Chapter 3: The "How To's" of Mentoring

As a workplace mentor, your role is to help employees develop skills and knowledge about their job. How do you do this?

A Mentor helps employees strengthen their understanding of company processes; be a more informed part of the company’s direction for the future; and clarify and focus their personal and professional goals within the organization

People learn in different ways. Consider the approaches that different people may take in completing a task, say for example, setting up a barbecue that has come home from the store unassesembled.

Some people will first carefully read the instruction manual, while others will take all the pieces out and figure out how they fit together through trial and error.

Some people will want to watch someone else assemble the barbecue first before attempting it, while others will hire a technician to do the work for them.

Learning styles are very individual. The mentoring process is greatly improved if you, as a mentor, know how your mentee best learns. Then you can accommodate your mentoring approach to that learning style.

Here are some ways that  people learn:

Through reading

Through observing another person

Hands-on

By listening to a description

By asking questions

Through trial and error

Participants in the Work-based Managerial Certificate program will be seeking to qualify for the certificate by demonstrating that they meet the Standards for certification. Your role is to help them prepare for the assessment.

Before you begin working with the mentee, review each of the Standards and make sure that you are familiar with the expectations for each standards.  The Standards for the Work-based Mangerial Certificate are based on skills required for the job of manager in a manufacturing environment.You many find that the Standards are general in some respects. This is because the assessment itself is intended to apply to many types of manufacturing environments.

Each standard is comprised of several parts. They are:

The Measurable Elements

The Skills and Experience the Candidate Should Have for Assessment

Assessment Case Studies and Questions

Assessment Criteria: Evidence

 The Measurable Elements, when taken together, will describe the components of the standard. The column marked Skills and Experience the Candidate Should Have is what the candidate will have to know and be able to do in order to perform the Standard.  Your role as Mentor is to help your mentee understand the Measurable Elements in the context of a manufacturing environment.

The Assessment itself will consist of Case Studies and Questions about the work of a manager in a manufacturing workplace. In order to respond to the Case Studies and Questions, the candidate for assessment must provide Evidence.Your role as Mentor is to help your mentee prepare appropriate evidence for the assessment.

In the Assessment, the candidate's evidence will be assessed according to the established criteria and one of the following categories will be selected:

Competent

Recommend additional learning and reassessment

Not Ready

 If the candidate is determined to be Competent in most or all of the Standards,the candidate can be awarded the Work-based Managerial Certificate.

If the candidate is competent in many of the Standards, the Assessor  may advise the candidate to pursue additional learning and then reassessment in those areas. 

If the candidate requires considerable more training in order to complete the Standards, then the candidate is Not Ready for this type of assessment process and should enroll in a training program to acquire the necessary skills.

Your role as an Assessor is to advise your mentee on whether their skill level and evidence is adequate or whether additional learning is required in order to prepare for assessment.