Testing, testing...

Good news yesterday, I had the go ahead from the mentoring tutor that my choice of mentee was totaly appropriate. Iam kind of wondering if it was my choice of mentee or the mentee's choice of mentor??? I think that is a bit of the chicken and the egg thing! Hopefully the initial meeting will be on Friday as I am running out of weeks to do this. All of a sudden, going on holiday seems to be rather soon (I even whent and bought shorts today!), especialy as I have to fit in these hours of mentoring. Did you know, it is only about 10 weeks untill the start of the new accademic year?

Anyway, I have given the mentee the option of having the first session away from our work place or using a small meeting room - I have absolutly no idea wich she will chose, I hope coffee away from work!!

I have also made my big list and located all the self assesment tools that I would like to use for my initial bit of self reflection for this assignment! It will be interesting to see how accurate they are against my self perception. Already, I know that my MBTI was pretty much what I expected - InFJ - no suprises there!

The Begining (which should have been started ages ago!)

Well, were to start. I suppose an explanation about why I am trying to do this. Really it is to try and sort some things out in my head and help me critically review why I feel that this Level 7 qualification is not possible for me, especially given my current (rather jumbled and negative) outlook on life.

Assignment one is just about done, I just have the bibliography to complete and I can submit it. Strangely, I do not feel as excited about this as I did with my level 5 last year. I think that perhaps it is because this Level 7 has encouraged me to look more deeply at the things that are happening around me and and that makes me feel sad and sometimeses sick with anger. In an ideal world, I could channel this energy into changing that situation but that is not possible at the moment as I am emotionally (and physically) exhausted. Really I need to find a way of spiritually re-energising and becoming interested (but possibly slightly removed) in the topic again.

A really good point has been that I have found someone to Mentor for the second assignment. I think they will be totally and completely ideal!!! it is someone within the organisation for which I work who has been reinstated in their original management position after a couple of years undertaking other duties. Mentoring has already been suggested by the person's seniors so I have contacted my tutor who is also the person in charge of the mentoring network here in the organisation as I need to ensure that it not only fulfils my criteria but the needs of the mentee and also the organisation as a whole.

My to do list with regard to that is as follows:

• Chase response from the Mentoring tutor
• Arrange initial appointment with my mentee to discuss expectations and goals
• Prepare relevant paperwork. (I need to slightly amend the organisations paperwork to fulfil my needs)

The initial appointment is really just to ascertain the following:

• Help the mentee feel comfortable with the process
• Acknowledge any previous experience of coaching and mentoring that the mentee may have had
• Define my role as a mentor
• Arrange the location and time of future meetings and also talk about telephone and email contact 
• Negotiate the structure of the meetings (goal setting, reflection, feedback, etc.)
• Discuss documentation

The real biggie for this meeting is talking about the boundaries of confidentiality!!!!