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How to Prepare for Your First Mentoring Meeting with Your Mentor

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Your first mentoring meeting can be stressful. The first meeting is all about getting to know each other and gauging whether it's a good match. The better prepared you are, the more you will get out of it.

Here are some useful tips to make it more productive.

Meeting Practicalities

1. Make Contact and Set the Date

The mentee sets up the first meeting, so you have the option to either Request a Session to meet a prospective Mentor or to straightaway Request Mentoring.
Reach out to your mentor and set a date and time. If your mentor gives you permission, you can schedule your meeting right on MentorCloud. Ask your mentor if they would prefer to connect virtually or in-person.
To Schedule a Session, go to the Mentorship Tab and select View Relationship. You will see a button to propose a session.  Fill out the information for the session. If both parties have synchronized their calendars, you can set up a date and time for your session.
Ensure you have selected the correct time zones to avoid any confusion later.
Select a private place to meet where you can both share openly. Simply select Schedule and go to Session Location and select your preferred video conferencing tool or location. You can type in the address for a physical location within the Location details text box.

2. Background

Learn about your mentor’s background on MentorCloud. Your mentor might also have added a link to his/her LinkedIn profile for you to learn about their background and professional experience. 
What is their experience, achievements and interests? 

Have they mentored before? 
Read any announcement, insights or posts they have contributed on the Community tab.

3. Agenda

Send an agenda to your mentor a few days before your first meeting. This will help your mentor be better prepared.


Meeting Preparation

1. Who are you?

What do you want to share about yourself?
What are your strengths, values and achievements? 
What brings you joy and energizes you? 

2. Why do you want to be mentored?

Have a strong understanding of what you want from your Mentoring Journey. 
Do you have goals you want to achieve or anything specific you want to learn? 

3. What do you want to learn from your mentor?

Send an agenda to your mentor a few days before your first meeting. This will help your mentor be better prepared.


4. Parameters?

Think about how often you want to meet, how you want to communicate, and any needed boundaries.
You have the option to set up recurring meetings under Sessions. Simply tick the box “Make this a recurring session” when you create a Session.

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How to Set Your Goals

The purpose of setting specific and measurable goals in the Mentoring Journey is to identify concrete and meaningful areas to work towards.
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The purpose of setting specific and measurable goals in the Mentoring Journey is to identify concrete and meaningful areas to work towards. This will help ensure that the time during your Mentoring Journey is well spent.

Requirement for Goals

Inspiring - You should be excited and energized about working towards these goals.

Challenging But Achievable - Your goals should challenge you, yet be realistically achievable.

 Measurable and Time-Based - Your goals should be measurable, so both you and your mentor will know when they have been accomplished. They should be clear and well-understood, and need to be completed within a certain timeframe. 

Steps to Identify and Set Your Goals

Ideally, you should have up to three primary goals for your Mentoring Journey. Here are five steps to help you think of some goals -

STEP 1: Explore/Reflect

Take some time to prepare for your meeting with your mentor to discuss your goals. Reflect on your values, purpose and vision. What’s important to you? What do you stand for? What are areas in which you want to improve?

Reflect on the major focus areas of your work and personal life. You want to identify at least three areas relevant to your Mentoring Journey.

Questions to think about:

  • What do you want to accomplish in the upcoming months?
  • What are some things that you would really like to learn or do?
  • What comes to mind in terms of work or life you are dealing with right now? 
  • What have you always dreamed of doing?
  • What would you like to see in your life that’s currently missing?

STEP 2: Identify

From the areas described in Step 1, identify and record 2-3 goals related to your Mentoring Journey. Use the MentorCloud worksheet to document your goals and track progress.

For each goal, ask yourself: 

Are these goals positive, challenging and motivating to you?

  • Do they inspire or excite you?
  • Are they challenging? Do they need a bit more stretch?
  • Is each goal achievable?
  • How will you measure success for each goal?  How will you determine when you have achieved it?
  • Are they time-based?

STEP 3: Needs Analysis

Reflect on what needs to be done in order to achieve each goal and invite your mentor to brainstorm with you. Identify where you are now with each goal. 

  • What is your vision for each goal? 
  • What skills do you need so you can achieve this goal?
  • What resources, information, knowledge, help, or collaboration do you need?

STEP 4: Obstacles

  • What could get in the way of you achieving these goals?
  • Who could hold you accountable to help you achieve these goals?

STEP 5: Milestones and Action Plan

For each goal, define milestones and set a timeline. Ensure that you have an action plan for achieving each goal.

  • What milestones would help you track your progress for each goal?
  • What resources, information, knowledge, help, or collaboration do you need?
  • What is a reasonable timeline for you to achieve each goal? 

Once you have identified some goals and discussed them with your mentor, use the Goals & Tasks sections under Mentorship to set and document a goal to accomplish during the relationship. Break these down into tasks that need to be done to achieve the goal, and review your progress.