At KMP+ House of Mentoring we define mentoring as a mutual learning process, where both mentor and mentee learn through their conversations. A successfully learning partnership demands the right match between mentor and mentee and here comes the important of matching the right mentors and mentees. Because how will you define a right match?
Chemistry and trust
“A right match is a match where both mentor and mentee get the desired benefit from the collaboration and where chemistry and trust are both present”, says matching expert Lise Krogh Løvschal, Senior Consultant and Partner at KMP+ House of Mentoring, who has many years of experience and a solid expertise with both selecting suitable mentors and matching mentors and mentees.
Having the right attitude
According to Lise Krogh Løvschal, the selection process of suitable mentors completely corresponds to the recruitment process that potential employees go through at companies and organisations. In the same way you conduct a face-to-face job interview, Lise always invites potential mentors to meet up in person.
“It is important to ensure, that a potential mentor has the right attitude,” she points out. “I match based on their professional and personal background. The most important quality in a mentor, is that the person shows a genuine interest for other people. Mentoring should be driven by other things than business recruitment interest. The essence of mentoring is professional and personal knowledge sharing and dialogue in a confident space, and it requires that both mentor and mentee show involvement and wants to take part in the learning process.”
5 tips for the matching process
However, it can be difficult to know what you need to focus on when matching. Lise Krogh Løvschal gives 5 tips to ensure the right match between mentor and mentee:
1. Have an in-depth interview with mentor before the matching process
It will give you a better understanding of who mentor is as a person and it will make it easier during the matching process to assess whether there will be a good chemistry in the match or not.
2. Match mentee with a mentor, who have been through a similar progression to the one that mentee is currently experiencing
It creates a solid base for exchange of experience and knowledge sharing in the mentor/mentee relationship.
3. Match mentee with a mentor, that has a sufficient personal understanding and experience in relation to what the mentee needs
In relation to work-life-balance and job development, mentee might need professional as well as personal advice and guidance.
4. Don’t let the industry be essential to a match
Always look at mentor’s progression and general experience – mentor and mentee can learn a lot from each other without being in the same industry, and it may be an advantage not to share industry or professionalism.
5. Be sure to align expectations between mentor and mentee
The alignment of expectations should be preferably ready from the very beginning of the mentoring relationship, so that both agree on the benefit and the duration of the relationship, the frequency of meetings etc.
