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Planned or formal mentoring
efforts are increasing in number and quality, and they’re
multiplying in churches and parachurch organizations. If this
is true of your church/organization, you’ve no doubt experienced
what a powerful tool mentoring can be in helping people develop
in all areas of their life.
If your initiative has been in place for a while, now might be
a good time to improve its effectiveness. Let’s start with
some assumptions.
- It needs improving. At the risk of stating
the obvious, if your mentoring initiative is working well and
people are satisfied, don’t make radical changes beyond
expanding it.
- The target audiences (potential mentees,
mentors, stakeholders) want an improved effort
and are willing to participate.
- You’ve pilot tested your processes
and materials and know, at least in general, what works and
what doesn’t.
- You and your group have the energy, time,
and leadership backing to take on this important
task. (Remember, improving existing programs can be as hard
or harder than starting a new program from scratch.)
- God appears to be directing this new effort.
Assuming the above are true, here are some suggestions:
- Get more data. Sit down by yourself and list
your own objective and subjective reactions
to what’s occurred up to now. What helped mentees the
most? What was fun for you and others? What was constantly difficult
and unproductive? Ask others in your planning group to do the
same, and compare notes.
Interview numerous people. Even if you have
existing evaluation data, take the time to personally contact
representatives of all the “stakeholder” groups
(e.g., past and future mentors, past and future mentees, policymakers).
Talk to some of the naysayers who complained about the old program
and are pessimistic about any revisions. Check with other mentoring
program planners and implementers to see what’s working
well for them.
- Compile a summary of your findings. What
has to be different this time? Whittle down ideas into your
new program design. Draw this out in a flow
chart, get reactions, and improve it.
- Improve (or purchase better) mentoring resource materials.
At the very least, your program participants should have access
to self-study materials plus guides or booklets to use during
their training. If you’ve limped by with photocopies of
photocopies up to now, consider preparing or acquiring higher
quality materials. (They’ll make a statement about your
initiative’s quality.) Put together some “best practices”
used by mentors and mentees in your former program and in other
programs.
- Do more with the mentees this time. Be certain
they’re ready to take a very active role in their development
and in their mentoring relationships. Provide training for them.
Have them nominate the mentors they want, choose specific skills
on which to work, and write tentative development plans. Teach
them how to motivate and reinforce their potential mentors.
Encourage them to organize events for themselves (such as brown-bag
lunches with speakers from the mentor pool).
- Tighten up your training. Formalized initiatives
clearly benefit from rigorous training for mentors and mentees
and from at least a briefing for mentees’ managers or
other significant people. In the training, emphasize mentoring
concepts and skills.
Don’t let people off the hook. If they have to miss your
training event, have a back-up session for them supplemented
with self-study materials and coaching by yourself or another
skilled person. If they miss this, invite them to participate
in the next round.
- This time, make a commitment to solid, meaningful evaluation.
Figure out how you’ll decide a year from now if your program
has really made a difference: in people’s walk with Christ,
skills and knowledge, career progress, satisfaction with your
organization, retention, productivity, or whatever else is important
to your audiences.
No doubt you can think of many more steps and areas to improve;
this is only a start. Please e-mail us at info@faithmentoringandmore.com
with mentoring initiative ideas that have worked for you.
For more ideas on initiatives, order The Christ-Centered
Mentoring Coordinator’s Handbook (listed in
What We Offer).
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