What is mentoring?

Staff mentoring helps to connect people and ideas and provides a rich source of feedback and opportunity for perspective-taking. The mentoring relationship is driven by the mentee and helps to provide support and encouragement for a mentee’s career progression, whatever the career goal might be.

Mentoring has been widely recognised as an effective activity for supporting performance and career development. It develops key skills to enhance career progression, as it promotes reflection, practice preparedness. Career progression does not necessarily mean a promotion or new job, but developing your skills, competencies and capabilities so that you can achieve your career goals. Our aim is for staff members to create purposeful connections to share experiences and develop greater insight across Colleges and portfolios, professions and perspectives. You can participate as a mentee, mentor or both.

At its most basic, mentoring is a positive, supportive relationship aimed at encouraging participants to reach their full potential. Mentoring may be conducted as:
  • Functional mentoring, with a more senior mentor advising a more junior mentee
  • Peer mentoring, with one or a group of peers to foster mutual support and accountability
  • Reverse mentoring, with both participants being in turn a mentor and mentee 
In all these forms, the mentoring relationship relies on mutual trust, openness to giving and receiving constructive feedback and clear guidelines on what is and what isn't on the table.  There is a deep appreciation for feedback and a willingness to be open to differing perspectives and constructive challenge.

Mentoring involves three key elements:
  1. A purposeful relationship between mentee and mentor, not necessarily from the same discipline or profession. Interdisciplinary or interprofessional mentorships can give rise to new understanding and growth.
  2. A defined goal (such as improving communication skills) or project for the mentee to work towards to provide structure for effective development. This should be captured in the mentee’s Individual Development Plan.
  3. A willingness to be challenged and a willingness to challenge respectfully with positive intent.

What mentoring isn't

A mentoring relationship is unique AND very different from coaching. Mentoring is not coaching. Mentoring is an established relationship with an expert in the skills/knowledge/capability you are seeking development in, who will share with you that knowledge directly or through advice and tips. A coach is someone who will support you to develop solutions to problems/challenges you face, using the knowledge, resources and skills you possess. They won’t give you the solution. 
For the mentor
Regardless of whether you are a very experienced mentor or someone considering becoming a mentor for the first time, online, self-paced resources are available at any time:
As a mentor, you are providing support and advice to your mentee and paying-it-forward, so to speak. This internal engagement is not only important to the internal capability development of staff at RMIT, but can also provide you with the following benefits:
  • Develop critical skills for leadership such as listening, and interpersonal skills
  • Extend your RMIT network
  • An opportunity to self-reflect upon your own practices
  • Undertake reverse mentoring and learn fresh perspectives from your mentee
  • Understand the broader issues affecting staff members at RMIT University
  • Enhance the satisfaction of your mentee and in gain a sense of satisfaction in being able to support your mentee

To make the most of mentoring, mentors need:
  • Commit to fostering an environment of psychological safety to promote reflection, sharing and growth
  • Be willing to provide advice and guidance by sharing expertise and experience
  • The ability to recognise and encourage the mentee’s strengths and areas of development
  • Assist in setting goal(s) and developing action plan(s)
  • Commit to invest time into the partnership
  • Be willing to provide constructive and honest feedback and facilitate problem solving
  • Encourage the mentee to seek additional support as required
Workday user guides

Frequently asked questions

Any staff member can be a mentor. A mentor can be any staff member who is willing to dedicate time to share their experience and expertise with another staff member. You don’t have to be a people manager to be a mentor.

How will I find a mentee?

The portal will suggest suitable mentors to mentees based preferences you selected in your registration form. Potential mentees will also be able to browse through or search for other available mentors to find the most suitable partnership.

What are the topics can I provide mentorship on?

- Preparing for a horizontal move in my career
- Preparing for a vertical move in my career
- Preparing for a leadership role
- Building on my leadership capabilities
- Increasing influencing skills
- Building confidence and resilience
- Building self and time-management strategies
- Embracing agile ways of working

What will my time commitment be?

It is strongly recommended that mentors and mentees meet at least once a month. This may be something that you and your mentee would like to reach an agreement on during the first meeting. The mentoring partnership will run for 3 months, but may be ended earlier if the objectives and goals set by your mentee have been met. Alternatively, if both parties agree, the mentoring partnership can continue beyond the 3 months.

What can I expect from my mentee?

Your mentee is expected to drive the partnership. Your first meeting will offer the perfect opportunity to discuss your mentee’s specific needs and expectations depending on the topic they have selected.  Conversely, this would also be a great opportunity for you to discuss your expectations as well.

I haven't heard from my mentee, what should I do?

Again, we hold an expectation for all mentees to drive the partnership. If you have not heard from your mentee after one month of forming the partnership, please contact us at learninganddevelopment@rmit.edu.au so that we can reach out to them or terminate the partnership to allow other interested mentees to reach out to you. 

What support will I receive?

Regardless of whether you have previously participated in mentoring programs or are considering entering into a partnership for the very first time, you will be provided with support and guidance.  As the program is launched, there will also be general forums where both mentors and mentees can register for and attend to network, understand expectations and the opportunity to gain clarity on any questions about the program. There will also be templates and guidance documents made available to you and your mentee.

I already have an informal but successful mentoring partnership within RMIT, do my mentee and I now have to register and be part of the program?

RMIT Staff Mentoring is a platform that helps to connect staff to other staff who would not otherwise have had the opportunity to meet and collaborate. It provides an avenue to start the conversation. If you are already part of an ongoing mentoring partnership, you and your mentee do not have to register to continue the partnership. 
However, if you have the capacity to undertake additional mentoring partnerships, you are more than welcome to register so that other prospective and compatible mentees can contact you. 

What if my mentee is at a different campus?

If your mentee is at a different campus and meeting face to face is not an option, you may want to connect with your mentee through ‘remote mentoring’ via video conferencing on Microsoft Teams, Zoom, Skype or Google Hangouts.

Will I be inundated with requests?

As a mentor, you will only receive as many requests as the number of partnerships you are open to.  The default number of partnerships is one; this means that each mentor will receive a maximum of one request at any one time. If you choose to decrease or increase the number of partnerships, the number of requests will also decrease and increase accordingly.
If you are unable to be a mentor to a staff member, we would recommend that you decline the partnership request as soon as possible. Mentees are unable to initiate a request to another mentor if the request to yourself remains as pending.

How many mentees do I have to have?

As a mentor, you can enter into as many partnerships as you feel to be suitable. As a default setting, all mentors have the maximum number of partnerships set at two. However, you can choose to easily increase or decrease this.

Can I only be a mentor?

Not at all! If you would like to be a mentor and mentee, all you will have to do is simply register for both programs.

What if I am concerned about my partnership?

We encourage you to discuss any concerns with your mentee in the first instance. Identify your area of concern regarding the partnership. If you feel that you are unable to resolve an issue you can seek advice and guidance by contacting learninganddevelopment@rmit.edu.au. We will work with you to provide support to resolve the situation in a positive manner for both yourself and the mentee.