How an aspiring or an existing entrepreneur can effectively get mentored.

1. Why and how to get
mentored
Ajay Mohan Goel
ajaymgoel@gmail.com

2. Who is a Mentor?
• Someone who will encourage and support you to make the most of yourself and your
business.
• An invaluable guide
◦ Identify the support you need
◦ Consider your options
◦ Provide new information
◦ Help you brainstorm
◦ Help make informed choices
• Mentor is a trusted confidante

3. What is enterprise mentoring?
• A one-to-one relationship over a set period of time /duration
• Mentor provides consistent support and guidance & practical help
• Voluntary relationship, which mentor or mentee can terminate any time.
• A two-way process:
◦ Mentor shares personal skills, knowledge and experience with mentee.
◦ Enable mentee to explore personal and professional situation
◦ Mentor & mentee work together o achieve pre-determined goals and objectives.
• Enable mentee:
◦ To gain the skills, knowledge and confidence
◦ To perform at a higher level
◦ Give them access to impartial, non-judgmental guidance and support.

4. What is enterprise mentoring not?
• The mentor’s role is not to:
◦ Give you advice
◦ Provide a counselling service
◦ Provide a training service
◦ Provide a coaching service
◦ Provide therapeutic interventions
◦ Sort out all your problems
◦ Run your business

5. What would a mentor do?
• You should expect your mentor to:
◦ Provide an outside perspective on you and your business
◦ Listen, in confidence, to the things that are worrying you about your business
◦ Help you by sharing their own experience of failures and successes
◦ Give you friendly, unbiased support and guidance
◦ Be a sounding board for your ideas.
◦ Facilitate your decision-making by suggesting alternatives based om personal experience
◦ Provide ongoing support and encouragement

6. What would a mentor do?
• Your mentor is there to:
◦ Guide you to look at a wide variety of options
◦ To solve problems for yourself
◦ Rather than to give answers or provide solutions
◦ Help you gain new personal skills, experiences and knowledge
◦ Help you to develop new attitudes and behaviour, and therefore improve both your personal and your
business performance.

7. Mentors ‘pull’ – they don’t push

8. Different types of mentoring relationships
• Face-to-face, one-on-one mentoring is the most common sort of mentoring
• Face-to-face group mentoring (or peer mentoring) is where a small group of business owners
come together to discuss their opportunities
• Telephone mentoring is usually part of a blended mentoring approach, used along with face-
to-face mentoring.
• E-mentoring (for eg. using skype) can be part of a blended mentoring approach or used on its
own.

9. The key skills of a mentee
• To need to use the following skills to get the
best out of mentoring process:
◦ Listening in order to understand
◦ Questioning to clarify and make sure you have
understood correctly
◦ Questioning to explore additional options and
consequences
◦ Being prepared to act on what has been agreed
with your mentor.

10. Establish a successful relationship with your mentor
• Once you have been matched with your mentor through your mentoring organisation, you
should:
◦ Prepare a timetable of regularly spaced meetings.
◦ Establish a set of ground rules to which you will both abide
◦ Keep notes of your meetings, and use these as the basis for ongoing discussions
◦ Work towards developing a trusting relationship and establish a good rapport with your mentor
◦ Aim at maintaining the relationship for as lon as is appropriate to your needs.
• Effective mentoring meetings provide a sense of purpose and achievement.

11. What is the first meeting for?
• Establish ground rules and acknowledge that the relationship is two-way.
• Agree about what you hope to achieve.
• Share your expectations with each other.
• Cover your goals and ambitions:
◦ Specific issues you face
◦ Achievements so far
◦ Realistic expectations
◦ Scale of priorities
◦ Areas in which you would find inputs most
useful
• You should also cover a few basic essentials:
◦ When you would like to meet – how often and for
how long
◦ Venue for follow-up meetings
◦ How you will keep in touch (email or phone)
◦ Confidentiality
◦ Responsibility
◦ How will you record progress and issues / targets

12. Barriers to an effective mentor / mentee relationship
• Most barriers to effective mentoring occur due to:
◦ Personality issues
◦ Lack of awareness of the role of the mentor.
• Common barriers include:
◦ Poor mentor / mentee matching
◦ Lack of support from the mentoring organization
◦ Mentor or mentee dissatisfaction about the way the mentoring is conducted
◦ Unrealistic expectations about what mentoring can achieve
• Seek help from your mentoring organization to overcome any barriers you may encounter

13. Confidentiality
• Respect each other’s confidentiality
◦ What you discuss with the mentor, should not be spoken with anyone else
• Five things to think about are:
◦ Concerns: If you have got any, talk to your mentoring organization and seek help
◦ Secrets: Agree on what things you will keep confidential / secret between yourself.
◦ Information: Keep information about your mentor (Phone no, email, skype id).
◦ You: Be aware of those personal areas of your life you’re happy to share with your mentor and those
you are not.

14. Goal setting and action planning
• Start by setting goals and making ac action
plan. This will keep you on track and help you
to:
◦ Identify when you need support
◦ Set goals you can work towards.
◦ Find out how you are doing
◦ Keep an eye on your goals
◦ Pat each other on the back for your successes

15. Ending the mentoring relationship
• There will come a time when the mentoring relationship will begin to draw to an end:
◦ At this point you must both ”let go” so that you can maintain your independence
• Some tips to help you end your mentoring relationship successfully
◦ Fix a date for your final meeting
◦ Find other ways to support yourself
◦ Celebrate your success
◦ Say good-bye

16. Some Additional resources:
• How mentoring Helped me?
◦ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yFkYNzY-JA0
◦ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xmrS7YGloUw
◦ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_jyr_euyMaQ
• Mentoring Session
◦ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UCTr8R7CCXQ
• Mentors - The Entrepreneur's Unfair Advantage | Russell Buckley
◦ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tl0F1cuTFjQ
• What is mentoring
◦ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8u9LzDbCdOw