Mentoring Scenarios

At Project Thrive, we evaluated the success of a mentoring relationship by how well the pair is incorporating what we’ve dubbed the 'mentoring secret sauce'. The secret sauce contains four ‘ingredients’ that we believe are the key components to ensure mentoring success. If any of these four ingredients go ‘off’ (or get left out of the recipe completely), this could lead to the mentoring relationship going sour.

The four key ingredients that make up this secret sauce are:

1. Collaboration 🤝

2. Communication 💬

3. Curiosity 🐱

4. Proactivity ⚓️

All of these ingredients are important for both mentors and mentees to incorporate into their relationship in order for the relationship to be a valuable one for both parties.

Project Thrive has seen over 300 pairs go through our tech mentoring programme. Let’s read through some real-life mentoring scenarios that we've encountered to see if you can spot the missing ingredient, or if this sauce is delicious as it should be!

Scenario 1

Lucy (a mentee) wants to develop her python skills. Based on this, her mentor develops a lesson plan for Lucy to work through during the mentoring relationship.

Scenario 2

Ben (a mentee) is feeling swamped at work and is struggling to make progress towards his goals. He and his mentor decide to re-evaluate his goals and re-prioritize where necessary.

Scenario 3

Nick (a mentee) is in a tricky situation at work. His mentor has been in a very similar situation before, and tells Nick exactly how to handle it.

Scenario 4

Alice (a mentee) has a mentoring session scheduled for Tuesday evenings at 7pm. However, when the time comes, she doesn’t show. When her mentor contacts her to find out whether they’re still meeting, she tells her mentor that she has a work deadline and asks to reschedule to Thursday evening.