1. Sarah M. Sack Medaille College MOL-624E
Individual Mentor Project
Sarah M. Sack
Medaille College
MOL-624E

2. Overview Why you chose your coach/mentor.
What your goals are for this relationship. What your timeframe is for this relationship.
Why you chose one experience over the other (coach/mentor).
How one effectively communicates with their coach/mentor and vice versa. Explain why this is so important in this process.
What you learned from this process and about coaching/mentoring.
What knowledge was gained at each session with your coach/mentor.
How the MAOL program and MOL 624E course information helped you during this process.
What you learned about your coach/mentor during this process.
What you learned about coaching/mentoring during this process.
What ways you benefitted from this experience as an individual and as a leader.
What obstacles and issues could exist with a coach and coachee/mentor and mentee and ways they can be resolved.
What the future entails with your coach/mentor.
As you begin to consider coaching/mentoring, explain what you will do to maintain a successful relationship and ensure your coachee/mentee’s goals are met.

3. Why did I choose my mentor?
My mentor = my current boss at Horizon
I chose her as my mentor because I want to learn her:
positivity
communication skills
Confidence
I want to learn her positivity because her positive attitude radiates to her employees
Her positive attitude helps her employees complete their tasks and increase their performance
I want to learn her communication skills because she is able to communicate to her co-workers and employees efficiently and clearly, so she is well understood
I want to learn how to display confidence the way she does because I believe confidence shows her one’s knowledge in their field
Most importantly, I want to be able to become a partner with my boss as the Residential Admissions Director and I believe she is able to assist me with this goal

4. Goals/ Timeframes Goals:
I want to learn and prove enough skills to be promoted to work alongside my mentor as the Residential Admissions Manager at Horizon Village Terrace House by the end of 2016
I want to increase my communication skills and learn how to effectively communicate with all employees to increase their trust within the next six months
I want to increase my confidence (be able to “pull the trigger”) and learn when I need to make important decisions for my team and I want to start implementing these newly learned skills as soon as I learn them
I want to prove to Horizon’s executive team that I have the skills and education to excel at Horizon and be a life-long employee
I want to assist with our new “Residential Re-design” and be a part of the decision-making and implementation process within the next six months and I want to be able to answer all employees questions regarding this new process

5. Goals/Timeframes Goals: Timeframes:
I want to attend Utilization Review conferences in the next three months to increase my work skills to become a better Utilization Reviewer and understand all parts of insurances before being promoted to Residential Admissions Manager
I want to build Horizon’s rapport with our insurance companies and other Inpatient and Detox centers in the area within the next six months, so we can work cohesively together
I want to obtain my Masters of Organizational Leadership degree within the next year to help me increase my education to become a better leader for Horizon
Timeframes:
Our timeframe for our mentoring relationship is two years, but we want most of our goals completed in one year
First meeting with my mentor: Monday 5/30/16
Second meeting with my mentor: Monday 6/13/16

6. Why I chose mentor over coach…
I chose mentor instead of coach because I am interested in learning from my boss to build a mutual relationship to benefit my long-term career movement
Prior to our mentoring relationship, I viewed my boss as my coach:
she focused on making improvements in my behavior and performance to resolve work issues
I believe I can learn from my boss by having her as my mentor because I want to follow her career path and work along beside her as a Residential Admissions Manager.

7. How to effectively communicate with your mentor…
you need to stress the importance of keeping communication open and honest
you need to discuss how the mentee needs to be up front and let their mentor know what goals they hope to achieve through the program
the mentor and mentee need to maintain contact
To guarantee healthy communication is maintained a communication plan should be discussed
A communication plan outlines their communication expectations and clearly define how they expect each other to participate in their relationship
Why is effective communication important?
poor communication can make a mentoring relationship fail
it allows the mentor and mentee to acknowledge their strengths and to motivate each other to work on areas of weakness
Without communication a mentoring relationship would just remain stagnant, but with communication they are able to know what needs to be improved, eliminated, and/or remain the same to help their relationship grow

8. What I learned about this process and about mentoring…
I learned that mentors are positive people by nature
I believe it takes a positive person to give their time to help another learn, grow, and succeed
My mentor taught me about positivity because no matter the situation she always found a way to twist it into a positive learning experience
I learned that communication is crucial in a mentoring relationship
I noticed at times my mentor and I could have struggled if we didn’t keep open and honest communication

9. What knowledge was gained at each session with your mentor?
During my first meeting, I gained knowledge into how mentoring is a marathon and not a sprint when establishing my goals
a mentoring relationship takes time to achieve the goals recognized and to build a relationship between the mentee and mentor
During my second meeting, I gained knowledge about keeping a mentoring relationship creative
For instance, I believe it was easy to struggle with becoming complacent and bored within a mentoring relationship
So, by keeping the relationship exciting and creative it will help the relationship thrive and not become stagnant.

