A Decade of SueMentors Mentoring!

The just-finishing 2019 marks a decade of my “formal” SueMentors mentoring.

As I reflected on the decade over the last months of 2019, I realized I have learned so much – but haven’t always let mentees and other supporters know that.

So I went back to my program-evaluation career and put together an infographic to summarize the 10 years. This shows you what I’ve learned from mentees, the ways mentees have shaped my delivery of short- and longer-term mentoring, and how I’ve been able to expand from 1-to-1 mentoring to more 1-to-many methods that meet people where they are.

Many thanks to the decade of mentees I’ve worked with directly:

Mentees who connected through a mentoring program or a “self-referral” or a referral to me from someone else
Several of you who “discovered” me from an online source
Some who I’ve met in person at conferences or by happenstance (like waiting for ride-shares)
Those who have re-contacted me

And a special thanks to Kristina Davis, a mentee who selected me as her mentor in 2009 in the APHA National Student Mentoring program and whose nomination was the reason I received the first APHA Student Assembly Public Health Mentoring award that same year.

There are many advisors, engagers and supporters that have influenced SueMentors directly and indirectly over the decade including:

Margie Cartwright, Catherine Gergen, and Sarah Basinger at Tulane University
Mentors for the Tulane U School of Public Health and Tropical Medicine Short-Term Mentoring Program (especially John Iskander whose suggestion challenged me to formalize the Short-Term Mentoring Process Guide, Tools, and other collateral materials)
Program leaders of and mentors in the various mentoring programs I’ve worked with
Evaluators who helped this very word-oriented evaluator find ways to apply dataviz in my end-of-year reviews, presentations for workshops and seminars, and the 14 webinars that I was finally able to produce in 2018-19 (Stephanie Evergreen, Ann Emery, Chris Lysy, and Echo Rivera).

I am thankful for the decade of this Mentoring journey and excited to start the next one!

Happy new year and happy mentoring!

Comments

Mentor: Barbara Rawlins, Monitoring and Evaluation Team Leader, Maternal and Child Survival Program

Another feature of this blog is bringing you advice and perspectives from people who mentor, by answering 3 questions.
Here are Barbara Rawlins’ responses:
What are mentees looking for? · Career guidance · Technical advice · Moral support · Advice on how to negotiate politically-sensitive or controversial situation
What 1 piece of advice do you give every mentee you work with? Figure out what they want to do (in the long term) and what steps they can take to get there
Why are you interested in mentoring? To support younger colleagues, especially women, to help attain their career goals

Expanding Mentoring Help from SueMentors: A New Webinar

I enjoy the individual mentoring that I do for organizations and for personal clients. For several years, I’ve wanted to make mentoring help more widely available. Writing my blog was a start at that.
But my mentor-mentee interactions have reinforced that mentees want – and need – real-time examples of advice that addresses their issues.
So I am pleased to be partnering with my graduate alma mater, the Tulane University Office of Alumni Relations, to initiate a monthly Mentoring Help webinar, with the first webinar in May 2018. The 30-minute format will include 3 sections: A brief review of the mentoring topic for the monthA case example of the mentoring topic with a mentee and mentor working through the mentee's issue in real timeSueMentor’s Question Time (aka answering questions submitted in advance of the webinar).

This form solicits information from you about your interest in attending the webinars, identification of the issue(s) that you'd like the mentor to address, and des…

Guidance on Mentoring: What is Mentoring?

This brief guide focuses on defining different aspects of mentoring, whether for an individual or for a team, and includes selected reference resources. It is critical that the mentee and mentor both approach their interaction with the same understanding of the nature and scope of the advising that will be offered. This brief guide can serve as a reference for both parties in arriving at that mutual understanding.
Before delving into mentoring, it’s important to be aware that sometimes the terms “mentoring” and “coaching” are used interchangeably despite important differences between them. There are many resources on mentoring and coaching – and almost as many different definitions for each as well as the similarities and overlap between the two (such as shown in the articles on coaching in the resource list below).Also, most people agree that mentoring is NOT training although a mentor or coach may recommend that a mentee obtain additional training.
What is the nature of the mentoring…

4 comments

Read more

Sue Mentors: Jobs, Careers, Lifework...

Search This Blog