You are experienced in a field, or you simply want to share your experience and pass on advice. But, are you wondering about your posture as a mentor? 🧐


In this 'MentoringTools', we will bring you insight into what the Mentor posture is! 💡

👀 Coach vs Mentor
A significant distinction

It is essential to distinguish the posture of a mentor from that of a coach. Indeed, the two postures may seem similar, but they are significantly different. Let's start by identifying what a coach is. A coach accompanies individuals in the development of their potential, as well as their know-how within the framework of professional objectives. 

As for the mentor's posture, it must allow for the construction of the mentoring relationship on a collaborative basis, based essentially on exchange, sharing of vision, as well as the transmission of advice and experience. The mentor must be a real ear and a shoulder for the mentee.

🔑 Keys to shaping your mentor posture
Accompanying a mentee by adopting a posture

Here are some tips to keep in mind to build and develop your mentor posture:  

• Make active listening a priority.
• To put oneself in the place of the other person in order to better understand them, empathy is an essential quality.
• To take a step back, on oneself, towards the other, in order to be able to readjust one's posture if necessary.
• Open the field of possibilities by allowing the mentee to be the actor of his success.
• To share an authentic testimony of oneself, to share one's failures and successes in order to help the mentee develop self-confidence.
  
  
  

💡 Some points of attention

It is important as a mentor to balance the mentee's expectations with reality. It is important not to position yourself as the mentee's savior, but rather as a pathfinder.

In the same perspective, during the mentoring relationship, it is imperative that the mentee be the actor of his or her future, so it will be necessary to guide and support the mentee so that he or she feels autonomous in what he or she undertakes, and not to do things and make decisions on his or her behalf. 

We advise you to take your time and not to go too fast, this will favour the qualitative construction of the Mentoring relationship.

As a mentor, it is important to listen to the other person, but in order to do so, it is essential to listen to yourself first. We advise you to co-construct a framework with your mentee from the very beginning of your relationship, in order to set respective limits together and to define the necessary distance within your mentoring relationship.

Here is a little tour on the mentor's posture, we hope it will help you in your mentoring! 💡

💬 If you have other tips, 
please feel free to share them with the community in the comments area below.