10. How has the MAOL program and MOL 624E course information helped during this process?
MOL-624E taught me to learn about my weaknesses to be able to excel
During week three- I learned that I need to learn how to manage my own emotions after completing the Workgroup Emotional Intelligence Profile
I believe I need to improve my awareness of my own emotions because I tend to bottle in my emotions and not share them with my team
This benefitted my mentor relationship because…
I discussed this with my mentor and we set goals to be able to help me become aware of my own emotions
Goal- to open up and discuss my feelings with my mentor the next time I become indifferent or frustrated
Goal- once we work through my emotions together we will figure out how I should open up to my team

11. What I learned about my mentor…
I learned that my mentor’s strengths are:
she is creative and empowering
I learned that she is creative through observation because she works hard to keep her employees motivated through creativity.
I learned that she is empowering because I noticed that her employees all try their best for their team, which stems from their leader
I learned that she struggles with involvement to keep open communication within her team and she tends to have an individualistic outlook
she struggles with keeping open communication because she needs to learn how to make her team aware of changes
she struggles with having an individualistic outlook because she tended to use “I” instead of “we” on a regular occasion.

12. What I learned about mentoring…
I learned that maintaining a mentoring relationship is a crucial part to sustaining the relationship between a mentor and mentee
I learned this because at the beginning of my mentoring relationship the way we were communicating was not effective for my mentor and I.
For example- We were only communicating via outside of our two formal face to face meetings. This was difficult due to our busy work schedules and because of this our communication lacked. So, through evaluation and discussing what needed to be changed we discussed our communication plan. At that point we scheduled two additional thirty minute face to face meetings. This helped our communication increase. But, without evaluating our relationship this would have never been addressed and our communication would have suffered.

13. Benefits as an individual and a leader…
As an individual- this mentoring process has been beneficial because I have learned areas I need to work on to excel.
For example, my mentor pointed out that I need to work on assertiveness.
As a leader- I learned through experience the importance of being synergistic and always having a “we” outlook instead of “I”.
As a leader this is important because it helps keep unity within a team and it helps the team members feel important

14. Obstacles and how they can be resolved…
a mentoring style that does not meet the mentee’s needs
the mentor and mentee can have clashing personalities which results in different views and work styles
insufficient time
Some mentor’s may not be able to devote enough time to their mentee
If the mentor does not commit enough time to their mentee that can result in a lack of trust, and their relationship can suffer
Also, a mentor can expect too much progress from the mentee in an unrealistic amount of time
Results in mistakes and a poor relationship due to not giving your mentee enough time to grow professionally
To resolve a mentoring style that does not meet the mentee’s needs you need to choose the right mentor/mentee from the beginning
Also- you should address how to address conflict in your mentoring plan and try and address the issues professionally
To overcome and avoid insufficient time, I believe you need to make sure to address how the mentor and mentee is going to manage their time in their mentoring plan and stick to it

15. Future with my mentor….
My main goal of becoming my mentor’s co-worker and being promoted to “Residential Admissions Manager”
this is lined up to begin in the next four months when we make a shift in our organization and need an additional manager in our department
For the next 4-5 months- we are going to continue our mentoring relationship
it has been beneficial for our relationship as co-workers, but most importantly for our team
Through our mentoring relationship I have been able to be the “voice” for my team and I have communicated what our team wants changed to increase our productivity
at this time we think it is critical to keep our mentoring relationship while our team is growing and changing

16. Maintaining a successful relationship and ensure your mentee’s goals are met…
To maintain a mentoring relationship I would provide structure and evaluate the relationship as it progresses
To provide structure I would set up regular meetings with agendas to be sure each meeting moves towards the mentee’s goals
To evaluate the relationship:
I would discuss whether the mentor and mentee is on track to reach the goals of the mentoring relationship
I would have the mentor and mentee openly discuss with each other what they think about one another
I would have them discuss what they think is working well and why
I would have them discuss what they think could be working better
have them communicate what changes need to be made
have them discuss how they are communicating
discuss how they are managing their time

17. References
Zachary, L. (2012). The mentor’s guide: Facilitating effective learning relations (2nd ed.). San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.