Just-In-Time Mentoring

When people talk about mentoring as a way of supporting individuals, we often think about long term relationships that last anything from 6 months to 2 years and in some case longer.

However, mentoring can be delivered over a much shorter time frame, Just-in-Time mentoring can be a useful method of providing fast, targeted support and advice to help people overcome a specific issue and move forward. The benefits can be immediate, just-in-time mentoring helps the mentee achieve their goals quickly and efficiently. Just-in-time mentoring can be used to develop a wide variety of skills and networking and relationship building, decision-making skills, and create accountability.

Just-in-time mentoring is a great way for a bank of mentors in organisations to use their skills in an effective, targeted way, they can be perceived as ‘special advisors’ and can support a number of mentees at the same time without having to make a long-term commitment to one person, this may suit organisational cultures and ways of working.

Benefits of just-in-time mentoring for organisations, mentors and mentees:

• Results can be immediate – This style of mentoring can bring confidence to new skills, fast.
• Build networks quickly
• Build a culture of learning and collaboration
• Just-in-time mentoring can be a less intimidating way for many to get a taste of what mentoring has to offer
• It’s often a great way to recruit people into an existing program and encourage a wider variety of people to share their skills

How to use just-in-time mentoring as a mentee:

1. Be clear on what area you want to develop, get advice on – have a focussed objective
2. Seek out a mentor who has the capability, knowledge, skills etc that can help you achieve this objective, ideally the organisation will have a bank of mentors who have different areas of expertise and specialisms
3. Sit down with them and explain what it is you want from them and how they can help you achieve your objective
4. Arrange meetings, whether face to face or remotely and identify actions
5. Take responsibility for doing the actions!
6. Arrange further meetings if required

How do you know if just-in-time mentoring is right for your company?

• Your company is expanding quickly, and you have a constant flow of new recruits who need support and help to get up and running and integrated into the organisational culture
• Your business requires employees to be constantly up to date on the latest advancements to stay competitive
• Your employees work remotely but still required to connect and collaborate with wider networks
• You are having trouble finding mentors who want to commit to a long-term mentorship relationship

Just-in-time mentoring can be a great solution to supporting your employees on an on-going basis, providing targeted, objective-driven solutions resulting in changes to performance quickly and efficiently.

How I can help…

If you would like to explore mentoring in your organisation and how it can work for you and your staff, then please get in touch. Together we can identify what you want to achieve from a mentoring programme and how to go about achieving it.

I have put together an e-guide on Introducing a Mentoring Programme in your organisation, if you would like a copy, you can download it HERE

More information is available at: www.fptrainingltd.co.uk or email me at: enquiries@fptrainingltd.co.uk or call me on: (+44) 01332 527144