Overview

Your role as mentor is to inspire, encourage, and support your mentee, and to contribute to their professional and personal development.

Mentoring Expectations

• Mentors and mentees are expected to create a mentoring plan that clearly states the frequency and format of their mentoring interactions.  Interactions may take place on the Chronus platform, via email, text messages, virtual meetings, or in person. Mentors should work with their mentee to determine what kind of support will be most useful—specific feedback related to finding jobs, general career advice, guidance on coursework or research questions, technical information, personal encouragement, and so on.

Relationship Term

• We ask our mentors to make commitments of nine months to ensure the mentee is able to fully benefit from the relationship. If the mentor needs to leave the relationship early, please inform your mentee and inform the MARC team (marc@asha.org) that the relationship has ended. 

Addressing Relationship Concerns

• If the mentoring relationship isn't going well, we encourage mentors to contact their mentee to discuss concerns and contact the MARC team (marc@asha.org) for assistance. We will provide our full support to resolve the situation in a positive and satisfactory manner.

Mentor DOs

1. Set aside time for the mentoring process and honor all appointments.
2. Invite the mentee to meetings or activities, as appropriate. Schedule meetings with planned topics.
3. Be flexible on meeting times and places.
4. Arrange frequent contacts through the format(s) stated in your mentoring plan (e.g., the Chronus platform, email, face-to-face, etc.)
5. Respond to emails from your mentee within two days of receipt.
6. Keep information that your mentee has shared with you confidential. If something concerning the mentee needs to be discussed with others, it should first be discussed within the mentoring relationship.
7. Establish open and honest communication and a forum for idea exchange.
8. Foster creativity and independence. Help build self-confidence and offer encouragement.
9. Provide honest and timely feedback to your mentee.
10. Provide opportunities for the mentee to talk about concerns and ask questions.
11. Above all, LISTEN.

Mentor DON'Ts

1. Try to give advice on everything.
2. Encourage mentee to be totally dependent upon you.
3. Provide your personal history, problems, animosities, successes, failures, etc., unless they are constructive contributions.
4. Be too busy when the mentee needs your friendship or your support. If you do not have time, give the mentee a heads up, so that they know when they can reach you.
5. Criticize.