Discuss feedback as a career development skill in mentoring and learner support.
Giving constructive feedback in a way that preserves dignity while simultaneously improving performance is a learned skill. It takes practice and a mentor we should put into practice such skills and to be part of our career developmental goals to enable to provide best feedback to learner as a supportive tool.
Feedback is defined as the return of information about performance, a process, or an activity. Whether we like to receive it or not, feedback is an essential part of career development. If you don’t know how you’ve been doing, how will you know where you need to improve, grow, and develop? Feedback is a look backward, it’s the review of what has been done. Yet, the most important factor in receiving this information is determining what you’ll do with it moving forward.
Discuss role modelling as a personal development skill in mentoring and learner support.
Role model is a process that where learner learn new behavior without errors in doing things, role model is teaching by example and learning by imitation.
In addition, the mentoring relationship is probable to involve helping the apprentice develop the skills necessary to succeed professionally and as a career development. A mentor you partake to possess a skill professionally to support your learner and create as career developmental goal.
Discuss any FIVE important listening skills
- Show you are interested by maintaining eye contact and a friendly expression.
- Be alert to the tone of voice being used. Sometimes it is more important how something is said (and done) than precisely what is said or done. This can be a two-way concern so be alert to your own tone also.
- Encourage the mentee to describe their ideas and opinions freely by using prompts such as ‘Hmm’, ‘Yes’, I see’, ‘So what happened then?’.
- Show the mentee that you sympathise with his /her feelings – however way he/she may be expressing them.
- Don’t take the learner’s views personally and try not to get defensive in response to any aggression.
Discuss how a mentor can assist in the evaluation of the success of a mentee
The mentor should:
- Encourage their mentees to arrange formal evaluations with their line managers.
- Help the mentee to prepare for a formal evaluation and remind learners of the value of self-assessment and of peer-assessment.
- Use reflective questions to help learners analyse the causes of any barriers to learning that occur as well as quantifying the benefits that they gained during the IDP process.
Discuss FIVE barriers that should be taken into account when giving and receiving feedback during a mentoring process
- Feedback can come as a surprise or shock when there are no clear objectives for the job, or when the mentee and mentor do not share the same perception of what the job entails.
- The feedback may be delivered in a way that the recipient sees as concentrating on critical or unsubstantiated judgements. This may offend the mentee and be against the recipient’s sense of fairness.
- There may be a problem of credibility; it is important that the recipient believes the feedback-giver is competent to comment on those points.
- Previous history of receiving negative feedback may make the recipient feel obliged to be defensive.
- People are ‘afraid’ to give feedback because they are not confident about handling the response and are concerned that feedback will damage relationships.
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- Identify who is best placed to provide you with feedback; this may vary depending on the circumstances each time and may involve more than one person. The concept of 360° feedback suggests you should seek feedback from all around you – mentor, colleagues, suppliers and customers.
- Choose an appropriate time and place, when you will be able to have a constructive discussion.
- Be clear about what you need feedback on and don’t try to cover too many things in one discussion, focus on the key issues only.
- Ask probing questions to identify what behaviour you should continue doing or stop doing.
- Listen actively, concentrate and be receptive to the feedback and don’t react defensively or try to justify poor performance that is being criticised.
