible try to gather info on resume writing skills to review the resume

### Part 5: Share actionable feedback

- It is very important to share the actionable feedback for mentees to work their problem statement or aspiration interest

- Also we can ask mentees to setup follow-up session or we can be reachable for them in case of any questions while implementing the actions



## For mentee,

### Part 1: Scheduling, Tracking and join session on time

- After setting up time for mentoring session, keep a note of date and time for the session

- If you think you're not able to make it to the session, then reschedule the session well in advance or cancel the session. This will help mentors to plan their day well.

- On the date of mentoring call, Be on time to join the session

- Be responsible to join the session. Please keep in mind we are blocking someone else's time so we need to respect that other person's time and effort

### Part 2: Be clear with your need for the session

- Before joining the session, understand why you need the session now. If possible send a note to the mentor before the session. It will give heads up to the mentor well in advance about the need of the session. So they can be prepared.

### Part 3: Listen and Ask questions

- Listen while mentoring speaking and take notes if needed for your future reference

- After listening to the mentor's input, ask questions if you're not clear with any input shared by the mentor. More questions you ask, more the session can be useful

### Part 4: Take actions on the feedback

- If the mentor is sharing actionable feedback as part of the session take notes and then start working towards the actions
- Setup followup session

## Conclusion
Mentoring sessions can be both beneficial if we are prepared for it and keeping in mind some of the suggestions drafted in this article.
Be mindful on the day of session and join the session on time.


Share your experiences if have taken or conducted a mentoring session.

## Pla a Mentoring Session
If anyone wants to connect with me via mentoring session you can [block time in calendly](https://calendly.com/g-gsaravanan/15min?month=2022-12).

We can discuss blogging, oss contributions, career guidance on cloud, infra automation as code, DevOps/SRE, and can discuss programming trends!!