Mentoring Discussions 

One of the imperative activities that must happen in order to create good mentors, is that they need to determine what basic skills are involved in being a good mentor. Most people understand what this entails, so open, Socratic style, discussions are necessary for the athletes to create their own set of guidelines. By creating their own guidelines for what it means to be a good mentor internalizes their roles and makes it their own. 

I will divide the team into groups of 5 or so people. Each group will be given a book of post-it notes and some writing utensils. They will be given some guiding questions to get their thoughts out. 

Guiding questions

• Using only one word per post-it note, write down words that come to mind when you hear the word mentor?

Have the students place their post-it notes up on the wall and then work together to try and organize them into common themes. We will then look at them and discuss what makes a good mentor. We will narrow it down to several characteristics and discuss what are examples of each. These will be written down on large poster board.

We will then discuss what it means to be a good mentee and repeat the same process.

• Using only one word per post-it note, write down words that come to mind when you hear the word mentee?