General definition
Mentoring refers to a supportive interpersonal relationship helping relationshipMentoring is an exchange and learning relationship in which an experienced person, the mentor, offers his or her acquired wisdom and expertise to foster the development of another person, the mentee, who has skills or knowledge to acquire and professional goals to achieve.
The mentor and mentee thus form a relationship called a dyad, the duration of which will vary according to the mentee’s needs or the characteristics of the mentoring program of which they are a part.
Mentoring with BML
Mentoring is aimed at entrepreneurs or managers of Luxembourg companies who have already passed the pre-creation stage and are facing a challenge, or who wish to learn, grow and develop.
The mentee can be an entrepreneur or an executive.
Entrepreneurs from all sectors can benefit from mentoring, whatever their income, the nature of their business, whether they are in a consolidation, growth or takeover/transfer phase.
By the nature of their activity, it is understood that the business project must be lawful and managed in the common interest of all stakeholders, in the general, economic and environmental interest.
Mentoring is a process designed to support the development and professional fulfillment of the mentee.
The relationship is based on mutual trust and respect.
Mentors and mentees must be prepared to commit to their mentoring relationship in a meaningful way.
The relationship is selfless, strictly confidential and free of any conflict of interest.
- Volunteer: BML mentors are not paid for their mentoring, neither by BML nor by the mentee.
- Confidentiality: the mentor and BML undertake not to use or divulge any data or information concerning the mentee without his or her explicit agreement.
- Disinterested relationship: the mentor is invested and committed but totally disinterested in the mentee’s results and performance, on both the professional and private sides.
- Conflict of interest: the mentor must not find himself in a situation where his own interests could interfere with those of his mentee.
At BML, the practice of mentoring is governed by a charter of good conduct and an agreement specifying the responsibilities of mentor and mentee.
BML aims to guarantee a minimum of homogeneity in the quality of its mentors’ mentoring practices, based on shared values and best practices.
This implies a sharing of points of view through the interaction of mentors, enriched by the inspiration of academics and mentoring practitioners.
Mentor skills and abilities
The mentor has extensive professional experience.
He has – among other things – a toolbox that the mentee can use to improve or develop his personality and build or “repair” his business.
- A mentor is someone who wants to pass on what they know or have learned, without expecting anything in return, even though we know that mentors derive as much satisfaction from their mentoring relationships as mentees.
- The mentor is a positive person in relation to life and others, a ” nurturing ” person who values the other’s efforts and confirms the other in who he or she is and who he or she is becoming during the mentoring relationship.
The mentor does not imprison his mentee in his own judgments, demands, needs, aspirations and desires.
- The mentor is therefore a generous, available and inspiring person, as well as possessing effective communication skills, in particular natural listening skills and the ability to ask questions that will help the mentee progress.
- The mentor is a neutral person.
His or her questions help the mentee to structure his or her thinking, but without ever judging or evaluating him or her.
Articulating what’s going on, sharing observations and reframing are all part of mentoring techniques, but they are done without judgment or performance expectations on the part of the mentor.
Mentor roles
The mentoring relationship is more likely to succeed if, from the outset, mentor and mentee share the same conception of what mentoring is and of the respective roles of each.
Mentors wear many hats, depending on the situation and the needs of their mentee.
He is in turn the sage, the guide, the narrator, the facilitator, the confidant and the role model.
It’s equally important to remember what mentoring is not.
What it is | What it is not |
The mentor is a guide “at the side” of the mentee, a support, whose aim is to help clarify objectives and make better decisions, while reinforcing the mentee’s self-confidence. The mentor’s role is limited to speaking, and he or she does not take on any operational tasks. He may, however, comment on a piece of writing or review an analysis, but this is limited to the spoken word (do not take out your ballpoint pen to correct or complete).
The mentor listens and asks questions, and may also explain and criticize, constructively, so that the mentee has the best possible opportunity to challenge his or her assumptions and gain new insights into the situation.
The mentor is a facilitator, encouraging the mentee to develop new skills and behaviours, and to take action to achieve his or her goals.
|
The relationship is constructive and not dominated by the mentor. In this mentoring relationship, the focus is on the mentee. The mentor can’t be too directive in his or her approach, otherwise he or she oversteps his or her role. The mentee remains in control of his or her own learning.
The mentor is not the mentee’s superior and therefore has no obligation to evaluate or expect any particular performance from the mentee.
The mentor is not a therapist or psychologist, and has no business intruding into the mentee’s private sphere, or healing past wounds.
|
The mentor can also encourage contact from his or her network and open doors for the mentee, or explain the importance of a network. | Mentoring is not a networking or job placement activity. Mentors are not “networkers”. |
Why use a mentor?
Mentoring creates a space for calm, distance and reflection, and a secure, privileged setting for exploring ways of achieving the mentee’s ambitions.
It enables the mentee to :
- Managing a major transition (e.g. opening up capital to a foreign investor)
- Developing self-confidence in a new role
- Obtain confidential advice from a neutral, trusted source
- The need to be challenged to boost personal/professional development
- Helping to apply knowledge/skills acquired elsewhere
- Feeling less alone at the top
- Test your reasoning on complex questions
Appendix 1
Clarification in relation to other “neighboring” mentor roles
Mentor vs. coach
Coaching is often confused with mentoring, and we’ll try to explain the differences as follows:
The coach is a professional who holds up a mirror so that the coachee can see himself from new angles and gain new insights into himself.
His sphere of intervention can be private or professional.
The coach provides a method, but not his or her own entrepreneurial experience.
With the exception of the technical framework of his intervention, his experience, professional career and field of activity have little influence on his work, because the method he brings is unrelated to the coachee’s business or activity.
In principle, coaching is aimed at a precise result, an objective that the coachee wants to achieve, and which is set down in a contract.
As for the mentor, he or she intervenes in the relationship with the mentee, contributing all his or her skills and expertise, as well as the lessons of his or her own experience.
Mentoring is not usually aimed at a specific result, but is fuelled by what the mentee brings to the table, depending on the situation, the questions he or she is asking or the lessons he or she is learning.
This is why mentoring relationships generally last longer than coaching relationships.
The mentor VS the consultant
The consultant is commissioned and paid by the customer to analyze/understand a problem and respond by proposing/implementing effective solutions.
The consultant has in-depth experience in a given field, and applies a specific methodology to carry out the assignment.
The consultant sometimes replaces the customer in carrying out a certain number of tasks: compilations, statistics, analyses, reports, etc. He then makes recommendations which are generally adopted by the customer.
He then makes recommendations which are generally followed, as the consultant is presumed to be more competent in his specific field of activity than the customer himself.
Conversely, the mentor is not mandated to propose solutions to specific problems, and is not remunerated.