Advocacy-Matters-Spring-2023
Keep up to date on what your fellow Society members have to say in Advocacy Matters.
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MENTORING<br />
Word to the Wise: Making<br />
the Most of the TAS<br />
Mentoring Portal<br />
• Tell me about your workplace. How many<br />
people are you working with? Who do you<br />
work most closely with? Do you have an<br />
assigned or informal mentor at your firm?<br />
If so, how is that relationship working for<br />
you?<br />
• Are you wrestling with an acute issue now<br />
that needs priority attention?<br />
• What are you looking for in a mentor?<br />
• Who do you currently turn to for guidance?<br />
What do you value most about the<br />
guidance you receive from that person?<br />
• Where do you see yourself and your practice<br />
in five years?<br />
• What’s your definition of success?<br />
• What are your top priorities right now?<br />
• What do you see as the primary obstacles<br />
to achieving your goals? What have you<br />
tried so far to overcome those obstacles?<br />
What worked? What didn’t work? Why?<br />
How can TAS members participate in the<br />
new TAS Mentoring Program?<br />
The new mentoring program was launched in<br />
January <strong>2023</strong> and is open to all TAS members<br />
to participate as mentors or mentees. TAS<br />
Junior Members are automatically signed up<br />
for the new Mentoring portal and can set up<br />
their accounts by going here.<br />
Members 5+ years of call interested in<br />
being a mentee in the program can register<br />
here.<br />
TAS members 10+ years of call are welcome<br />
and encouraged to sign up to be a mentor.<br />
Simply go to your member profile to opt in as<br />
a mentor or email membership@advocates.<br />
ca and TAS staff will sign you up.<br />
Our approach to mentoring changed over the course of the pandemic with the switch to<br />
remote work. We can no longer rely on casual office pop-ins, chance encounters at the<br />
coffee machine, or walks back to the office from court as the prompt and pretext for daily<br />
mentoring. Instead, we need to be more deliberate about creating and nurturing these relationships.<br />
Further, with the proliferation of virtual communications, mentees are no longer<br />
bound by geography or by the confines of their own workplaces, and suddenly have a much<br />
bigger pool of potential mentors to learn from.<br />
Against this backdrop, The Advocates’ Society has reinvigorated its Mentoring Portal with<br />
a view to fostering mentoring relationships among advocates across Canada. The Mentoring<br />
Portal connects advocates for discrete or continuing mentoring sessions in a way that<br />
provides scores of mentoring sources for mentees without overloading individual mentors.<br />
To make the most out of the precious time you carve out for mentoring, it’s a good idea<br />
to come to sessions equipped with conversation prompts designed to spark meaningful discussions.<br />
Here are some effective prompts specifically tailored for mentors using the TAS<br />
Mentoring Portal:<br />
• Tell me about yourself. Where are you from? What drew you to law?<br />
• Tell me about your practice. How would you describe your advocacy style?<br />
• What do you like best about your practice? What’s the best part of a typical day at work<br />
for you? What are the biggest challenges you face in practice? Are you dealing with any<br />
chronic irritations that keep you from enjoying your work?<br />
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