The mentor and mentee guide

The aim of this guidance is to help mentees and mentors build a great mentoring relationship. GCS has several mentoring programmes which you can participate in, depending on your goal and stage of career.

On this page:

The mentoring partnership

Responsibilities

Each mentoring pair will decide how they want their partnership to work and will detail these in a Learning Contract.

Download the Mentoring Contract (Word, 36 KB, 2 pages)

It is expected that mentees will:

  • take responsibility for managing their own development
  • set clear, realistic objectives and initiate learning and career development activities
  • be responsible for scheduling meetings and rescheduling them if needed 
  • be open to feedback from mentor and receptive to new ideas
  • show consideration for their mentor’s time
  • adhere to confidentiality of mentoring partnership
  • maintain the commitment to the mentoring partnership – the frequency, structure and length of the partnership will be discussed and agreed with the mentor, but it’s typically 1-2 hours per month for a period of 6 months, with learning and development activities between meetings
  • take responsibility from this point for arranging meetings and setting agendas

It is expected that mentors will:

  • motivate and encourage mentee to take responsibility for learning and career development activities
  • help identify learning and networking opportunities
  • provide constructive feedback and act as a sounding board for ideas
  • challenge mentee to take a broad perspective
  • use listening skills and a facilitative approach to increase mentee’s awareness of strengths and weaknesses
  • adhere to confidentiality of mentoring partnership
  • maintain commitment to the mentoring partnership –  the frequency, structure and length of the partnership will be discussed and agreed with the mentee, but it’s typically 1-2 hours per month for a period of 6 months, with learning and development activities between meetings

The first meeting

The first meeting is a good opportunity to discuss what you are hoping to get through the mentoring partnership. Don’t place too much pressure to cover a lot of ground – spend some time getting to know each other and setting your objectives.

Ideally, the first meeting should cover:

  • introductions and mentor/mentee background 
  • expectations of the mentoring partnership, and role and responsibilities of each
  • what the mentee and mentor hope to get out of the partnership
  • mentee’s learning objectives
  • frequency, structure, length and logistics of the meetings
  • action points and agenda for the next meeting

In preparation for the first meeting, it may be helpful to think about and note down your thoughts on the following:

  • What are your expectations of mentoring? What outcomes are you aiming for?
  • How do you see your role and responsibilities?
  • How often would you like to meet? And for how long?
  • Where/how will meetings take place?
  • Are you happy to have direct contact with each other between meetings?
  • What limits will you put in place in terms of confidentiality?
  • Are there any areas / topics that are outside the scope of your mentoring partnership?
  • How and how often will you review how things are going?
  • What will you do if you think the partnership isn’t working out?
  • What will success look like at the end of the mentoring partnership?

Complete the learning contract together as a record of your objectives. You should record CPD points in your Personal Development Plan. We would recommend that one hour of mentoring equals one CPD point.

Establishing ground rules and setting boundaries

Confidentiality

Confidentiality is an important element of the mentoring relationship and is central to a successful partnership. On this, GCS provides the following guidance:

Anything said during the course of a mentoring meeting is confidential to the parties involved and should not be repeated without the express consent of those individuals.

The mentoring discussions will remain confidential to the mentoring partnership both during and after the formal mentoring relationship has finished. The mentor has no direct contact with the mentee’s line manager.

In exceptional circumstances where the mentor has concerns (for example involving a Civil Service Code or health and safety issues), the mentor will advise the mentee of the need for disclosure and should contact GCS for guidance.

Bullying, Harassment and Discrimination (BHD) and Equality, Diversity and Inclusion (EDI)

The Civil Service has a longstanding commitment to ensuring positive, supportive working environments in all of our teams, departments and businesses.

One key element of this is our commitment to tackling bullying, harassment and discrimination in the workplace.

Both the mentor and the mentee have a responsibility to read and understand the BHD guidance for their department and follow its procedures. They have a responsibility to read the GCS Equality, Diversity and Inclusion action plan 2023.

If you need further guidance on the topic, we encourage you to look to read the Civil Service Review of Arrangements for Tackling Bullying, Harassment and Misconduct in the Civil Service, the Civil Service Diversity and Inclusion Strategy, and look for support resources on your department intranet. 

When discussing the additional ground rules and boundaries of your mentoring partnership, you might want to consider the following:

  • be inclusive: inclusion is the responsibility of everyone in the workplace and many disabilities are invisible.
  • when you start your conversation, ask each other “What can I do to make our meeting comfortable for you?”
  • discuss whether either of you has reasonable adjustments to be aware of: depending on their needs, some colleagues might like video with subtitles, some might prefer a phone call, some might prefer an email with text in a certain size. 

How will the mentee use the mentor’s authority and contacts? For example they will only contact members of the mentor’s network with their prior consent

  • accessibility and the allocation of time to mentoring. How will you keep in touch between meetings and how much time will you allocate to mentoring?
  • some mentors will have time for calls or emails between sessions, others may not

Mentoring pairs should discuss and reach agreement on ground rules or boundaries, and detail these in their Learning Contract.

Mentoring meetings

After the first meeting, good mentoring meetings should:

  • have a clear agenda
  • review actions from last meeting and assess progress
  • be related to agreed learning objectives
  • focus on exploring the mentee’s issues
  • identify clear actions and next steps, including any learning activities the mentee will undertake between sessions
  • agree a date for the next meeting

Keeping the mentoring partnership on track

Try to build in time at specific points during your mentoring partnership to reflect on how things are going and what progress is being made towards achieving overall learning objectives.

Taking stock of what has or hasn’t worked along the way will help keep the relationship on track and ensure you get the most out of the mentoring experience. It will also help identify any issues which, if left unchecked, could cause the mentoring partnership to break down.

If you feel that the mentoring partnership isn’t progressing as you’d hoped, consider scheduling some time to raise this with your mentee/mentor, ensuring you have a clear agenda for discussing the situation. Revisiting the Learning Contract to review the ground rules and objectives initially set can be a useful exercise for helping you see where you may have veered off track.

Closing the partnership

The mentoring partnership should last for the amount of time that the mentor and mentee have agreed during the first meeting (this may be in line with the timing of a specific GCS mentoring programme), with an option to continue if the mentoring relationship is proving productive and successful. Occasionally, mentoring partnerships may need to close early due to unforeseen circumstances (for example change of role) or simply because the relationship is not achieving the aims of either party. Where this is the case, close down the partnership without fault or blame attached to either party.

At the end of the mentoring partnership, we will ask mentors for feedback on the process, not on the content of the discussion. This feedback is really valuable as it shows us what is working well and where changes could be made to improve this element of our talent management and development.

  • The Coaching and Mentoring Network is a free and independent portal for news, information and developments in the coaching and mentoring field. The site’s Information Portal provides detail on definitions / different types of mentoring, as well as recent articles and reports on mentoring and coaching.
  • The European Mentoring and Coaching Council exists to promote good practice in mentoring and coaching across Europe. The information and resources available via this site are aimed primarily at professional mentors, coaches and supervisors.

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