Mentoring is one of the most popular tools that help one progress in the career or successfully onboard in a new role. According to stats, employees participating in the mentoring program are promoted five times more often than those who don't. Another study confirmed that 87% of mentees feel empowered by their mentoring relationships and feel an increase in confidence. Sounds impressive, right?
However, these results don't appear just by finding a mentor or starting a mentoring journey. For a successful outcome, a mentee should define goals that will help track their progress and get them to the next step of their career ladder. In this article, we'll dive deep into why to set goals in mentoring and, most importantly, how to set them in order to succeed.
Mentoring represents a relationship between less and more senior professionals and aims to help less senior mentees grow and develop in their roles. The mentoring program is usually limited to a set number of one-hour meetings held during the defined period of time (for example, six sessions during six months). Taking into account the limited amount of time allocated for discussions between a mentee and a mentor, it is crucial to set mentoring program goals right at the beginning of cooperation.
By setting mentoring goals before the mentoring program begins, a mentee creates a path that corresponds to their career challenges and needs, and, on the other hand, a mentor understands whether their experience fits the criteria when they could be helpful to a mentee. Mentoring goals and objectives become a helpful tool for a mentor in guiding a mentee to the most efficient results, while a mentee can easily check the progress by identifying the completion of these set goals.
Without adequately set mentoring goals, the mentoring relationship might not give the results both mentor and mentee expected. That's why it's essential to set goals, both for a mentor and a mentee, to make sure:
Now it's clear that setting mentoring goals is a crucial step before everything else moves forward, and it's a key to success in this relationship. But how to do it right?
There are many strategies for setting mentoring goals for mentees and mentors to make the mentoring program effective. While setting goals, a mentor and a mentee can use several frameworks and strategies, including OKRs, SMART, or micro-goals.
It's important to remember that there's no set rule on how to set mentoring goals for each mentoring program. Instead, it's important to set at least a limited number of goals (better, less than more) to guide both mentee and mentor in the relationship and motivate them to succeed.
OKRs - Objectives and Key Results - is one of the most known strategies for setting goals across many businesses and companies. The objective is usually a broad statement that needs to be achieved, and Key Results are specific goals that show how it's possible to achieve that objective.
This strategy allows mentees and mentors to break down the big objective into smaller, clearly defined, and achievable goals, allowing them to track the progress easily and reach the final objective quicker. Although organizations often use the OKRs methodology to keep their business profitable, applying this strategy to one's personal and professional goals is also possible.
One of the examples of mentoring goals using OKRs could be set as follows:
Objective - Advance career from current role to Senior
Key results - Acquire the professional certification
- Spend 10+ hours shadowing Senior
- Attend one industry event and meet 2+ professionals from the same field
The second popular methodology for setting mentoring goals is SMART: the goal must be Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Time-bound. Mentee and mentor can use this methodology within any other goal-setting strategy; for example, the Key Results in OKRs can be set using SMART goals.
The SMART framework helps to set specific goals and easily identify what a mentee wants to achieve, why they want to achieve it, whose help they'll need, and where it will happen. A measurable goal helps set a clear benchmark to identify the point when the goal is achieved. However, this goal should be also Achievable to allow the chance of reaching this goal. A relevant goal is one that corresponds with the current state, personal values, and factors surrounding a mentee. Finally, a Time-bound goal defines when it should be achieved to be considered done.
What is an example of a SMART goal for mentorship? If to take a similar example that was used before - Advance career from current role to Senior - and rewrite it as one of the SMART goals examples, the result will be:
Specific - Advance career in my current company from Specialist to Senior Specialist
Measurable - Spend 10+ hours shadowing Senior and acquire one professional certification
Achievable - Use two hours every week to work on career goals
Relevant - Use the career progression plan provided within my company
Time-bound - Advance career by the end of this year
If we put this all together, our defined SMART goal could look something like this:
Advance in my current company from Specialist to Senior Specialist by the end of this year using the company progression plan - I will spend 10+ hours shadowing, acquire one professional certification, and work 2 hours a week on my goals.
Another strategy that a mentee and a mentor can use while setting mentoring goals is to break down regular goals into micro-goals. The methodology reminds OKRs; however, micro-goals mean that even Key Results can be broken down into smaller steps that are easy to achieve. With micro-goals, it's required to have it all planned out on paper or in software and keep the progress updated regularly, which can be weekly or bi-weekly.
One of the mentoring goals examples using micro-goals strategy when advancing career from the current role to Senior can be a split of sub-goal "Spend 10+ hours shadowing Senior." In this case, micro-goals will define:
Now we understand why and how to set mentoring goals, but what are good mentoring goals to have? In a mentoring program, a mentee and a mentor should have clearly defined goals to guide both along the career journey. Good mentee goals and objective examples might include:
A mentor should also set goals to ensure the mentoring program benefits both parties involved. Mentoring goals examples for a mentor include:
Once relevant and achievable goals are set, it's necessary to create a mentoring plan where the progress of achieving these goals will be recorded. There are many examples of mentoring goals worksheets available online as a standalone document or software, but most use a similar mentorship goals template as below.
Goal
Sub-goals
Measurement when achieved
Deadline
Completed?
Specific, achievable, and measurable goals will help both a mentee and a mentor to work on career growth and adjust the mentoring plan when tracking the progress. It's also possible that not all goals will be completed during the duration of a mentoring program. Still, accountability comes in - mentees can always continue at the same pace and work on goals even after the program ends. The secret to success is clearly seeing the final destination and constantly moving, even if slow.
If you are interested in the mentoring program and want to set the right goals to help you with your career progression, don't hesitate to check out the Femme Palette Mentoring program. We'll be happy to guide you in setting SMART mentoring goals.
