Essential Skills for Mentors

Benefits:

• Become a high-quality mentor, not just someone who tells others what to do
• Support your succession planning and retention of teachers and leaders
• Enhance your role clarity for mentors, coaches, and leaders
• Learn how to intentionally develop the capacity of new teachers and leaders
• Empower mentees to take more responsibility and initiative
• Improve your leadership and communication skills
• Understand how to share knowledge, without having to know it all

This course is for:

• Mentors in schools, regions, networks, organisations or systems
• Middle and Senior Leaders
• Anyone who has completed the GCI Introduction to Leadership Coaching course
• Professional learning leaders
• Learning Area, Faculty, Department leaders

Mentoring is more than telling, advising and advocating. It requires the skills and capacity to draw on our experiences and expertise, but to always keep your mentee at the centre of each conversation.

High-quality mentors respectfully and humbly share knowledge and perspectives with others. They understand their ‘Way of being’, and use key mentoring and coaching skills, alongside a proven conversational framework to best support and challenge the growth of their mentees.

Drawing upon research and the most effective skills and tools of coaching and mentoring, Essential Skills for Mentors helps you better support your colleagues and mentees. You will understand the similarities and differences of mentoring and coaching, explore the stances required to better support your mentees, and expand your skills as a mentor and leader.

Key Outcomes:

• Enhanced role clarity for mentors and coaches
• Understand how a ‘continuum of professional learning conversations’ supports higher quality mentoring
• Understand when and how to share expertise with humility
• Improved conversational skills that can be applied to mentoring relationships
• Increased agility and confidence in mentoring conversations

Structure:

Mentoring and Coaching: What is the difference, and how are they similar?

Continuum of Learning Conversations: The why, how and when of different stances we can take in conversations

Practical Applications: See demonstrations and apply the GROWTH framework in mentoring conversations

Key Skills: The key skills effective and high quality mentors use in conversations

Sharing Knowledge and Perspective: Balancing respect and humility to share our knowledge