Think again to your pre-leadership/entrepreneur years. Is there an individual who was wanting to put money into your improvement? Is there an individual who cared about your success? If there was such an individual, did you consider that particular person as a mentor on the time? What precisely is a mentor?
One definition describes a mentor as a extra skilled one that shares experience with a much less skilled particular person. To achieve a fair clearer understanding of the time period “mentor,” it might be useful to have a look at synonyms for “mentor,” which embrace trainer, supporter, advisor, and even encourager. But maybe the perfect definition and the one that almost all clearly aligns with the function of a mentor is that this: A mentor is an individual who gives helpful and actionable data within the context of a long-term relationship.
SLATE Mentoring Methodology
Mentors that use a confirmed methodology to make sure high quality and consistency are likelier to assist their mentees obtain their objectives. The 5 key elements of the SLATE mentoring methodology embrace the next:
- S = Stop and Suspend Judgment
- L = Listen and Learn
- A = Assess and Analyze
- T = Test Ideas and Teach With Tools
- E = Expectations Setting and Encouraging the Dream
When you start any mentoring session, keep in mind SLATE and find out how to begin every session with a clear SLATE. Be open to new prospects. Be prepared to think about new concepts. Start with a contemporary, clear SLATE. The SCORE mentor program makes use of the SLATE mentoring methodology (since I’m an authorized SCORE mentor, that is how I discovered about it). Let’s discover every a part of SLATE in higher depth.
Stop and Suspend Judgment
Whether you’re mentoring by telephone, e mail, video convention, or in particular person, when you may join with an entrepreneur, you should be utterly engaged within the mentoring session. Because it’s such essential work, the primary a part of the mannequin is to STOP and focus all of your consideration utterly on the second and on the particular person you’re mentoring.
As mentors, we wish our mentees to really feel linked to us for the lifetime of their enterprise or profession. And you may assist be certain that they’re.
There are three issues our minds can take into consideration the previous, the current, and the long run. When you cease and concentrate on the entrepreneur, you deliver all your consideration to the current precedence — your shopper — and you’ll higher mentor the entrepreneur.
Suspending judgment means you chorus from casting judgment relating to an individual’s look, clothes, mannerisms, ethnicity, and even the enterprise concept. We acknowledge that not all concepts you hear will turn into nice concepts, however respecting the one that brings the thought is a crucial a part of your service as a mentor.
Suspending judgment doesn’t imply that you’ll by no means have the ability to provide your concepts and expertise in regards to the enterprise concept. Still, it does imply that you’ll droop judgment lengthy sufficient to pay attention, be taught, ask questions, and are available to a deeper understanding of the thought.
Premature judgment interrupts the method of constructing rapport and creates a barrier. Remember, your aim is to ascertain a relationship with the entrepreneur, not bounce to conclusions within the first couple of minutes of a mentoring session.
Listen and Learn
When you’re listening, you aren’t speaking. You usually are not interested by speaking. You usually are not ready for a gap to speak. So, what are you listening for? Consider the phrases you’re listening to. Is the entrepreneur expressing ideas, emotions, beliefs, feelings, information, information, or rumour?
Knowing what you’re listening to will assist you to dig deeper with questions to assist the entrepreneur be taught and develop on account of your mentorship. Listen and Learn has at its coronary heart the notion of making efficient dialogue. Mentoring is a relationship with an ongoing dialog. The finest option to create a dialog and produce essential data to the floor is to make use of the facility of questions.
- Ask questions that make the entrepreneur assume deeply.
- Ask questions that start with how, what, and why, which helps elicit data to extend understanding.
Assess and Analyze
By definition, “assess” means to estimate the worth of one thing. “Analyze” means to look at intimately to establish causes, key elements, and attainable outcomes. After the Listen and Learn step is Assess and Analyze, which helps you concentrate on the data that has surfaced up to now; keep in mind, you aren’t judging the concepts or the particular person. Your mission ought to be to assist the entrepreneur assess and analyze the problems at hand. This is totally different than you assessing the concepts. It’s you serving to the shopper assess and analyze the thought. You can do that by actively listening, asking good questions, and making a dialogue.
As a mentor, you’re asking questions that lead the entrepreneur to higher discoveries. Great mentors don’t present the entire solutions, however they do assist the shopper assume by issues logically and methodically in order that she or he can decide the perfect plan of action. The finest mentors are masters at serving to the entrepreneur assess and analyze by uncovering data and discovering solutions collectively.
Test Ideas and Teach With Tools
Suggesting that an entrepreneur “test an idea” is a robust type of discovery. Testing an concept includes exploring an concept extra absolutely, which generally yields extra data and information. You usually are not lining up concepts and capturing them down. You usually are not asking the entrepreneur to defend the concepts so as to choose them.
At Tork Media, we’ve got found that the primary concept an entrepreneur has is just not at all times the thought the entrepreneur succeeds with. Testing is a technique to assist uncover the perfect concept or to discover an concept extra absolutely. There are some ways to check an concept. The following are 4 methods to remember.
- You and the entrepreneur might interact in a dialogue utilizing if/then statements to work an concept by its paces with out truly implementing it.
- The entrepreneur might discuss to somebody who has already examined an identical concept.
- The entrepreneur might analysis different organizations which have applied an identical concept.
- The entrepreneur might implement a section or portion of the thought and observe the outcomes. Once the entrepreneur exams an concept, she or he might have extra data.
That’s when Teaching With Tools is available in. There are three kinds of instruments to remember:
- First, there’s YOU. As a mentor who brings a wealth of expertise and a deep need to be a devoted and smart advisor, you put on a singular software belt filled with instruments. Share your experience. Become the mentor your entrepreneur asks for by title and even recommends by title.
- Second, there’s the web and/or ChatGPT (to not be relied on too closely).
- Third, there’s your community. I at all times counsel you begin closest to dwelling in quest of the experience you want.
The most essential factor to recollect about Teaching With Tools is that you’re equipping the entrepreneur to assume, resolve, and act based mostly on data, information, and tendencies. That makes the entrepreneur smarter.
Expectations Setting and Encouraging the Dream
Eventually, every mentoring session involves an in depth, and it’s essential to wrap up the session in a method that creates momentum for transferring ahead. Regardless of whether or not the entrepreneur will discover extra data on the internet, meet with one other entrepreneur, take a look at an concept, or simply do some extra pondering, one thing constructive and particular ought to come out of each mentoring session. SLATE helps you keep in mind to finish sturdy.
Expectations Setting helps hold the mentoring relationship alive and transferring ahead. At the shut of every mentoring session, ask the entrepreneur what she or he plans to do because of the mentoring session. Develop a plan of motion collectively. Identify what will likely be executed by when. Talk about it and put it to the SMART take a look at.
SMART is an acronym for ensuring that there are clear, actionable expectations on the shut of the mentoring session.
- S is for particular.
- M is for measurable.
- A is for attainable and action-oriented.
- R is for real looking.
- T is for well timed.
By placing expectations to the SMART take a look at, you and the entrepreneur set up a relationship constructed on mutual accountability and exercise that can produce momentum and outcomes. Great mentors don’t encourage purchasers to be silly or to want upon a star realizing that failure is imminent. They assist set a plan of motion and encourage acceptable steps ahead. They assist purchasers assess every step and assist them be taught from every step.
Once there are clear expectations, the suitable dose of encouragement to take the following steps, and the entrepreneur is aware of what to do subsequent, you then’re each able to hit the bottom operating in your subsequent mentoring session.
Featured Image Credit: Pexels; Thank you!
