The 4 elements of a successful mentoring session


Build in structure, determine what space to show up in and ask specific questions to reap the benefits of your mentoring sessions.

When Annette Lee moved from a Chief Operations Officer role into her current position as a People Manager at Land’s Edge Foundation, she felt like she needed some additional support and advice to make what was essentially a lateral career transition.

She has spent many years honing her skills as a COO in various roles, and has been adjacent to the HR space for most of her career, overseeing learning and development programs and managing teams at senior levels. But it wasn’t until after the pandemic that she made the decision to formally move into the HR profession, kicking this off by undertaking an accredited Certificate IV in Human Resources Management with AHRI. 

As the sole HR representative in her not-for-profit organisation taking on an unfamiliar role, she wanted to seek out a fellow HR mentor to firm up her HR expertise and build her confidence in a new field. In 2024, she found this support as a participant in AHRI’s Mentor Program

“It was a great chance to connect with another experienced HR professional to help further my development and understanding in the HR space,” says Lee.

Her mentor, Liam Kiernan, Senior People Business Partner at Metro Trains Melbourne, had also previously worked in standalone HR positions, and could translate his experience to her workplace challenges. 

They found valuable cross-pollination learning opportunities in sharing their respective experiences in vastly different sectors.

Reflecting on their mentoring sessions over the past year, Lee and Kiernan share their advice to set your mentoring session up for success, and offer simple strategies to make the mentorship meaningful for both parties. 

1. Getting the prepwork right

As anyone who has sat through an ineffective meeting knows, it takes more than simply sitting down over a call to make your meeting meaningful. The same goes for your mentoring session.

Building structure around mentoring sessions can anchor the conversation, steer it to specific objectives and set accountability.

For Kiernan and Lee, preparing an agenda was a particularly effective tool to organise their sessions. In their case, Lee would share a brief agenda with Kiernan before each session, detailing the topline points she wished to discuss.

“You know the proximal goal you’re working towards and the direction the session will cover,” says Kiernan. 

Any critical items that weren’t covered would be carried over, similarly to how you’d manage a standard project at work.

“It was good… because we always roughly knew what the next session would hold.”

For example, a helpful structure that mentees can prepare beforehand to maximise the value of the session might cover: 

  • One big ticket item: the priority outcome you’d like to achieve – e.g. guidance setting end-of-financial year HR strategies
  • Some HR learning resources: this might include podcast episodes, key HR thought leaders to follow or useful content recommendations.
  • Reflection points from the previous session: this might include chatting about how you implemented advice from the previous session or any pertinent reflections.
  • Any action points: the tangible steps the mentee and mentor agree to take after the session to ensure things move ahead prior to your next session.

However, leave room for flexibility, as that’s when you encounter out-of-the-box solutions, which are equally, if not more, important, says Lee.

“I thought of those times as gold nuggets. I remember one session I received some great book recommendations from Liam. If you’re set and rigid, you’re going to miss those things.”

“[Participating in the program] has put me in good stead at work where people have seen that I’m committed to HR and to bettering the HR within the organisation.” – Annette Lee, People Manager, Land’s Edge Foundation

2. Determine your operating space

While mentoring sessions will naturally evolve over time as goals change, reaching an agreement on what ‘space’ you’d like to operate in during a session can ensure both parties are on the same page (see the diagram below for examples). 

Taking the time to do so can transform a session from being a chat, into a targeted conversation that is most helpful to the mentee during that point in time. 

For example, perhaps a mentee is seeking a peer-to-peer conversation, in which case they may be seeking general advice or support rather than directive feedback. Or perhaps they need to chat through a heavy topic, such as managing a redundancy, in which case they may require their mentor to operate in the ‘sense making’ space and ask evocative questions that speak to their emotional wellbeing.

Cognitive space: 

A conversation where you unpack the logical elements of a situation.

  • How does your mentee approach different HR challenges at work?
  • Are there any specific HR skills your mentee wants to enhance?
  • What resources, frameworks or ideas can be shared to help tackle a challenge?

Sensemaking space:

A conversation where someone helps you to make sense of the emotional elements of a situation.

  • Learn how a mentee feels about a specific situation. 
  • Encourage them to reflect on their emotional reaction to an issue, or that of others involved.
  • Ask probing, open questions that help a mentee to uncover their feelings about a difficult situation. 

