Category Archives: Mentoring

5 Tips on How to Coach and Mentor Perfectionists

5 Tips on How to Coach and Mentor Perfectionists Perfectionists are driven to succeed, strive to continually improve and work hard to avoid mistakes. Particularly when you have your own perfectionist tendencies (like me) it is easy to align perfectionism with diligence, excellence and well…perfection.  In fact, habitual perfectionism is in itself an imperfection. The […]

In Celebration of National Mentoring Day

National Mentoring Day Mentors are truly magnificent people who share their time, energy and experience with someone else. They guide and encourage, they challenge and confront, but most of all they support and listen. My first real mentor was an ex-boss. He gave me my first job as a graduate and watched out for me […]

How to Help a Coachee or Mentee Develop Presence

How to help a coachee or mentee develop presence “Presence” is one of those easily recognisable but hard to define qualities. It plays a significant role in how we assess competence, promotability and other factors that make or break reputation and careers. So what exactly is presence? A pragmatic definition is: “Influencing others simply by […]

How Mentoring Can Help Introverts Become Great Leaders

The Importance of Formal Mentoring for High Potential Introverts Research has shown (and intuitively we all know) that extroverts tend to be more successful in the corporate world.  The Truity Psychometrics study, for example, showed that extroverts earn substantially more than introverts and are more likely to reach senior managerial roles.  Extroverts just seem naturally […]

Business case for mentoring programs in organisations

Is there a proven business case for mentoring programs in organisations? My esteemed colleague Professor David Clutterbuck, a leading researcher and writer on coaching and mentoring, recently told a group of our clients that “highly effective mentoring programs deliver substantial learning for over 95% of mentees and 80% of mentors”. But is there real evidence […]

How to help your mentee manage loneliness

How to recognise and help your coachee or mentee manage loneliness It’s a common misconception that loneliness is about isolation from or lack of contact with other people. In reality, people differ greatly in how they respond to being on their own. So, what is loneliness? Loneliness is a feeling of being socially isolated that […]

Important Skills for a Successful Mentoring Relationship

Study Confirms Communication Competence Critical to Mentoring Success Don’t you just love being proven right? It was with a slight inner gloat that I read a recent mentoring study from York University in Canada, which found that communication competence on the part of both the mentor and the mentee was the one single skill most […]

The 9 Key Elements of Talent Life Cycle

The 9 Key Elements of Talent Life Cycle Many companies limit the effectiveness of their talent management by taking a narrow perspective of what is involved – focusing on the aspects of identifying, development retention and promotion. In contrast, a systemic view of talent takes into account the whole Talent Life Cycle and consists of […]

Selecting and using an executive coach

Selecting and using an executive coach Executive coaches are used mainly by senior managers or professionals, to help them work on specific aspects of their performance. As a relatively expensive resource, it’s important to understand why you will benefit from having an executive coach, what the outcomes of the relationship will be and what kind […]

Tips for Successfully Marketing a Mentoring Program

Top Tips for Successfully Marketing Your Association’s Mentoring Program Few years ago, Associations Now wrote about the importance of mentoring for membership retention, but what makes the program successful? No matter how well-conceived and run your association mentoring program is, its success will ultimately be determined by your ability to engage and excite your membership. The […]