Posted by jmeyer on November 21, 2022
There are many crucial elements to learning mentoring. Find out the elements that your mentorship training needs to cover to enhance your organization. Connecting with a mentee requires a certain skillset. Discover the top mentoring skills that you can use in training new mentors.
A study conducted by Big Brothers Big Sisters of America found that youth with a mentor were almost 50% less likely to start using illegal drugs. These findings and others suggest that mentors provide a tremendously positive effect on children and adolescents. However, there are skills mentors must learn and master in order to positively influence children in a meaningful way. A mentorship training program is essential to the success of any mentoring program, but especially when mentors are dealing with vulnerable youth.
A comprehensive mentorship training program should prepare volunteers not only with basic definitions and principles but also examples of real-world experiences. Teaching the entire set of core topics about mentoring to volunteers — from initiating the relationship to match closure — will help mentors to support skills development in youth. Through the mentoring relationship, youth can learn to develop trusting relationships with others, grow their skills and interests, and reach the goals they have set for themselves.
There are more than two dozen recommended topics a mentorship training program should cover, according to our partners at MENTOR. From the basics, like defining mentoring, to program rules, such as the amount of money and time spent on mentees during a match, to more advanced topics, such as tips on how to mentor youth from special at-risk populations, mentorship training programs need to be thoughtfully and carefully developed and implemented with all volunteers. Training to extensively cover all these mentoring skills can take several hours, and the completion of the training program can be viewed as another vetting measure to assess if volunteers are ready for taking on such a commitment. While there is much to teach emerging mentors, many key mentoring skills can be categorized into six different skill sets that all intertwine, are teachable, and are fundamental to success.
While these skills are complex, they are teachable for volunteers who want to learn. At least two hours of training are recommended to develop essential mentoring skills. However, at least six hours of training are even better. There are several mentorship training programs, but very few that are research-driven and based around important scientific findings regarding mentoring. Online and a hybrid of online and in-person models are able to teach mentors at their own pace. A training program based around proven best practices will cover these six skills mentors must know to strengthen your program.
Mentoring Central helped write “the” book on mentoring. Our online mentorship training programs are scientifically designed, field-tested, and research-based. With a variety of learning modules, mentors are presented with real-world scenarios, engaging videos, and a self-reflective journal to encourage comprehension and action. These six core skills, along with other essential qualities mentors should have, are covered extensively in our many courses.
The robust online courses and administration system help organizations stay on top of their mentor training. Programs can easily enroll mentors into the system and track their progress. Data and reports, along with completion rates, are all found in one easy-to-use system.
Strengthen your mentoring program today — buy online training to educate mentors on these six crucial skills and more.