3 Reviewing my own experience
Before you consider mentoring and coaching in more detail, this is a good time to reflect on your own experience of these processes. It will give you a useful starting point for the course and inform your decisions about how to progress after completing it.
While you might not have experienced a formally identified mentoring or coaching relationship, you may well have encountered informal mentoring or coaching from someone, for example, a teacher or a colleague. In Activity 1 you considered who some of those individuals might be. Include those experiences when you are reflecting in Activity 4.
Activity 4 Where am I now?
Ask yourself the following questions given in Tables 3 and 4.
Remember that an informal example could be something as simple as a colleague asking for your help to come up with a solution to a problem or to help them see a situation differently.
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Record your answers in the box below.
Comment
Assessing and noting your own experience of mentoring and/or coaching at the beginning of the course will give you a starting point for your learning and help you to get the most from each week as you come to it.
Reflection is an important element of coaching and mentoring, and the more you do it the better you will get! Completing this exercise will help you to practise your reflective skills. In Week 2, you’ll focus on self-reflection in more detail.
In this section, you’ve considered your starting point, recognising your own level of experience in the mentoring or coaching context. In the next section, you’ll focus on ensuring that you have the time you need to make the most from this course.