The Mentee's Guide: Making Mentoring Work for You

Very satisfied with the condition of the books received. Fast delivery. I highly recommend.

Whether you are getting ready to be mentored or already are being mentored, coached or supervised (Zachary defines the differences in her companion "The Mentor's Guide"), this book will guide you step by step through the process of preparing to get the most out of your experience and out of your mentor or coach. Zachary believes mentoring is a collaborative partnership, and that both mentor and mentee should be committed to active learning. Her emphasis in both guides is two fold: process and content. Process involves thinking carefully about your goals, reflecting on past experiences, and considering your needs. Content involves what you will write and talk about with your mentor. She has advice on choosing a mentor who is a good "fit" for you, as well as how to construct a contract with your mentor that will address important areas like goals, success criteria, ground rules, confidentiality, boundaries, etc. She even addresses how to get out of the relationship if it isn't working for you. Best of all, she provides user friendly outlines and sumaries that you can use to organize your preparation. If you expect to sit back and passively soak up your mentor's wisdom, this Guide is not for you. It's also a great resource for mentors and coaches to learn about what should be expected from their students. It's not just for folks in business settings, but can be applied in all sorts of coaching/mentor situations. Some I've mentored had no idea how much work goes into the mentoring experience, so I use Zachary's Guide with my mentee to set the stage for our work together.

Mentoring is all about mentee development and the metaphor of a sponge is often used when thinking about the mentee role, the simple absorption of the learning needed to develop. Consequently, many designers and managers of mentoring programs forget that deep learning and accelerated development can only occur when mentees are fully prepared for their role. Luckily, Lois Zachary has written a book to prevent mentees from falling into the `sponge' syndrome - done well, this is not a simple process, but it is a rewarding one. I must admit that my partner, Cherie Hutton, and I almost missed the usefulness of this book. We had extensively used Zachary's "Creating a Mentoring Culture" and "The Mentor's Guide" in the design of a new mentoring program for a client. We were going to skip the Mentee's Guide, mistakenly believing that being a mentee was just a natural shift for an employee (again, the "sponge" syndrome). That would have been a major mistake. We now know better: mentees need to be carefully prepared for their role. They are active participants in the relationship and in their own development. This book is a fast and easy read and therefore very approachable. The reflection exercises are excellent and we used them as pre-work prior to the mentoring training. The book addresses some of the issues the mentees will encounter in the mentoring cycle, and provides sound advice, tools and techniques for getting the relationship and development on track and keeping it there. Zachary's emphasis on the mentees taking full ownership for their learning is an important message. We encourage you to use all three of Lois Zachary's books when implementing a formal or informal mentoring program. They have a permanent place in our mentoring toolkit and we're eagerly hoping for accessible electronic versions of the templates for the mentor's and mentee's guides, similar to the CD that accompanied "Creating a Mentoring Culture".

If you have been researching mentoring, your search is over now that you have discovered Dr. Lois Zachary. Dr. Zachary, an internationally recognized expert in mentoring and leadership, has written three books providing resources for organizations, mentors and most recently mentees. "The Mentee's Guide: Making Mentoring Work For you" combines theory, real-life examples, and practical exercises that will enhance your mentoring relationship regardless of its stage. Whether you are considering finding a mentor, are in a corporate program or are already connected with a mentor in an informal situation, the process will be improved by what you learn from this book. "The Mentee's Guide" is such an easy read and I found myself so energized by it that I read Dr. Zachary's "The Mentor's Guide" before settling down to explore the exercises for mentees. From a personal reflection exercise through goal setting and agreements all the way to bringing the relationship to closure, working through the exercises will leave no questions unanswered. With this book you will have a mentoring guru at your side throughout the process.

Lois Zachary does it again in The Mentee's Guide. Her previous books (Creating a Mentoring Culture and The Mentor's Guide)have been my bibles in terms of building a mentoring culture at the non-profit organization for which I work. She presents the material for an aspiring Mentee to prepare them for the relationship with their Mentor. She uses a four-fold framework to describe the learning relationship life-cycle: preparing, negotiating, enabling and termination. The exercises in the book are straightforward and help facilitate the self-knowledge that a Mentee needs to fine-tune his or her relationship with the Mentor. I would like to see a future book focus on the success factors and outcomes of a Mentoring program - possibly titled "Evaluating a Mentoring Program". While this is treated in Creating a Mentoring Culture, this topic needs its own book. I highly recommend purchasing all three books.