What a good mentor does
The benefits of mentoring are small but real, around 0.2 of a standard deviation in meta-analysis of youth mentoring programmes reported by DuBois and colleagues in 2011, and they come from what the mentor does rather than from who the mentor is.
A volunteer who has been matched, or is about to be, and wants the role described in behaviours rather than in adjectives.
The mentee, by keeping the relationship inside the scheme where it can be seen. Every boundary here exists because breaking it moves the relationship somewhere nobody can supervise.
Kind volunteers break boundaries for kind reasons: a lift home in the rain, twenty pounds until Friday, a promise not to tell. Each is defensible alone, and together they build a private relationship no coordinator can see into.
Turning up on the agreed day, listening past the point where it gets uncomfortable, and declining to solve the problem produce that effect. Charisma, life experience and good intentions do not, which is the most useful thing a new volunteer can be told.
What the benefits actually are, for both people in the pair
The benefits divide unevenly between the two people, so name them separately. What moves the mentee is consistency over months: someone outside the family and outside the system, not paid to be there, who turns up anyway. What moves the mentor is different.
- Practice at listening without steering, which transfers into managing people.
- A concrete picture of a part of your own area you had no reason to see.
- Tolerance for slow progress, because there is no weekly scoreboard.
- The satisfaction of having been reliable to one named person for a year.
Programme practice, not mentor quality, decides whether any of that happens. Matching, training, supervision and match length move the effect far more than the individual does.
What a mentoring relationship is, and what it is not
A mentoring relationship is a bounded, purposeful, time-limited friendship arranged by a third party, and every word is doing work. Bounded means the lines below. Purposeful means the pair works loosely towards something the mentee wants. Time-limited means a stated end from the first meeting rather than a fade. Arranged by a third party means the scheme is a permanent presence, not an introduction agency.
It is not therapy, advocacy, case work, a substitute parent, or friendship in the ordinary sense, because ordinary friendships are not supervised and do not end on a planned date.
The four behaviours that produce the benefit
Four behaviours produce almost all of the benefit, and none is a personal quality.
Turn up
Turn up on the agreed day, at the agreed time, for the whole agreed period. This is the base everything else rests on, and it is boring. Matches ending before three months are associated with outcomes worse than no match at all, reported by Grossman and Rhodes in 2002. That study did not compare a steady mentor with a vivid one, so it cannot settle the point on its own, but it is why a scheme would rather have a volunteer who attends unremarkably for a year than one who is brilliant for two months. When you cannot make it, say so in advance, to the mentee as well as the coordinator, and give the next date in the same message.
Listen longer than is comfortable
Listen past the silence. The instinct is to fill the gap almost at once with a question or a story of your own, and the thing worth hearing usually arrives only if you do not. Ask what happened, then what happened next, then nothing.
Do not solve
Do not solve the problem the mentee describes, even when the answer is obvious and they are visibly stuck. Solving takes the problem away from them, and trains them to bring you problems rather than think aloud. Ask what they have tried.
Do not rescue
Do not rescue. Rescuing is solving with money, transport, or calls to their landlord or their school, and it is the commonest way a well-meaning volunteer ends up outside their role. Anything resembling rescue goes to the coordinator, who has the mandate and the insurance for it.
The lines you hold, and the reason behind each one
The lines are those same behaviours seen from the other end, and each needs its reason attached, because a rule with no reason gets broken the first time it feels unkind. Expect every one of these requests. None makes the mentee manipulative.
| The request | The answer | The reason |
|---|---|---|
| Lend me some money until Friday | No, and tell the coordinator today | Money turns a voluntary relationship into a debt, and debt stops the mentee ending the match freely. |
| Give me a lift | Only if policy allows it and both insurances are confirmed in writing | Your own motor insurer, not the scheme, decides whether you are covered carrying a passenger, and a car is unobserved time. |
| Add me on social media | No; contact goes through the scheme’s channel | Private social contact is unlogged and opens a route to the mentee that outlives the match. |
| What is your mobile number | Give the scheme’s number or its issued method | A personal number cannot be withdrawn, reaches you at midnight, and reaches your family. |
| Here is a present | Accept only what is small and occasional, and declare it | Gifts create obligation whichever way they travel, and an undeclared pattern of giving is a recognised opening of grooming. |
| Can I have a hug | Follow the written policy, normally public places and minimal contact | Ambiguity about physical contact protects nobody, and a written policy is what you point at when it is questioned later. |
| Promise you will not tell anyone | No, and say so before they tell you | Confidentiality has a stated limit, and a promise you must break is worse for the mentee than a limit stated honestly at the start. |
The mentee starts with “do not tell anyone, but”
Interrupt before they finish and repeat what you said at the first meeting: you keep things between you unless someone is being hurt, in which case you pass it to one named person. Then let them talk. Afterwards write down what was said in their own words, with date and time, and pass it to the designated safeguarding contact the same day. Do not question them further, do not investigate, do not tell the family. The coordinator decides the referral and tells you what happens next.
Report a line you have already crossed, even though nothing bad happened. Nothing bad happening is why the next one is easier.
The mentor
- Holds the line and gives the reason, rather than refusing without one.
- Records boundary requests in the session log, including the easy ones.
- Raises anything uncomfortable at the next supervision.
- Names the ending at the start, and again in the final third.
The mentee
- Is told the limits of confidentiality in plain words, not in a leaflet.
- Can test a boundary without being treated as a problem for it.
- Knows who to speak to about the mentor, by name.
- Gets a planned last session, with notice.
The scheme owes both of them the boundaries in writing before the match starts, in a version the mentee can actually read, and supervision frequent enough that a small crossing surfaces while it is still small. A boundary policy living only in the volunteer handbook is one the mentee never agreed to.