About Mentoring
Mentoring in the Scholarship & Mentoring Program is about:
- Connecting the past with the present to define the future
- Growing from the experience and learning from the best
- Developing insight to turn hindsight into foresight
- Creating an alliance that creates a space for dialogue that results in reflection, action and learning
It’s important to not underestimate the influence you can have on nurturing and developing the Scholarship Holder.
It is a significant opportunity that will allow you to share your experiences and to encourage positive life choices as well as assisting the Scholarship Holder to identify/clarify clear personal goals.
While the Scholarship Holder will take on a commitment to be involved in regular interactions, this is a two-way relationship and you, as the Mentor, are encouraged to drive the early contact/sessions. Often, on the early stages of your mentorship the Mentee is nervous about making contact and initiating the first few conversations.
How to be a Great Mentor
- Help your Mentee set goals
- Be sure to discuss their goals in your first meeting
- Be a confident communicator, advisor sounding board and a good listener
- Share experience and advice – in and outside of sport
- A strength of the Program lies in cross-sport pollination. This helps avoid coaching and to provides your Mentee with insights outside of their sport which are, more often than not, very similar
- Assist with guidance across highs, lows, challenges and opportunities
- Be available and responsive
- Remember, in some cases, given your status and the fact that you’re probably a sporting hero of theirs, your Mentee may be nervous or reserved and reluctant to reach out to you for the first few times. Often Mentees feel that if they contact their Mentor first, they will appear annoying and/or be a burden
- Respect confidentiality
- Encourage independence
- Inspire confidence
- Help them find their identity outside of sport.
We encourage you to follow the Scholarship Holder’s career, attend competitions (where possible), understand the Scholarship Holder’s goals and work with them to focus on achieving those.
We also encourage you to have contact with the Scholarship Holder’s family and their coach/NSO/Health and Well-being Manager and to assure them that you are there as a Mentor, to pass on your experience and assist within the wider program, not to change training programs.
An important aspect of this Program is ensuring the Scholarship Holder understands that there is a life that exists after sport. To help encourage and reinforce this message, it may be beneficial to find out what the Scholarship Holder’s goals are outside of sport and how you can work with them to achieve these. You may be able to make an introduction to somebody, open a previously closed or unknown door or suggest career or educational paths they could follow later in life.