Best practice: The peer mentor's role
Do’s and don’ts of mentoring
To be a strong mentor and lead intentional conversations with your mentee, you may take on many roles: teacher, consultant, sounding board, confidant, role model, devil’s advocate, or coach.
Do
- Be a motivator: Guide, express belief and confidence in a mentee’s abilities and encourage them to try new things.
- Be a resource: Help a mentee navigate academic, professional, or sociocultural environments by introducing them to new people, places and ideas.
- Be a supporter: Encourage open dialogue, listen to the needs of mentees and act as a sounding board as they process ideas and concepts.
- Be a coach: Help a mentee develop the skills needed to achieve, realistic and meaningful goals in both the short and long term.
Don’t
- Don’t be a tutor: Provide general guidance from your own experience, but do not help a mentee in a particular class or subject. Refer to tutoring.
- Don’t be a passive listener: Listen to and support a mentee, but listen actively and provide constructive feedback.
- Don’t be an academic advisor: Discuss educational goals and disciplinary culture, but academic consultancy is the role of an academic advisor, not a mentor.
- Don’t be a counselor: Share perspectives and advice from your own experience, but never provide clinical recommendations (or diagnoses!) — leave that to trained professionals.
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