Best-Practices for Supporting Mentees

Building authentic and trusting relationships with mentees is critical for success in the PM role.  This resource provides best-practices that have been established by PMs over the years which have proven to be reliably effective in ont only building but leveraging relationships with young people in the program.

Evidence-Based Mentee Support Strategies

PMs can learn a lot from the field of cognitive development when it comes to providing support to mentees.  However, the volume of research on the subject can be overwhelming.  This two-page resource is a great place to start, as it explores the key characteristics of early and middle adolescence (which all mentees fall into) and associates those characteristics with tangible strategies PMs can use to inform their support efforts. 

Finding Common Ground Between Mentees and Mentors

While some mentees will be immediately amenable to the idea of having a mentor and will naturally form a bond with minimal support, a significant portion of mentees will need targeted support to identify similarities they share with their mentor and celebrate/learn from their differences.  This one-page resource provides details on how PMs can implement three effective strategies to support mentees in connecting with their mentor in order to get their relationship off on the right foot.

Supporting New Pairs in Returning Cohorts

Often, due to students transferring into iMentor partner schools, or in the case of mentees in need of a re-match, PMs will support pairs whose relationship is new while the mentee's grade level peers have been paired with their mentor for some time.  This presents a unique pair support challenge because PMs will need to nimbly pivot between launching new relationships while continuing to foster growth with others.  This resource provides guidance for PMs navigating this challenge. 

Supporting a Mentee if Their Mentor Dies

While we hope it will never happen, because of the scale of the iMentor program a volunteer may pass away while they are mentoring one of our students.  This resource provides guidance and links to additional resources that can help PMs approach this situation should it occur.  PMs should always discuss the best way to proceed with their manager prior to taking action if a mentor on their caseload passes away.