Leadership Development
Essential Skills for Mentors
Move beyond telling and become the mentor your colleagues and mentees deserve.
Mentoring is one of the most valued forms of professional support in education, and one of the most commonly misunderstood.
Too often it defaults to advice-giving and direction, leaving mentees dependent rather than empowered.
High-quality mentoring requires something different: the skill to draw on experience and expertise while keeping the mentee at the centre of every conversation.
About
Drawing on the three elements of effective mentoring and coaching, Essential Skills for Mentors equips mentors and leaders with the skills, knowledge and strategies to develop and empower their mentees.
You will explore the similarities and differences between mentoring and coaching, develop the conversational stances that best support mentee growth and expand your capacity to share expertise in ways that build initiative and responsibility rather than dependence.
In this course you will
- Explore the roles of mentors and coaches
- Explore how a ‘continuum of professional learning conversations’ supports higher quality mentoring
- Consider when and how to share expertise with humility
- Practise conversational skills in mentoring relationships
- Apply different approaches across mentoring conversation
What you will gain
A clear understanding of high-quality mentoring and how it differs from, and connects to, coaching
Practical conversational skills and frameworks to support and challenge the growth of mentees
The confidence to share knowledge and expertise in ways that empower rather than direct
Enhanced capacity to support succession planning, teacher induction and leadership development in your school
Structure
Mentoring and coaching
What’s the difference and how are they similar?
Continuum of Learning Conversations
They why, how and when of different stances we can take in conversations
Practical applications
See demonstrations and apply the GROWTH framework in mentoring conversations
Key skills
The key skills effective and high-quality mentors use in conversations
Sharing knowledge and perspective
Balancing respect and humility to share our knowledge
Learning design
At GCI, we believe that we act our way into learning rather than learn our way into acting.
Research-informed, Practitioner-focused
With this principle in mind, all of our courses have a strong emphasis on practice.
A Learning Design to Enable Praxis
When we are engaged in praxis we are reflecting in action, taking what we are learning and applying it in real-life situations. Our in-person and online courses enable praxis through a ‘coaching approach’ to facilitation combined with a range of thoughtfully designed adult learning experiences including:
The option of a spaced learning design consisting of live interactive workshops complemented by self-paced modules on our Learning Management System (LMS) provides the opportunity for participants to apply skills and techniques in their context between sessions.
individual and group reflection activities
co-operative learning tasks
practise opportunities using real workplace scenarios
modelling
observation and feedback
debrief sessions
Flexible Modes of Delivery
The Essential Skills for Mentors course is available in a range of delivery patterns:
- One full-day (in-person or online)
- Three 2-hour workshops spaced over a number of days or weeks (online only)
In their words
These are from GCI’s participant survey, across their courses rather than this one.
Our facilitators
As a coaching organisation, we endeavour to model a ‘coaching way of being’ in our interactions with our clients by being:
- Respectful
- Humble
- Curious
- Strengths-focused
- Reflective
We encourage a culture of high expectations through our commitment to the ongoing development of our people based on mutual respect and collaboration. Our consultants are expert coach practitioners who draw on a wealth of educational experience to provide the highest level of service as coaches and trainers.
Certification
A GCI Certificate is issued to each individual completing this course.
Fees and what is included
This price is for an individual registering on an open-enrolment course.
Savings are available for organisations who wish to run this course for an in-house group.
Please email info@growthcoaching.com.au to request a quote or discuss this further.
Register your interest
If you would like to explore offering this course to your own group, or would like to be notified when new dates are announced, please complete the form below. A member of the GCI team will be in touch.
