BECOME A MENTOR
SPEND QUALITY TIME WITH YOUR PROTEGE
Although we ask that mentors have at least three contacts with their protégé each month (two check up calls & get together once), the quality of the time you spend together can have a direct impact on the success of your mentor/protégé relationship. We urge you to be creative in the development of your relationship and in the activities in which you become involved as a mentor/protégé team. To follow are merely some ideas shared by past and present mentors on how you can become involved in the life of your protégé.
- Invite your protégé to spend the day “shadowing” you in your workplace. Seeing is believing.
- Have your protégé join you in a business meeting or weekly staff meeting to give him or her a bigger picture of what you do and how your activities relate to the company as a whole.
- Visit your protégé at their home. Home visits and meeting the parents is crucial in helping you to understand the kind of life your protégé leads and how you can best help them set and achieve goals.
- Plan to have lunch with your protégé at their school or arrange for your protégé to join you for lunch at the office.
- Go to your protégé’s Open House, which is in October.
- Sit in on your protégé’s parent/teacher conference or arrange for a special mentor/teacher conference twice a year.
- Contact your protégé’s teachers occasionally to check on his or her progress.
- Share your own studying methods with your protégé.
- Invite your protégé for a social visit to your home, to meet your family.
- Plan for you and your protégé to attend special functions that relate to his or her area of interest.
- Attend a monthly networking function or a meeting of an association to which you belong.
- Attend a lecture by an expert or a discussion by a motivational speaker.
- Plan a social function for you to enjoy with your protégé. Attend a sporting or cultural event or visit one of Cleveland’s many renowned museums.
- Share inspirational books, stories, articles that have motivated or helped you in your life.
- Go to dinner and movie.
- Let your protégé know you are available and there for them if they need you!
Mentor n. a wise and trusted counselor
Protégé n. a person who is aided and guided in his career by an influential person