Listening space:

A conversation that functions as a debriefing space. A mentor may listen more than they speak, or ask open questions that encourage deeper exploration of an issue.

  • Practise active listening and switch between listening styles. This can help you adapt your approach throughout the conversation.
  • Avoid the urge to jump in with advice/your own perspective. Get comfortable with letting silence hang for a moment to give your mentee space to let their thoughts bubble to the surface.

Peer-to-peer advice space:

A two-way conversation that focuses on shared learning.

  • Ask questions like: I’ve used this approach to resolve this XYZ problem before. How have you approached it?”
  • Lean into storytelling and sharing real-life examples of when you’ve faced similar challenges and how you solved it. Ask your mentee to share their own stories.

Most of Kiernan’s and Lee’s sessions flowed between the peer-to-peer advice space and cognitive space, where Kiernan offered practical strategies to specific business issues such as managing hybrid roles across Lee’s organisation. 

“Annette knew all the answers already,” says Kiernan. “It’s just providing the platform for her to speak and reflect on it. Whereas sometimes at work, you’re going from one thing to the next.

“In the sessions, we’d actually be able to talk things through, and give [the challenge] the breathing space to [work] towards the right outcome.”

Read HRM’s article on managing HR’s emotional load.

3. Lean into your mentor’s technical expertise

One of the most obvious benefits of mentorship is the exchange of specialist and organisational knowledge between a seasoned expert and someone looking to develop or hone a new skill set. 

For Lee, being able to draw on Kiernan’s experience working in complex and often highly unionised business environments, was useful in helping her adjust to a new profession and role. 

Kiernan’s industrial relations skills were especially useful for Lee when she was tasked with the daunting process of drawing up her organisation’s enterprise agreement.  

“I had no experience in putting one together. So, [during our sessions] I had lots of questions around wording certain clauses, factoring in rostered days off, pay and work conditions. How can we meet the better off overall test and how does the agreement relate to your payroll system? They were questions I wouldn’t have gotten looking at a [generic] website,” says Lee.

Now, coming up to the end of the twelve month process, she believes being able to garner comprehensive advice from Kiernan – who provided input into the strategic aspects of an agreement and running through workplace planning documents – was instrumental to her success. 

Once you’ve done the hard work of finding a mentor, use the opportunity to drill down into how they would handle a specific workplace challenge and leverage their knowledge to apply tangible insights to your HR practice.

4. Ask specific questions and utilise frameworks

Kiernan has had a range of professional mentors during his career and also recently led the development of a mentoring program at his current organisation. He says another key element of an effective mentoring session is asking strategic questions.

For mentees, this might include posing to your HR mentor:

  • How do you respond to pushback from your leadership team?
  • What places or resources do you turn to when you’re struggling with a workplace challenge?
  • What networking channels have you found useful in your career, and would you be willing to connect me with these?
  • If you’re a standalone HR practitioner in a business or operate in a small team, how do you manage your workload?
  • What self-care strategies have you relied on to mitigate burnout/compassion fatigue?

For mentors who are mentoring mentees without clear career development objectives in mind, Kiernan cites the GROW model as a powerful framework to open up the conversation in a clear direction. The model, developed by executive coaches in the 1980s and seminal in modern coaching approaches, breaks down four steps to help achieve an individual’s goal (see diagram below).

Partly adapted from HBR’s The Leader as Coach article.

These questions can be adapted beyond a formal mentoring session. For example, a goal question Kiernan asked Lee early on in their sessions – ‘What problem am I trying to solve?’ – struck a chord with Lee and she regularly applies that thinking when working with new systems and processes. 

In fact, Kiernan’s guidance and support through AHRI’s Mentor Program has been “hugely positive on a personal and professional level” for Lee.

“I’d have discussions with my boss and say, ‘Well, I had this conversation with my HR mentor’. It’s given me more credence. Over time as well, I just became a bit more confident in how I presented information at work.

“[Participating in the program] has held me in good stead at work where people have seen that I’m committed to HR and to bettering the HR within the organisation.”


Develop the skills and confidence needed to manage people effectively by adopting a coaching mindset. In AHRI’s Empowering Growth: Enhancing Your Coaching Mindset short course, you will learn how to support leaders and employees in developing their own problem-solving capabilities and help create a culture of continuous learning within your organisation.


