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Ten Rules for Effective Mentoring (by John Roberts)
I do subscribe to John Robert’s Rebel with a Cause to get success principles like these. Everyday they send me one, and I usually like the content most of the time.

1. Set High Expectations
Expectations should be expressed, negotiated, and
agreed upon at the beginning of a mentoring relationship.
Sometimes mentoring proves disappointing. This
disappointment can frequently be traced back to differing
or unfulfilled expectations.

2. Know the Purpose
Jointly agree on the purpose of the relationship. When
you each know what you want and why you want it, you
have the basis for building a wonderful relationship.

3. Stick to The Schedule
All good things come to those who meet consistently.
Determine the regularity of interaction and stick to it.

4. Be Accountable
Determine the type of accountability. Mutual
responsibility is an important mentoring dynamic! It
does not just happen – you must plan for it. Agree
together on how you will establish and monitor mentoring
tasks.

The heart of empowerment lies not only in what the
mentor shares but also in the tasks the mentor gives to
the protégé. You must complete the tasks in order to
benefit. Accountability is the prod to make sure this
happens, because change rarely takes place without it.
It can occur many ways: phone calls, probing questions
during meetings, or a planned evaluation time.

5. Develop Communication Mechanisms
It the mentor sees or learns of an area of need or
concern for you – and it may be negative – how and when
do you want your mentor to communicate it to you?
Determine this important communication mechanism is
advance so that it causes no undue harm or ill feeling
later on.

6. Keep it Confidential
Clarify the level of confidentiality. You both need to
make it clear when something you share should be treated
as confidential and never, ever violate this trust.

7. Determine the Time frame
Determine the length of your relationship and by all
means avoid open-ended mentorship. That way both of you
can back out without losing face if the mentoring
relationship does not meet your expectations. On the
other hand, if it goes well you can continue the
relationship and set up a new evaluation point.

8. Measure Progress
Evaluate the relationship from time to time. Inspecting
progress from time to time allows you to reinforce
predetermined expectations and agreed upon standards of
performance.

9. Encourage Feedback
Encourage your protégé to ask for feedback. Although
difficult to hear at times, feedback is critical to
growth and development. Demonstrate that you are open to
hear ideas and suggestions to bring out areas that you
may not have discussed at the beginning of your
relationship. They may want you to keep on a eye on
certain blind spots that were initially overlooked.

10. Say Goodbye
A happy ending for a mentoring experience involves
closure, in which both parties evaluate, recognize how
and where empowerment has occurred, and mutually end the
mentoring relationship. What frequently happens in
successfully closed mentoring is an ongoing friendship
that allows for occasional mentoring and future
interweaving of lives as needed.