Does your program meet the standards for professional mentoring?

How do you know if your mentoring program is a world-class professional program? You can certainly do benchmarking but that doesn’t necessarily guarantee that the program you’re benchmarking is meeting standards.  At Management Mentors, we have developed such standards based upon our 22 years in the mentoring field and accredit programs that do meet these standards to demonstrate the quality of that program. Altogether, we have developed over 250 standards in 8 Core Areas.  One of these is in Design (creating a mentoring program) and here is an example of standards in that area that involve diversity.

1.  There has been a discussion about diversity and whether this component will form part of the program.

2.  If diversity is a component of this program, the Design Team consists of members that can adequately represent the needs and concerns of the diversity population targeted.

3.  If diversity will form part of the mentoring program, diversity goals have been identified and are tied to a specific business objective.

4.  If diversity is a component of the program, demographics are utilized to determine the target population both for mentorees and mentors.

5.  If diversity is a component, the mentoring model or combination adequately allows for diverse mentors and mentorees to be reflected in the model(s).

How does your program measure up to these sample standards?