Have you been invited to Mentor a new Hamwic Speakers Member?

In keeping with the basic ethos of Toastmasters, Hamwic Speakers likes to provide as much support to new members as possible. The best way to help members beginning their journey is by providing them with a Mentor to help them through the learning curve of finding out how everything works. That way they never need to feel alone and have someone to answer their questions and show them the details necessary to progress successfully through the early stages of membership.

If you have been invited to become a Mentor by our Mentoring Coordinator (Currently George Weller) it is because he and the committee feel that you have the knowledge and ability to be of great help to a new member, much as your own mentor will have been to you when you first joined the club. It shows that you have progressed well and you should be proud of your achievement on your own journey, so well done.

Now please don’t feel concerned that you need to be an all-knowing master of everything toastmasters to be a mentor because it is not the case at all.  We are a successful growing club with a continuing flow of new members. In order to keep up with the demand for people to mentor these new members we also need to recruit people with sufficient ability to help them. You have been selected because you know enough to help and we are confident in your ability to fulfil this role.

Being a mentor is very rewarding and you will discover that you will learn much from the experience and it will also help improve your communication skills and confidence. We realise that you may see being a Mentor as big  responsibility and as a club we will provide all the support that you need to be a successful mentor of great value to you mentee’s.

All you need to do is talk to and befriend the person you have been assigned to mentor, find out what their needs are and decide how you will work together.  Then answer any initial questions they have and be there to assist them as and when it is needed. Your job is not to do things for them but just to provide some helpful feedback and assist them over any hurdles they have on their own journey. Everyone is different and each will have their own issues to overcome. Just be as helpful as you can. Most mentor and mentee’s become good long term friends.

If there is any reason you feel unable to mentor the person you have been invited to, (not all pairings are necessarily a good match) just talk it over with the mentor coordinator and usually a different person can be selected for you to mentor.

If you think you need to know more. There is training/guidance material available (see links below) to help you prepare. Please take a look at the material available and download the TMI mentoring manual as reference.

At Hamwic Speakers we have created a 3 tier system so that above mentors and mentee’s we have a few of our most experienced members and mentors to provide back up/support to help mentors with anything at all. So if you have an issue that you want to talk over, a question you couldn’t answer or just want to check you did something right. They are there for you.

Mentoring support is provided by Barbara Saph, David Collins, Ken Amy, and Rob Dewing. So please feel free to contact any or all of them as they are only too willing to help.

Mentor Resources from TMI and other Clubs

Hamwic Speakers Mentor Training