 

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The 4 elements of a successful mentoring session


Build in structure, determine what space to show up in and ask specific questions to reap the benefits of your mentoring sessions.

When Annette Lee moved from a Chief Operations Officer role into her current position as a People Manager at Land’s Edge Foundation, she felt like she needed some additional support and advice to make what was essentially a lateral career transition.

She has spent many years honing her skills as a COO in various roles, and has been adjacent to the HR space for most of her career, overseeing learning and development programs and managing teams at senior levels. But it wasn’t until after the pandemic that she made the decision to formally move into the HR profession, kicking this off by undertaking an accredited Certificate IV in Human Resources Management with AHRI. 

As the sole HR representative in her not-for-profit organisation taking on an unfamiliar role, she wanted to seek out a fellow HR mentor to firm up her HR expertise and build her confidence in a new field. In 2024, she found this support as a participant in AHRI’s Mentor Program

“It was a great chance to connect with another experienced HR professional to help further my development and understanding in the HR space,” says Lee.

Her mentor, Liam Kiernan, Senior People Business Partner at Metro Trains Melbourne, had also previously worked in standalone HR positions, and could translate his experience to her workplace challenges. 

They found valuable cross-pollination learning opportunities in sharing their respective experiences in vastly different sectors.

Reflecting on their mentoring sessions over the past year, Lee and Kiernan share their advice to set your mentoring session up for success, and offer simple strategies to make the mentorship meaningful for both parties. 

1. Getting the prepwork right

As anyone who has sat through an ineffective meeting knows, it takes more than simply sitting down over a call to make your meeting meaningful. The same goes for your mentoring session.

Building structure around mentoring sessions can anchor the conversation, steer it to specific objectives and set accountability.

For Kiernan and Lee, preparing an agenda was a particularly effective tool to organise their sessions. In their case, Lee would share a brief agenda with Kiernan before each session, detailing the topline points she wished to discuss.

“You know the proximal goal you’re working towards and the direction the session will cover,” says Kiernan. 

Any critical items that weren’t covered would be carried over, similarly to how you’d manage a standard project at work.

“It was good… because we always roughly knew what the next session would hold.”

For example, a helpful structure that mentees can prepare beforehand to maximise the value of the session might cover: 

  • One big ticket item: the priority outcome you’d like to achieve – e.g. guidance setting end-of-financial year HR strategies
  • Some HR learning resources: this might include podcast episodes, key HR thought leaders to follow or useful content recommendations.
  • Reflection points from the previous session: this might include chatting about how you implemented advice from the previous session or any pertinent reflections.
  • Any action points: the tangible steps the mentee and mentor agree to take after the session to ensure things move ahead prior to your next session.

However, leave room for flexibility, as that’s when you encounter out-of-the-box solutions, which are equally, if not more, important, says Lee.

“I thought of those times as gold nuggets. I remember one session I received some great book recommendations from Liam. If you’re set and rigid, you’re going to miss those things.”

“[Participating in the program] has put me in good stead at work where people have seen that I’m committed to HR and to bettering the HR within the organisation.” – Annette Lee, People Manager, Land’s Edge Foundation

2. Determine your operating space

While mentoring sessions will naturally evolve over time as goals change, reaching an agreement on what ‘space’ you’d like to operate in during a session can ensure both parties are on the same page (see the diagram below for examples). 

Taking the time to do so can transform a session from being a chat, into a targeted conversation that is most helpful to the mentee during that point in time. 

For example, perhaps a mentee is seeking a peer-to-peer conversation, in which case they may be seeking general advice or support rather than directive feedback. Or perhaps they need to chat through a heavy topic, such as managing a redundancy, in which case they may require their mentor to operate in the ‘sense making’ space and ask evocative questions that speak to their emotional wellbeing.

Cognitive space: 

A conversation where you unpack the logical elements of a situation.

  • How does your mentee approach different HR challenges at work?
  • Are there any specific HR skills your mentee wants to enhance?
  • What resources, frameworks or ideas can be shared to help tackle a challenge?

Sensemaking space:

A conversation where someone helps you to make sense of the emotional elements of a situation.

  • Learn how a mentee feels about a specific situation. 
  • Encourage them to reflect on their emotional reaction to an issue, or that of others involved.
  • Ask probing, open questions that help a mentee to uncover their feelings about a difficult situation. 

