Virtual Mentoring Tips For Participants [INFOGRAPHIC]

Many of our customers have asked for virtual mentoring advice and best practices for their mentoring participants. Keep reading to get our Top 5 Virtual Mentoring Tips for mentors and mentees!

MentorcliQ experts put together our Top 5 Virtual Mentoring Tips

Whether your employees have already been mentoring virtually or if this is a new experience for them, employees can all benefit from these best practices to make virtual mentoring even more effective, engaging and fun!

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Q. How to practice mentoring when you are physically separated
A. The answer is keep mentoring virtually!

In times like these, I like to get back to basics. So let’s take a look at the basics of the mentoring relationship. Normally, the relationship is characterized by the mentor helping the mentee with professional advice and career development. So, why would the mentor do that when 99% of mentoring relationships are unpaid? Because the mentor cares!

1. Keep Mentoring

Continue the relationship. It’s really natural and all too easy to cancel mentoring meetings during times like these. However, everyone wins if you continue to create the time and mental space for each other. Yourself included. Don’t just keep the one hour meeting, be REALLY present for it.

2. Get Face Time

In this virtual world, we love communicating with emails, texts and chats. Now is a good time to also incorporate more human interactions with with phone calls and video chats.

3. Keep It Real

Amp up the personal focus. If your previous meetings were 10% personal and 90% professional, create the space for increased personal. But don’t force it. Every person processes difficult times differently. Some people will want to talk about their personal situation. Some people are worn out by that and just want to get back to work. They want ‘time off’ from their personal struggles. The net is, let your partner’s needs and health be your guide.

4. Allow For Messiness

During high stress times, people do and say wiggy things. All of us. And everyone’s wiggy in a different way, at different times, and to different extents. You never know how people are going to react from situation to situation and day to day. Give your fellow humans the room to blow a gasket. While you’re at it, give yourself some understanding when you do it too.

5. Show You Care

Above all, make sure people feel your care. Most of us go through our daily lives assuming that the people around us understand that we care. Why else would we be doing everything we’re doing, right? These days it’s important to make sure people feel the care, not just hear the words.

Want to learn more about virtual mentoring?
Check out our  virtual mentoring articles and request your copy of our Virtual Mentoring Toolkit.

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Ready to get started with your mentoring initiative?
Connect with MentorcliQ to see how mentoring programs powered by mentoring software and our framework can impact and improve your employees’ virtual mentoring experience.