Mentorloop’s Director of Customer Growth, Marina Sancho, has helped organisations run hundreds of mentoring programs as part of the Mentorloop Customer Success team. In this article, she explores the six key decisions she’d make if she were to run her own mentoring program.
I work with two types of customers at Mentorloop:
Those who know exactly how they want to run their mentoring program, as well as a clear idea of how they’d like to set things up; and those who want me to tell them how they should do it. And for the second type of customer, when I ask them how they want to set up their programs, they respond with questions like, “What do you think is best?” or “What have you seen work best for other customers?”.
Often, the real answer is that there isn’t “One Best Way” to run a mentoring program. It will depend on the objective of your program, who your participants are, and how much time you have to manage it, amongst many other factors.
Having said that, I do have my own preferences and I know how I would set up my own mentoring program. So here are the key decisions you need to make when setting up your mentoring program, and how I would approach them after having set up hundreds of them for our customers as part of the Mentorloop customer success team!
Decision 1: Program Timeline
Should I have a defined period for recruiting mentors and mentees or should the program always be open to new joiners?
I would open applications on a set launch date and continue recruiting without a set close date. Keeping your sign-ups open allows participants to join at any time that suits them.
I think this is the best way of building a true mentoring culture and encouraging participants to take ownership of their own development and mentoring journey.
Having said that, I would share a sneaky soft deadline to create a sense of urgency and buzz. For example, “Sign up by the end of X date to have the best chance of finding a match.”
Decision 2: Recruitment
Should I recruit my mentors first?
People often worry that they will have more mentees than mentors on their program. To preemptively address that, they think it may be best to recruit mentors first, get a clear idea on numbers, and only then recruit mentees. It’s a legitimate worry – most programs do in fact end up having more mentees than mentors.
However, I’d recruit everyone at the same time. Doing it this way will allow you to:
- Avoid drawing out your recruitment period unnecessarily
- Have one launch event for everyone
- Figure out the balance further down the line
It might feel uneasy but addressing that balance is a lot easier to manage than people might think. You can always recruit more mentors as the program progresses, ask some mentees to become mentors, or ask some mentors to take on multiple mentees. Plenty of ways around it!
Decision 3: Events and Training
Should I have a launch event and/or training session for participants?
Yes! I would definitely have a launch event. As for training, I’d incorporate it into the launch to reduce the ask on participants’ time.
In my experience, running a 30-minute webinar is enough to get people excited about the program, set some clear expectations of what’s required from participants, and provide a little training on how to get started.
I’d stay away from anything more involved because it may give the impression that mentoring is hard, or put people off from participating when really we want to make mentoring accessible to as many people as possible!
I also don’t need to worry that my participants aren’t getting enough support and guidance. With Mentorloop’s Nudges and Recommended Reading, I can be confident that my mentors and mentees are getting content guidance that’s relevant to where they are in their mentoring journey without me having to hold their hand.
Decision 4: Matching
How should I match mentors and mentees?
I would allow my participants to make their own matches (Self Match), with the help of recommendations from Mentorloop’s algorithm.
This alleviates the admin burden of having to check for new signups and then finding them the best match. Having said that, I would also make sure participants know to reach out if they need matching help so that I can jump in as a “concierge” and help them find a good match.
If I found that some people hadn’t found a match a month or two after launching, I’d ask Mentorloop to match them up using the algorithm. I’d give people without a match a heads-up that they’d be matched on a given date.
I find that this combination of self-matching plus a little help from the algorithm yields the best results and gets us close to 100% of participants matched.
Decision 5: Program Duration
How long should the program last?
Forever! As mentioned, I’m a big fan of the always-on program since keeping recruitment open indefinitely allows participants to join whenever it works best for them.
I’d advertise the program a bit more a couple of times per year, focusing on raising awareness and visibility of the program during those periods.
I’d also remind people that once they’re done with their mentor or mentee, they can close down that relationship and find a new mentoring partner! This leads us to our final key decision.
Decision 6: Participant Meeting Frequency
Should I prescribe how often participants should meet, or leave it up to them?
I would give participants guidance – just not enforce it as a hard rule. It’s ultimately up to mentors and mentees, but providing some guidance can be helpful, to begin with. That way participants have an idea of what is expected from them. They can get going right away but still have the flexibility to arrange for what suits them.
I’d recommend my participants meet at least once per month, for six months.
I’d also recommend that they set these meetings up in their loop as recurring meetings. This way it would give me, the program coordinator, more visibility and more data points like post-meeting scores.
There you have it. These are the 6 key decisions I would make if I were to run my own mentoring program. From having helped many organisations run theirs in my experience in the Mentorloop customer success team, these are the program settings that I feel would work best for me and how I would like to manage one. However, it’s good to keep in mind that no two mentoring programs are the same. So I would advise that you don’t take these suggestions as gospel. Rather, use it as a guide for how and why you would make certain decisions regarding your own mentoring program and its unique goals.
