Mentoring Circles

Contemporary mentoring has many forms and frequently people regard each other as partners, colleagues or peers, ignoring age or status. This more egalitarian approach to mentoring suits today's professional environment, enabling an exchange of views, exploration of ideas and personal insight.

In a Mentoring Circle a facilitator meets with four, six, eight or ten people, each of whom is both mentor and mentoree. The group meets regularly to learn, discuss and experience mentoring. The group and facilitator discuss only the mentoring process. Mentoring conversations remain confidential between mentoring partners. Each person in the circle mentors and is mentored.

The mentoring conversation invites each mentoree to reflect on his or her own experience with a situation, issue or problem, then gather information from a variety of sources (perhaps including the mentor), sort through options, decide on a course action, plan and implement it then review the results over time. Mentoring is empowering, enabling the mentoree to generate his or her own answers, explore possible consequences of actions and take responsibility for their decisions and actions. The role of each mentor is to build rapport, ask questions, listen and elicit the mentoree's own wisdom. The mentor does not have to be older, wiser or have specialised knowledge in any field. They need to be skilled in leading a mentoring conversation and listening. The mentor's questioning skills extend and enhance the mentoree's thinking processes. The mentoree develops their critical and creative thinking.

A three-hour workshop begins the Mentoring Circle:

• Introducing a practical model of mentoring;
• Describing a four-step mentoring process that can be used for decision making, problem solving and setting and achieving goals; and
• Providing an experience of the Mentoring Circle

The initial workshop is followed by monthly meetings of the Mentoring Circle. The facilitator assist participants extend their mentoring ability. A one-hour group skills development session is followed by up to one hour of mentoring for each participant by another. The program last for six months and concludes with a group debrief and feedback session.

Advantages of Mentoring Circles include:

• Both partners benefit by giving and receiving mentoring;
• Because the group meets monthly, the mentoring partners meet regularly;
• It is easy to monitor and ensure quality of the mentoring process;
• Mentoring skills are continually developed and enhanced through the input of an expert facilitator.