Become a mentor
What is a mentor?
A mentor is a person who assists another to grow, acquire new skills and insights, and develop his or her potential. The mentoring relationship builds confidence and helps the mentee to take responsibility for his or her development.
What does a mentor do?
- Volunteers time to take a personal interest in others
- Listens actively
- Questions and finds out what is important to the mentee, exploring their skills and aspirations
- Creates an open and candid relationship, to encourage the growth of trust and confidence which assists the learning process
- Regards all the mentee says as confidential
- Avoids mentoring those in a direct reporting line
- Is fully aware of their own limitations and is able to overcome them as well as those of the mentee
- Has appropriate experience for the role
- Is aware of the professional qualifications that the Institute of Water offers, and is able to advise whether these are relevant to the mentee
Benefits of mentoring
- Satisfaction from helping others and seeing them progress
- Deeper, broader knowledge of the industry
- Opportunity to practise and develop management skills
- Job enrichment and the chance to build wider networks
- Increased self-confidence and higher visibility within the industry
- Counts towards Career Professional Development
FAQs
We’re here to support our Mentors and Mentees throughout their journeys – from someone’s initial interest in through to stepping down. Please call us at 0191 422 0088 or email us if you have any questions about mentoring and we will be happy to help you.
The matching process is mentee led, so the mentee searches for the mentor on the platform and it is the mentee who makes the initial contact on the platform through the proposal process. The Mentor can see the mentees details and the request they are making for mentoring. It is only on the mentor accepting the request that contact details are exchanged.
Yes, mentors can take on as many mentoring assignments as they choose. If mentors feel they cannot take on any more assignments or have a period where they are extremely busy they can can identify themself as ‘unavailable’ for mentoring within their profile. This will take mentors out of mentee searches until they are able to participate again.
The Institute of Water monitors the mentoring programme and is available to take questions and give support. Questions should be addressed to membership@instituteofwater.org.uk.
The personal information notice is on the homepage at the bottom of the website and the privacy notice is within the terms of conditions of use that are on the account creation page.
Yes.
You can state your location on your profile and identify that you are only interested in face-to-face mentoring. Having said that, many successful mentoring relationships have been conducted using Microsoft Teams or Zoom.