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Mentoring specification

About business mentoring

Business mentoring for a startup is a highly efficacious way to evaluate, self-determine and reflect on the fledgling business.

We outline how business mentoring works below.

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What is business mentoring?

Business mentoring is often confused with management consulting, business advisers and business coaching, but it is different. 

  • Management Consulting

    • Based on the expertise, knowledge, skill set and technology of the consultant. 
    • Centred on developing their own internal resources, reprogramming them specific to the client's brief and reapplying them for the client's benefit.

  • Business Coaching

    Assumes the client has the necessary skills, capability and capacity to deliver the "recommendations" and shows how the client can discover their own hidden strengths.

  • Business advisers

    • begin with a pre-set structure or template of business process 
    • take the client's business model and re-thread the model to fit the structure or template.

  • Business Mentoring

    • Is receptive and not broadcast. Responsive not dictated.
    • It targets the personal development of the Mentee embraced with the objectives of their business model.
    • The mentee is well-versed in their fundamental technical and business skills.
    • The mentor provides assistance in other skill areas, expertise or knowledge that are identified through the relationship.

What is the role and value of the business mentor?

  • Advice

    A business mentor provides experiential advice, counsel, network contacts, political, economic, social, environmental and cultural know-how.

  • Personal support

    The business mentor's interest is to foster the career, entrepreneurial development and business (as founders) ambitions of the mentee through personal support and encouragement.

  • Decisions

    Business mentoring helps the mentee produce high quality decisions that define their effectiveness within their startup. 

  • Critical thinking

    A business mentor provides a confidential sounding board, thinking space and room for working through critical and complicated matters that are similarly critical and complicated matters for both the mentee and the business alike. 

  • Connections

    A business mentor can also help the founder and startup organisation recruit and attract co-founders, investors and potential purchasers for exit. 

What are the benefits for the mentor?

The primary objective for the mentoring programme is to develop the mentee. However, there is considerable passive benefits for the mentor.

In the most successful mentoring relationships there is always something in it for the mentor, not just for the mentee. It is, and should be, a win-win activity.

Benefits include:

  • Personal development

    You can grow by growing others as well as develop self-knowledge, self-awareness and self-worth.

  • Personal satisfaction

    Increased personal satisfaction and feel good factor of achievement.

  • Enhanced skills

    Sharpening of personal skills such as listening, giving feedback and adapting their own leadership style.

  • Networking

    The value of 'giving' – sharing a network of contacts with the mentee.

  • Judgment

    Ability to be a 'thermometer', in understanding other people's hot spots and cold points – strengths and weaknesses. 

  • Profile

    Raising the mentor's visibility within their own networks and the perceived value of the mentor's own personal 'offer'.

What will the benefits be for the mentee?

  • Direction

    The mentor, by virtue of their own experience, will be able to steer the mentee through the evolution of their idea at startup towards product fulfilment at market.

  • Inside knowledge

    The crucial gain for the mentee will be found in their ability to understand some of the more informal ways of getting things done and some of the unwritten and unstated ways of working (the world of commercial politics, expectations of suppliers, customers and investors). This will develop the mentee's professional expertise and career as an entrepreneur.

  • Trust

    The mentor is someone with whom the mentee can discuss and work through concerns or opportunities, weaknesses or threats.

    The mentee may be fearful of exposing these to their business coach, adviser, co-founders or shareholders. Indeed any of these may be applying pressure on the mentee to come up with short-term solutions, be unsympathetic to the mentee's longer-term objectives or be obstructive and defending a different position. 

  • Instinct

    The mentee may feel that they are working in an environment that does not fit with their preferred ways of working. They may not even be aware of this, perhaps just having an undefined feeling of things not being quite right.

    Talking with a mentor, who will bring a wider perspective, will help the mentee recognise what is happening and identify the business culture or environment that is right for them.

What makes a good mentor?

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Primary skills and attributes

  • a strong desire to help others grow and develop
  • a track record in developing others 
  • a strong understanding of how business works (formally and informally)
  • a knowledge of the key players in the mentee's life and those who need to be in the mentee's life
  • a key knowledge of both the strategic direction of the mentee and the startup, what its drivers are and those of the wider industry with entry expectations
  • a recognition there is more to give than is currently being contributed
  • strong listening skills
  • self-awareness
  • comprehension of cultural and gender differences and be sensitive to these differences
  • personal honesty – if this business or mentee is not something or someone that sparks, excites or enthuses the mentor, then the pairing will need to be reconsidered. 
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Practicalities of mentoring

There are some things that a mentor will need in order to optimise the return on time invested for both mentor and mentee:

  • Accessibility to the mentee. Where the agreement to meet regularly at a given place time and frequency this should be honoured as a firm commitment.
  • The provision of a structure to the mentoring relationship, particularly if the mentee is a new startup.
  • Follow through on all agreed actions from the meetings, thereby demonstrating to the mentee commitment and professionalism.
  • A mentor is required to be highly skilled in listening, giving feedback and, where appropriate, providing the mentee with impetus, excitement and drive to move along faster than they think they can go.
  • A mentor will need to select and adopt a style that can change as required within the mentoring relationship as it develops and according to the issue being addressed at any one time. 
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Mentoring programme quality

  • The quality achieved in a mentoring relationship often depends on the expertise of those establishing the programme in achieving the right fit between mentee and mentor.
  • The best results are often achieved when the mentor and mentee like and respect each other and where the personal chemistry is right. 