Listening space:

A conversation that functions as a debriefing space. A mentor may listen more than they speak, or ask open questions that encourage deeper exploration of an issue.

  • Practise active listening and switch between listening styles. This can help you adapt your approach throughout the conversation.
  • Avoid the urge to jump in with advice/your own perspective. Get comfortable with letting silence hang for a moment to give your mentee space to let their thoughts bubble to the surface.

Peer-to-peer advice space:

A two-way conversation that focuses on shared learning.

  • Ask questions like: I’ve used this approach to resolve this XYZ problem before. How have you approached it?”
  • Lean into storytelling and sharing real-life examples of when you’ve faced similar challenges and how you solved it. Ask your mentee to share their own stories.

Most of Kiernan’s and Lee’s sessions flowed between the peer-to-peer advice space and cognitive space, where Kiernan offered practical strategies to specific business issues such as managing hybrid roles across Lee’s organisation. 

“Annette knew all the answers already,” says Kiernan. “It’s just providing the platform for her to speak and reflect on it. Whereas sometimes at work, you’re going from one thing to the next.

“In the sessions, we’d actually be able to talk things through, and give [the challenge] the breathing space to [work] towards the right outcome.”

Read HRM’s article on managing HR’s emotional load.

3. Lean into your mentor’s technical expertise

One of the most obvious benefits of mentorship is the exchange of specialist and organisational knowledge between a seasoned expert and someone looking to develop or hone a new skill set. 

For Lee, being able to draw on Kiernan’s experience working in complex and often highly unionised business environments, was useful in helping her adjust to a new profession and role. 

Kiernan’s industrial relations skills were especially useful for Lee when she was tasked with the daunting process of drawing up her organisation’s enterprise agreement.  

“I had no experience in putting one together. So, [during our sessions] I had lots of questions around wording certain clauses, factoring in rostered days off, pay and work conditions. How can we meet the better off overall test and how does the agreement relate to your payroll system? They were questions I wouldn’t have gotten looking at a [generic] website,” says Lee.

Now, coming up to the end of the twelve month process, she believes being able to garner comprehensive advice from Kiernan – who provided input into the strategic aspects of an agreement and running through workplace planning documents – was instrumental to her success. 

Once you’ve done the hard work of finding a mentor, use the opportunity to drill down into how they would handle a specific workplace challenge and leverage their knowledge to apply tangible insights to your HR practice.

4. Ask specific questions and utilise frameworks

Kiernan has had a range of professional mentors during his career and also recently led the development of a mentoring program at his current organisation. He says another key element of an effective mentoring session is asking strategic questions.

For mentees, this might include posing to your HR mentor:

  • How do you respond to pushback from your leadership team?
  • What places or resources do you turn to when you’re struggling with a workplace challenge?
  • What networking channels have you found useful in your career, and would you be willing to connect me with these?
  • If you’re a standalone HR practitioner in a business or operate in a small team, how do you manage your workload?
  • What self-care strategies have you relied on to mitigate burnout/compassion fatigue?

For mentors who are mentoring mentees without clear career development objectives in mind, Kiernan cites the GROW model as a powerful framework to open up the conversation in a clear direction. The model, developed by executive coaches in the 1980s and seminal in modern coaching approaches, breaks down four steps to help achieve an individual’s goal (see diagram below).

Partly adapted from HBR’s The Leader as Coach article.

These questions can be adapted beyond a formal mentoring session. For example, a goal question Kiernan asked Lee early on in their sessions – ‘What problem am I trying to solve?’ – struck a chord with Lee and she regularly applies that thinking when working with new systems and processes. 

In fact, Kiernan’s guidance and support through AHRI’s Mentor Program has been “hugely positive on a personal and professional level” for Lee.

“I’d have discussions with my boss and say, ‘Well, I had this conversation with my HR mentor’. It’s given me more credence. Over time as well, I just became a bit more confident in how I presented information at work.

“[Participating in the program] has held me in good stead at work where people have seen that I’m committed to HR and to bettering the HR within the organisation.”


Develop the skills and confidence needed to manage people effectively by adopting a coaching mindset. In AHRI’s Empowering Growth: Enhancing Your Coaching Mindset short course, you will learn how to support leaders and employees in developing their own problem-solving capabilities and help create a culture of continuous learning within your organisation.


 

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