Tomorrow's Giants: a conference hosted by the Royal Society and Nature forum: topic
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2. Careers: How can we improve mentoring?
Jason Codrington
Thursday, 22 October 2009 12:30 UTC
Several participants at different workshops suggested mentoring as a useful means of support in their career development: Should there be more formal mechanisms to encourage mentoring and does anyone have good examples of how a mentor has helped them to develop their career?
Updated 23 October 2009 15:49 UTC
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Replies
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At the UK Resource Centre For Women in SET we regularly see the power of mentoring through the feedback from mentees we support. A mentor can be a role model, sounding board, advisor, ‘a professional friend’ as one mentee put it. Who wouldn’t benefit from such support? With respect to ‘formal mechanisms’ a lot of very valuable mentoring happens completely informally, but we recommend a ‘semi-structured’ environment if possible. As a minimum we would suggest some training or briefing of mentors and mentees (relationships are three times more likely to succeed if both parties have been trained), a central contact point available to all participants if they have queries, and some proactive follow-up or evaluation to collect formative feedback. See our free mentoring good practice guide in downloadable format.
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