Mentoring Programme Assignment Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1500 words

Mentoring Programme - Assignment Example The mentor believed that this element of experiential learning would assist the mentee in understanding how to communicate and respond during the important interview process. It was also believed, initially, that role playing would increase the willingness to engage and communicate with the mentor successfully. The mentoring program was also structured to include elements of transformational leadership, whereby the mentor leader utilises inspirational attitudes, role models desired behaviours, and impart a specific vision or mission to give the mentee a specific focus and goal (Fairholm 2009). The goal was to improve the mentee’s interest in strategic thinking to achieve long-term gains, however literature on leadership suggests that in order to motivate and encourage, change must be negotiated between two different parties (Grieves 2010). This is why there was significant emphasis on utilising contemporary leadership theory to better enthuse the mentee and make them intrinsic ally focused on achieving the mentoring program objectives. Increasing communications skills of the mentee was very successful and it is attributed to utilising the role playing exercises. The first method of improving communications was to remove noise that complicated receipt of positive feedback for the mentor. Noise is any specific factor that prevents a message from getting through to the receiver (Mullins 2010). During the first and second mentoring sessions, the mentor discovered that the mentee was quite reserved and her uneasy and anxious emotional state was preventing the message from being received properly, thereby serving as negative noise. By engaging the mentee through role playing, it seemed to establish a sense of trust that reduced anxiety and allowed the mentee to provide feedback illustrating that the concepts being taught and discussed were understood and could be applied practically to real-world business scenarios. The mentor realised, also, that the mentee ma intained many unrealistic perceptual filters that were serving to complicate the communications process. The mentee maintained many assumptions and expectations about the commercial environment, noticeable in the first three sessions. The mentee believed that job qualifications were not as important a how the job seeker presented themselves and communicated in order to find a job position. There seemed to be a culturally-developed set of beliefs, though not realistic, that the mentee could find employment without the necessary and listed credentials on job descriptions simply by creating an outstanding cover letter along with the CV submission. These perceptual filters were serving as noise and created moderate resistance to change when the mentor attempted to reinforce the absolute importance of having the proper credentials to achieve landing a position with a desired company. To overcome this element of noise, the mentor found many different research articles showing that it was absolutely critical to gain employability and educational skills to