Pacific Leadership Programme (PLP) Fiji 2015

Mentoring

Mentoring – what’s it all about?

Each participant on the Pacific Leadership Programme (PLP) Fiji 2015 is assigned a mentor, someone who has been on the PLP before and understands the organisation and the development opportunity.

The role of the mentor is to:

  • Increase understanding and awareness of the FRCA strategy and
    the role of a leader in 2015
  • Help the person access knowledge and expertise to be successful
  • Encourage and support progress and achievement of personal development goal(s)
  • Provide advice and assistance with the leadership project
  • Apply the tools learnt from PLP
  • Reflect and learn together
  • Celebrate progress and success.

How will it work?

The mentors are senior managers who have previously participated in the PLP. They have talked with each other and allocated themselves across the two groups, mentoring 3-4 people each.

You will meet and talk with each other at the first workshop 02 – 07 March in Suva.

The mentors are invited to attend any part of the programme that they are available for and interested in being part of, or to join the group for lunch each day.

On Thursday 07th we start the day with a session on mentoring, followed by a shared morning tea. See the workshop overview for details.

This is your initial meeting, a chance to start getting to know each other and agree how you will work together. See the first meeting record at the end of this document.

How often should we be in contact, meet and talk?

You will agree this as part of your initial meeting. It will be different for everyone.

As a guide you should be in contact once a fortnight and meeting/ talking once a month. Start out with a plan and see how it goes, don’t be shy of talking about and changing the plan if it doesn’t work for you.

It is great if you can meet together as part of each workshop. As mentioned above the mentors are invited to attend any part of each workshop that they are available for and interested in being part of, or to join the group for lunch.

There is also time allocated on the Thursday of each workshop for meeting and talking together.

Good mentoring is based on regular learning conversations.

Benefits

“Tell me and I forget, teach me and I may remember, involve me and I learn.”

Benjamin Franklin

Benefits of having a mentor

  • Accelerates your learning and development
  • Encourages you to reflect, self assess and plan
  • Provides “just-in-time” learning
  • Access to knowledge and expertise
  • Helps you to realize your potential
  • Builds strong working relationships between leaders at different levels and locations across the organisation

Benefits of being a mentor

  • Opportunity to continueyour leadership journey – apply your learning in a different way
  • Practice your coaching (listening and questioning) skills
  • Keep yourselves refreshed and reminded of the tools
  • Tap into talent across the organisation
  • Gain alternative perspectives from within FRCA
  • Opportunity to increase awareness, understanding and support for the FRCA strategic change programme

Benefits to FRCA

  • Utilises the most valuable learning and development resource available – people
  • Embeds the learning from the PLP into the way you work
  • Supports enhanced individual, team and organization performance
  • Builds a network of leaders working towards one FRCA
  • Builds leadership capability and capacity
  • Supports succession planning

Mentoring is goal oriented and promotes professional and personal growth among participants, it helps attract, motivate, develop, and retain profitable talent while increasing productivity.

Mentoring skills, tools and resources

These tools and resources are located in your PLP toolkit, on the website and in your workbooks.

Skills / Tools and resources
Planning and recording the conversation / Conversation planner
Coaching / GROW model and 5 interpersonal skills
Catching the moment a quick conversation
Coaching continuum
Trust tree
Asking questions / GROW questions
Getting perspective / Zoom in zoom out
Planning / Performance = DxOxMxA
Feedback / CRC
CAR
Johari window
Learning / Learning cycle

All of the other tools may also be useful depending on what you are talking about.

We encourage you to use the toolkits as part of your meetings and refer to the website and workbooks as required.

Principles for success

Both parties need to be open to learning from each other

Be realistic, keep it simple

Make it work for you both

It is about learning

Make it OK to talk about when things don’t go according to plan and mistakes happen

Talk and coach through the learning cycle

Remember you need to use the tools to get the value!

PLP Mentoring 1st Meeting @ Workshop 1

07 March 2015

Please:

Introduce yourselves

Share a little background, your experience, areas of interest and focus for work and leadership

Make connections between yourselves

Share what is intended for the development goal(s) and leadership project

Talk about how to make this opportunity work – what is important to you?

Agree the arrangements for working with each other – what is realistic?

Talk about important issues e.g. confidentiality or conflicts of interest

Agree the next steps

Mentor name
Role
Background/ experience
Areas of focus/ interest
Person’s name
Role
Background/ experience
Areas of focus/ interest
Leadership development goals
Leadership project
Arrangements for working with each other
  • How often?
  • When?
  • Where?
  • How?
    (Face-to face/phone)
  • What about emails?
  • At workshops?

Important issues
What about:
  • Confidentiality
  • Conflicts of interest
  • No-go areas/ topics
  • Limits and boundaries to be aware of e.g. how available you are, changing or cancelling plans?
  • Anything else?

Comments/ notes

“Learning is an experience, everything else is just information.”

Albert Einstein

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