Mentoring Future Leaders

Mentoring Future Leaders
Silence can be useful to:
• Encourage mentees to talk.
• Convey acceptance to more introverted mentees - it’s OK to sit back
and think.
• Show respect for the mentee’s depth of feelings or the weight of his/
her decisions.
• Slow down the pace of the session so that the mentee becomes more
relaxed.
New mentors are often afraid of silence and tend to jump in with more
speech or perhaps another question. A valuable opportunity for
reflection can be lost when this happens. Silence is truly golden in a
mentoring session. It often means that the mentee is busy thinking or
processing something internally. When they are ready to respond
again, they will.
Another kind of silence occurs. When the mentee is uncomfortable to
respond, move the session on. Look for the visual signals that someone
is engaged with their thoughts.
© Learning Link International
April 2005
Reassurance
(Downey, 1999, p.46)
Reassurance is a supportive technique that can be used to:
• Encourage exploration of new ideas and behaviour.
• Reinforce new behaviour patterns.
• Keep anxiety under control.
• Indicate that the mentee has nothing to fear or be ashamed of.
But reassurance should be sincere. The over-use of reassurance can
create dependency and resentment when things don’t go as expected.
Discuss when reassurance is appropriate and when it is
inappropriate.
Module 4 - Mentoring Skills Page ! 1