To be fair it’s not until you start giving back that you realise how much you know, how much others benefit, and in fact how enjoyable it is to impart your knowledge. I’ve been in the agency world for 20 years in a marketing capacity and during that time I’ve been lucky to be mentored by some wonderful, inspiring and creative people. In fact in my early 30’s I was mentored by the head of brand at mobile operator O2. At the time I was in a new role, was responsible for running a rebrand project and how that rolled out across all touch-points, was formalising marketing and communications plans for the coming year, and organising networking and industry events for peers to attend. Needless to say I found having a mentor and sounding board really useful, both to talk to and bounce ideas off.

The format for their mentor programme is extremely well structured and is spread over a 6- month period. As an industry body they do an excellent job of onboarding mentors via an introductory zoom call, which is great as we get to virtually meet others. Prior to this call Rachel and the team at BIMA have been approving mentees who have requested to be part of the programme, and once approved, matchmaking their mentors to the skillset of the mentees who have paid to participate in the programme.

From the initial chemistry call between mentor and mentee where we make contact, have a brief introduction and agree our first session, the following six meetings have a core structure that moves seamlessly from month one where we get to know each other, set objectives and start work, to having monthly check-ins where we review progress and outcomes, then refine actions. The programme continues in this manner until the final session where we summarise progress and review actions going forwards.

As with coaching, all sessions are confidential and all information shared within the framework of the programme remains between mentee and mentor. This is extremely important to communicate so there’s a trusted relationship fostered. Speaking personally as a mentor it’s an extremely special space to hold for a mentee as it’s not often one has the opportunity to spend 60 - 90 minutes a month to focus solely on oneself, to pause, to focus on what’s important professionally and personally, and to have a dedicated person as a soundboard to share thoughts with.

It’s also worth noting here the difference between mentoring and coaching; mentoring is typically where you push information forwards in the form of guidance, suggestions and sharing experiences, versus coaching is typically where you pull information by asking questions, challenging, reflecting and listening. This is an important distinction to make so expectations of the mentee and mentor are clear. Obviously during the sessions questions are asked as it’s a way for the mentor to understand more about the challenges being faced by the mentee, and with regards to question style it’s important to ask questions that are open (not closed ‘yes’ and ‘no’ answers) as they enable information to be shared, for insight to be gleaned, and to capture the important and emotion of a given subject.