A Partnership
Mentoring works best as a collaborative partnership between you and your mentee. To create a strong mentoring partnership you need to build a trusting relationship that:
- encourages your mentee to confidently speak up, ask questions and even challenge your ideas.
- promotes a sense of security that enables your mentee to feel secure enough to fully engage in the relationship.
- breaks down barriers and demonstrates that you are approachable and real.
Building a Mentoring Partnership
Partnerships take time, planning and work to be truly effective.
How much do you know about building partnerships with your mentee? Take the brief test below to find out.
Testing your Knowledge about Partnerships
Read each of the following statements and decide whether it is (true) or is not (false) a strategy for building a strong mentor-mentee partnership?
- Share your own stories or something unique and interesting about yourself.
- Give advice that will help the mentee get on the right path.
- Find areas of common ground where you share points of interest.
- Talk about a time when you had to face a similar challenge or develop a similar project and what you did to handle it.
- Tell your mentee what it requires for the two of you to work well together.
- Provide lots of encouragement and support to keep your mentee motivated.
- Let your mentee know that you plan on giving them feedback when you are disappointed in their performance.
- Ask your mentee about a time when they had to face a similar challenge or difficulty and what they did to handle it.
Check Your Answers
The Innovation Destination
The Innovation Destination was designed and evaluated by a team from the Center for Digital Literacy at the School of Information Studies, Syracuse University and developed by Data Momentum Inc, in partnership with the Connecticut Invention Convention, By Kids for Kids, New York On Tech, and over 70 school librarians and young innovators.
This site has been serving the youth invention community from 2015 - present.
