The Mentor Exchange: Buddy Up! session provided mentors with a lot to think about and reflect on. Below are the tips and advice that mentors feel they could begin to follow from today onwards, and that will improve their skills and mentoring relationship.

Tips

These are valuable tips that can be actively used to improve your mentoring relationship over a period of time.

1. When mentees are struggling for time, offer a 20minute catch-up to help prioritize - this ensure that conversations are succinct, effective, and that the mentee has time for you in-between family, work or other lifestyle commitments
2. Check with your mentee what they’ve taken from the session – to help work out which mentoring approach works best and to also gain a sense that the sessions are having a positive impact
3. Try not to approach your relationship with a 'line manager' attitude of demanding results, or pressuring your mentee - this can make them unresponsive
4. Try to revisit Bob Thompson's tips on mentoring and the mentoring/coaching dance - these include directive and indirective approaches to mentoring, one of which may be more appropriate than the other at certain times

Advice

The advice are ideas/opinions which you can choose to follow from today

• It is okay to have a check-in with the mentee about "what is going on" and review what is working/not working
• Don't go light on contracting so you both understand your relationship and what it will look like
• View the relationship as a transaction, with the mentee as a customer
• Focus on listening to what your mentee is trying to tell you, and use the tools when conversations dry up
• Refresh with the mentees on goals, especially at the start of the final year of the mentoring relationship
• Set dates in your diary a few months in advance if possible as a sign of commitment