Preparing for Your Initial Meeting

As a Mentee, we recommend you prepare for the meeting by doing the following:

  • Research your Mentor’s website
  • Ask yourself the following questions:
    • What are my career objectives?
    • What have been my experiences within and outside of a practice?
    • What type of learning will help me realize my career objectives?
    • What are my short-term and long-term goals, both personal and professional?
    • What type of work-life balance do I wish to achieve?
    • What type of engagements do I want to focus on?
    • How do I deal with client/internal challenges?
    • When answering the above questions be sure to set realistic goals

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Initial Meeting Conversation

Stepping-Stones to a Great Relationship

To kick off the relationship, get acquainted with each other and speak about your expectations and Guidelines for the relationship. Here are a few discussion points to get you started:

  • Get to know each other
    • Tell me about yourself
    • What are your hobbies / interests?
  • Discuss any previous mentor experience and what worked and didn’t work
  • Discuss the Mentorship program and expectations
  • Why did you join the mentorship program?
  • Discuss your objectives, roles and responsibilities, expectations
  • Acknowledge confidentiality expectations
  • How will the relationship be evaluated and feedback be given / received e.g. how am I performing?
  • Meeting expectations
    • How much time can you commit to the relationship?
    • Who will schedule future meetings and handle the meeting logistics e.g. set the agenda
    • Which method of communication works for you? example email, telephone, in-person meetings, video chat etc.
    • Set up a time for your next meeting

Values and Motivation

You will be spending six months with each other, so get familiar with each other’s background. Here are a few discussion points to get you started:

  • What values do you abide by at work?
    • Do you find it challenging to abide by them?
  • What makes you less motivated to work?
  • What motivates you to succeed?
  • How do you handle stressful situations?
  • What skills have you found useful in the profession?
    • How did you develop them?
    • Why is it needed?
  • What achievements are you most proud of?
  • What parts of the practice are you finding most challenging?
  • What parts of the practice are you finding most rewarding?
  • Why did you choose your particular style of chiropractic treatments?
  • What was been the most life altering experience you’ve had and how did it impact you personally or professionally?

Career Goals

An important topic the mentee should discuss is their career goals. Here are a few discussion points to get you started:

  • What are your goals for the next 5 years?
  • Are your career goals aligned with your current career as a practitioner?
  • How do you keep track and measure your goals?
  • How can your mentor help you achieve those goals?

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Ongoing Meetings Conversation

Discovering Your Mentee’s Career

Here is an opportunity to learn more about your mentee’s history, so you can understand how to guide them to their career goals. Here are a few questions to ask your mentee to get you started:

  • Reflecting upon your position, what do you think will make you successful in the future?
    • What steps do you need to implement to make this happen?
    • Tell me about what goals you have set and how did you accomplish them or didn’t accomplish your goals.
  • Which skills do you need to develop?
    • What are your strengths?
    • What are your weaknesses?
  • What do you think is most important to developing you career?
    • Can that be accomplished with your existing background and skills?
    • If not, what should you implement to make that change?

Discovering Your Mentor’s Career

Here is a great opportunity to learn from your mentor’s successes, mistakes, road blocks and how they got to where they are without repeating their challenges. Here are a few questions to ask your mentor to get you started:

  • Who was your role model? How did they inspire you?
  • Tell me about your career background and how long it took you to get to where you are today?
  • Which skills were key to developing your career?
  • How do you keep current with your skills and knowledge?
  • What achievements are you most proud of?
  • When did you know you were ready to take the next step in your career?
  • What were the most challenging aspects of the early part of your career?
    • How did you handle the situations?
    • What did you learn?
  • What would you do differently if you had the knowledge you knew today?
  • Did your specific practice area affect your career choices and priorities? If yes/no, why?
  • Reflect and discuss your life experience, success and failures
  • What strategies do you have on how to maintain your business and what resources have you used?
  • Review cover letters and resumes. This can provide a great opportunity to role-play for job interviews.

Networking

Here is a chance to learn to become an effective networker. Here are a few discussion points to get you started:

  • Tell me about your networking skills
    • Which areas or skills you would like to improve upon?
    • What steps are you taking to change?
  • Reflecting on your experience, have you been able to network effectively?
  • What networking activities have you done to date?
  • How often do you connect with your peers within your network?
    • Is there a schedule or random meetings when you need help?
  • Why do you network?
    • Has it been helpful to your career?

Career Changes

Mentees might be challenged with adjusting to a new role for example  from new graduate to an Associate role or an Associate role to an owner of a clinic. Mentors can share their thoughts on what worked and didn’t work for them. Here are a few discussion points to get you started:

  • Tell me about your new position
  • What challenges are you facing as an Associate / new owner?
  • What steps have you taken to solve your challenges as an Associate / new owner
  • What has been the greatest change in your practice to date and how has it affected you?
  • Do you view change as positive or negative? What makes it so?
  • How do you welcome positive and negative change?
    • Can you give some examples?
  • What have you learned from experiencing changes so far?
  • Have you put steps into place to handle future changes so you can deal with it effectively?
  • Reflecting on your negative experiences, what would you do differently today?
  • Is there anything you would do differently as a result of this discussion?

Business Management

This discussion helps mentees to think and understand more about the business side of practice. Here are a few discussion points to get you started:

  • How is success measured at your clinic?
  • What are the challenges to developing your clinic?
    • What steps are you taking to help the clinic grow?
  • What are the mistakes people make upon joining the clinic?
  • Tell me about your clinic building strategy.
    • How are you getting new referrals?
    • How are you handling patient complaints?
  • Discuss Marketing strategies
  • Gain some Human Resources advice
  • Learn from your mentor their Accounting  techniques
  • Draw on your mentor expertise with  Auto Insurance / WSIB

Real Life Situations Activity

In the next meeting share and discuss some ‘real life’ challenging situations with each other. Choose from the following topics:

  • If you are an owner, tell me about a challenging situation with an associate
  • If you are an associate, tell me about a challenging situation with a clinic owner
  • Challenging situation with a patient

Here are a few discussion points to ask about the situation

  • What were the steps and your thought process to resolving the situation?
  • Is there anything you could have done to prevent this from occurring?
  • Did you have any support or resources you need to assist in solving the situation?
  • What would you have done differently now?
  • What did you learn or take away from the situation?

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Your Final Meeting

Take the time to do a final debrief with each other:

  • Discuss what you learned and enjoyed about the mentorship experience
  • Review what will be the next steps for the mentee and leave with an motivational advice
  • Thank each other and acknowledge each other’s contribution
  • If you prefer to stay in touch with each other it is up to both participants