What we do
Mentoring & Coaching
Many organisations already offer some form of mentoring. But for most it is a fairly informal affair.
It usually involves pairing up newcomers with older hands and is offered as part of an induction programme. A mentor is there to show the ropes to new young staff, answer their questions, and help them with understanding the company culture.
Our mentoring programmes go further. They are formal, structured, and have clear objectives and achievable goals.
All of our mentoring programmes use tried and tested techniques and have a long term aim of helping our clients to build a mentoring and coaching culture.
We encourage you to select mentors from within your own organisation. We help you to identify, train and manage them. Our training helps develop the core skills of listening, questioning, building rapport and providing feedback that are crucial for anyone who wants to be a mentor.
We induct the mentees so that they manage the relationship and make the most of it.
Only with in-house mentors will you be able to build a mentoring culture. But if, for one reason or another, suitable mentors are not available, we will happily provide them until you grow your own.
Mentoring allows you to develop and keep important management skills and a whole host of 'soft skills' within your organisation. Businesses and public sector and not-for-profit organisations that have a strong mentoring culture often decrease their dependency on external coaches.
To reinforce learning, a typical mentoring programme often includes also management training.
One to One Mentoring and Coaching
As well as designing and managing in-house programmes for a number of individuals, we also work on a one-to-one basis. These individuals may need help to rectify a particular performance issue, or may have been selected because they are about to be promoted to a bigger role. Either way we can help.
Often the words 'coach' and 'mentor' are used interchangeably. There is certainly a strong similarity: Both are skilled in questioning and listening.
But at Shine we think there are three subtle differences:
- Specialist skills
Coaches do not need to be an expert in the area in which the individual needs advice. Their job is to enable the individuals to find the answers within themselves. Their role is to encourage and suggest.
Mentors, on the other hand, are experts and have a wealth of experience within which they are advising an individual. At some point they have been in the mentees' shoes.
- Specific goals/clear outcomes
Coaches usually help with a particular aspect of an individual's performance. The goal is very specific and the desired outcome is spelt out at the start. Over time an individual can work with the same coach on a number of different issues.
A mentor/mentee partnership is usually more about sharing experiences, making suggestions and widening an individual's thinking. The outcome is usually less defined.
- Timescale
A coach / coachee define at the outset how many sessions it will take to achieve the specified goal. The number of sessions are few and the period of time is weeks not months.
A mentor generally works with a mentee over a longer period.
But whatever the label and whatever the definition, the crucial thing is to make sure that the needs of the individual are spelt out at the outset. Only then can the match be right. And a good match is the secret of a successful coaching and mentoring relationship.