What makes a good mentee?

A mentee must, of course, be prepared to take feedback. But to get the greatest possible benefit from a mentoring relationship, there are several other things a mentee must do. 

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Owning the mentoring relationship

  • The mentee must own and take responsibility for the mentoring relationship.
  • The mentee is a founder of a business and own the business, they must therefore own their development which is an important principle of entrepreneur development.
  • No one has more interest in, or more to gain from, the progression of the mentee's career as an entrepreneur and as an owner of a startup than the mentee.
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The mentee must be proactive in the mentoring relationship:

  • Taking the initiative and setting the pace – with the agreement of the mentor.
  • Looking at the mentoring process as an integral part of the startup, growth, ideation, proof of concept, MVP and beta testing process they are managing with a view to take the knowledge and experience to market.
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Manage the business mentoring agenda

  • The mentee should define the agenda of the business mentoring programme by identifying what they want to achieve through it.
  • The mentee must define what they want to do. If they fail to then they are in danger of handing it over to others to determine their own direction.

How to manage the mentoring relationship?

Both the mentor and mentee must be systematic in managing the mentoring relationship, focusing on the three key areas:

  1. the first meeting
  2. the mentoring contract
  3. the ongoing mentoring relationship.

The first meeting

The first meeting between business mentor and mentee serves four purposes:

  • To get to know each other better

    • personal stories
    • histories
    • ambitions
    • expectations.

    This develops as a way for both parties to decide if they are happy to continue beyond the first meeting.

  • To articulate and agree expectations

    Different or unrealistic expectations can be the cause of mentoring relationships not working. Unrealistic expectations include:

    • The mentee expecting the mentor to sort out their business problems personally.
    • The mentee expecting the mentor to make their own personal network of contacts available to them directly rather than through collaboration and introduction.
    • The mentee expecting the mentor to tell them what to do – or worse, to do it for them.
    • The mentor expecting the mentee to do exactly what they tell them.

  • To set and agree ground rules

    Ground rules are things such as frequency and length of meetings.

  • To set objectives

    The mentee should come to the meeting with some draft objectives covering what outcomes they would like to achieve through the mentoring. These should be discussed and agreed with the mentor.

The mentoring contract

By the end of the first meeting, the mentee and mentor will be in a position to agree a mentoring contract. This will cover the important principles:

  • confidentiality
  • structure
  • frequency of face-to-face meetings and/or telephone meetings, with a schedule of dates
  • mechanisms for communicating between meetings (for example, email or phone)
  • duration of the business mentoring relationship
  • tracking and review of the business mentoring process and reporting back
  • objectives and ambitions – an agreement of what they are, plus dates for review
  • scope of the mentoring – it is usually best to be explicit about what is and is not included
  • statement from the mentee agreeing that they will be proactive and drive the startup business
  • date for final review and closure – although the mentor and mentee may decide to continue beyond formal closure.
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The ongoing mentoring relationship

Both the mentor and the mentee have a role to play in managing the ongoing business mentoring relationship.

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For the business mentor

The deal for the business mentor is to honour the terms of the contract:

  • achieving agreed objectives and ambitions and reviewing outcomes
  • attending the agreed meetings and not rescheduling
  • following through and delivering on any agreed actions
  • respecting confidentiality
  • exercising skills such as listening, giving feedback
  • recognising that as the relationship progresses both the mentor and mentee step back, review and adapt their styles to fit new circumstances.
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For the business mentee

The mentee's responsibilities are: 

  • to proactively ensure that the terms of the mentoring contract are adhered to and that scheduled meetings take place
  • to ensure that the objectives and ambitions jointly agreed at the first meeting are being worked on and the outcomes continually tracked
  • to recognise that as they grow in confidence and experience they will assume the lead and reduce the dependency they may have on the mentor
  • to focus on moving the relationship to redundancy and closure on the formal mentoring relationship
  • to think about what they can do to make a contribution back to their mentor. 

What remuneration can a mentor expect?

Typical mentoring contracts are for two hours a month usually delivered in one-hour sessions, over a period of six to 12 months.

It is not our policy to remunerate mentors. However, any legitimate out of pocket expenses will be paid.

We do not see this as a contractual service within the programme. It is a win-win relationship between the mentor and the mentee. For the mentee the exposure to realism is often cost enough.

The value benefit to a mentor is differently evaluated. It's a little like "How long is a piece of string?"

The value being added to the startup for the mentor is the reward. It is not philanthropic but it is an investment into a successor who will value the experiences that have been passed down to another generation of entrepreneur, and so the cycle of success through knowledge is passed on.