A “coaching roadmap” provides guidance to volunteer mentors (and mentees) to better deliver the skill-related goals of the organization.
There are two general paths to mentoring: unstructured and structured. In an unstructured approach, the mentor/mentee is free to have any conversation they choose. In a structured process, the host organization provides a level of guidance (from low to high). This document outlines the use of a Coaching Roadmap to provide a chosen level of guidance.
Approach: The organization determines themes that all mentors use during a given time period, e.g. weekly or monthly. The time period depends on the duration the mentee is in the care of the organization, e.g. at Life Learning Center the coaching lasts 12 weeks and there are weekly themes and at Mentoring Plus the coaching lasts years.
Definition: The Roadmap is the identification of the themes AND the associated documentation to facilitate mentoring and coaching.
Coaching Themes: There are no limits to the themes/topics you can choose but they should be consistent with the Mission and Values of your organization. Here are some examples:
- Dealing with Emotions
- Self-Confidence
- Goal Setting
- Trust
- Getting a Job
- Faith and Spirituality
- Dating and Sexuality
- Purpose and Vision
- Your First Car
- See the LSN Wiki for more ideas
Example of a Documented Theme:
Click here to see an example of a documented “theme”. It addresses Dealing with Emotions. It includes 3 pages: guidance to the mentor, an exercise and a one-point lesson.
Checklist of Elements to Consider:
- Objective
- Skill definition
- Mentor guidance
- Reading for mentor or mentee
- Questions for critical thinking
- Suggestion discussions
- Worksheets
- One-point lessons
- Exercises
Further Discussion:
- There can be significant effort in Roadmap preparation, particularly in the documentation of the individual themes.
- Consider required and elective themes. For example, during the course of the year, there could be 9 monthly themes and 3 elective themes. This allows some flexibility to the mentee on personal priorities.
- A Roadmap helps with time management because the key points for a given time period are known. Mentors know when to “go deep” and when to move to the next topic.