Mentoring

As an Organisational Development team we advocate the use and impact of experiential learning such as mentoring and coaching. The aim of this site is to act as a dynamic central hub which consolidates a range of resources and acts as a one stop shop for individuals, teams and departments wishing to establish mentoring support within their area of work.

Mentoring is a developmental relationship which involves a more experienced party imparting their knowledge and career reflections on the mentee through support, advice and guidance. Mentoring is about listening to understand and to support mentees to establish and reach their goals. Coaching is less directive and performance/target oriented. They are both excellent methods of learning through others that we encourage staff to engage with at least once throughout their career.

Here you will find the necessary resources to set up a mentoring programme at a departmental level. We are not able to offer a service where potential mentees can be matched to a mentor. If you are interested in finding a mentor, you should make initial enquiries within your department to see if there is an existing mentoring programme, or if there is interest in establishing one.

Please watch this video for an explanation of the difference between Mentoring and Coaching.

Establishing departmental programmes

Before setting up a mentoring programme, it is important that departments have a clear set of objectives supporting their purpose, and the need to resource these accordingly.

There are six key steps to establish an effective mentoring programme

Identify your working group membership and establish who holds responsibility. Clarify the objectives of the group, and agree on the preferred duration of mentor/mentee relationships. We would advise that six or twelve month relationships should be sufficient, depending on needs.
Address diagnostic questions on how to set up a mentoring programme. See Mentoring learning guide
Secure appropriate operational resource to support the mentor/mentee recruitment process and logistics. Structure is key to successful mentoring relationships.
Ensure that mentors and mentees undertake training before they commence. Our mentoring toolkit offers recommendations on relevant e-learning material, for example:
- Training for Mentors
- Training for Mentees

Mentors can also assess themselves in the role by accessing a diagnostic in the Mentoring learning guide.
Engage mentors/mentees in the use of the mentoring contract to outline goals and developmental objectives. A contract template can be found in the

UCL Mentoring Handbook

UCL Mentoring Handbook
Evaluate the relationship and measuring outcomes. If you do not have a template, please email coachatucl@ucl.ac.uk to ask for an experiential learning evaluation form.