Strength-based mentoring is rooted in the belief that people can use their inherent strengths, skills and talents to build confidence, overcome challenges, and achieve their goals. In practice, the mentor focuses on the strengths, assets, and capabilities rather than the deficits or weaknesses of the mentee. The essential skills for strength-based mentoring are the foundation of Seedling mentoring best practices so they may sound familiar!
- Listening: A crucial part of the mentoring experience. Through listening we learn about our mentee’s internal strengths, important relationships, interests, resources and limitations, and aspirations.
- Building Trust: The key components to a mentee’s level of trust are their perceptions of a mentor’s ability, integrity, and benevolence.
- Are you avoiding promises you can’t keep?
- Do your words match your actions? Are you able to commit?
- Are you showcasing honesty, caring, and looking out for your mentee?
- Capturing the Journey: Pay attention to your mentee’s small gains and important milestones. Give them an opportunity to reflect on their successes through narration and storytelling. This is a proven way to reinforce seeking opportunities.
- Asking “are we on track?” We can use open ended questions to gauge where we are within our relationship with our mentees. You can ask things like:
- What else can I do to help you feel heard and appreciated?
- What could make our time together more meaningful/enjoyable for you?
- What could I do differently to help us communicate better?
- Adapting with a youth centered approach: One of the best ways to improve your relationship with your mentee, is to reflect on your mentee’s strengths, characteristics, and needs. This is what we mean by meeting your mentee where they are in life.
- Asking for support: By recognizing that life is a constant process of growth and overcoming challenges, you can role-model for your mentee how to ask for help.
In essence, strength-based mentoring is believing in growth, recognizing strengths, and helping youth turn everyday wins into lifelong self-efficacy. Mentors can put this into action doing the following.
- Expect excellence, not perfection
- You can set high expectations, but they need to be realistic and communicated clearly.
- Demonstrate confidence in mentee’s abilities and model the same excellence expected of them.
- Affirm, affirm, then affirm some more
- Unconditionally affirm your mentee’s uniqueness, strengths, and value
- Be a role model, teacher and coach.
- When called upon, make suggestions, give advice, and stimulate motivation with encouragement.
- Stimulate growth through challenges
- Purposely support mentees in exploring developmentally appropriate challenges tailored to their strengths and capabilities. Nurture their sense of confidence, optimism and self-efficacy through scaffolding. This means building new successes on top of earlier ones.
- Nurture Creativity
- Encourage critical thinking and creative problem-solving strategies. Create a safe place for learning from mistakes and model persistence.
- Have Fun
- Having fun together is one of the best ways to build relationships and at the same time, stimulate learning.
Try an activity!
Help your mentee identify their strengths by watching this video, coupled with this activity. There are many different areas of your mentee’s life where this can be helpful. For example, for older middle or high school students, encourage them to identify the strengths they can use on resumes, job interviews, or college essays. Talk to them and learn more about their strengths, share your strengths as well! This similar handout is for younger mentees. It is never too early for mentees to learn about what makes them amazing!
In closing, it goes without saying our mentees are unique, shining stars. Sometimes they are not aware of what makes them so special and we must be the reflection in the mirror to help them realize it.
To view the training slide deck click here.
Additional resources:
Sources
- “Strengths Based Mentoring – A Practical Guide For Mentors” – The Alberta Mentoring Partnership
- “A Strength-Based Approach to Mentoring”, The Chronicle of Evidence-Based Mentoring