Consulting and Support for Mentoring in the Workplace
In my recent blog, I shared some of the hidden treasures you can find in River mentoring software. I capped my list at five items, but there were many more that I was eager to talk about. A few of these have nothing to do with the software itself, per se, but are instead some of the highly acclaimed services that we offer in conjunction with our mentoring software.
Our consulting and training services are often a pleasant surprise to people who reach out to us for information on our mentoring software. As we say around here, River is a mentoring solution, not just software. So when people contact us thinking they are just going to buy software, we gladly share how we provide a full-service solution that provides them with support and expertise every step of the way as they set up and run their mentoring programs.
These consulting and training services are one of the ways River sets ourselves apart from the competition. We are mentoring experts who have decades of experience in this area; but we also have experience in organizational development, leadership development, and employee development that we incorporate into our day-to-day work with our mentoring clients.
Here are three of the hidden treasures that we offer at River outside of our software that really get people talking.
Training Services
Whether you need mentee or mentor training (or both), River offers in-person and virtual training options that can be tailored to your unique needs. Our training services help your mentees and mentors develop an understanding of what mentoring is and how it can take shape, and it provides them with strategies for establishing and sustaining mentoring relationships. In short, our training helps your participants start off on the right foot. Training can be geared toward people in one-to-one relationships, reverse mentoring, or group mentoring.
Popular topics within our training options include:
- Kicking-off Relationships
- Creating Goals
- Establishing Expectations
- Building Trust
- Having Productive Conversations (Developmental Dialogue)
We will gladly work with you to customize the training for your audience, and we can even offer train-the-trainer services so that you can deliver the training using your own staff.
Certification
In addition to training your mentees and mentors on the basics of mentoring, we also offer certifications in two areas: mentor certification and mentoring/learning group leader certification. The certification process for both of these options follows a multi-pronged approach where your participants attend an in-person or virtual workshop to learn the concepts of leading a group, and then take part in a group mentoring relationship in River facilitated by our team. This group mentoring experience gives participants a chance to put concepts into action in the real world while also being able to lean on our experts for guidance and advice. As the participants complete specific activities, they can attain different levels of certification. (Read Randy Emelo’s article about mentor certification that was published in Chief Learning Officer magazine for more details.)
Our mentor certification focuses on how to effectively conduct mentoring relationships and covers such topics as:
- The Role and Responsibilities of the Mentor
- Setting REAL Mentoring Goals
- Establishing Expectations
- Building Trust
- Evaluating Impact
River’s mentoring/learning group leader certification is designed for mentoring champions and group leaders, and it focuses on how to effectively lead virtual mentoring/learning groups. Topics include:
- How Groups Work
- Creating a Group
- Forming Your Learning Group
- Leading the Learning
- Question-Driven Learning
As with our other training options, we also offer train-the-trainer services for our certification process.
Content Package
One of River’s secret weapons is our content package. With options including videos, newsletters, and tips for your participants, River’s Content Package provides your mentees and mentors with pertinent information that supports their mentoring relationships, professional growth, and overall development. As an added bonus, the content can be loaded into River and made available within people’s mentoring relationships. This allows your participants to get quality and relevant information while they are in the midst of their relationship, giving your mentees and mentors a robust mentoring experience.
Some of the content that makes up this package includes:
- Our renowned mentoring newsletter series covering such topics as Mentoring 101, Mentoring Conversations, and Learning through Differences. The newsletters provide advice on different components of mentoring and include practice exercises that mentors and mentees can put into action within their relationships.
- River’s First Three Meeting Guides, which provide tips, tools, and techniques for mentees and mentors as they begin their relationship, as well as a sample agenda for each meeting.
- Brief 5-7 minute videos that provide a self-directed approach to learning and skill development for mentees and mentors on topics such as Mentoring Basics.
If you have your own content that you want to share within River, we can accommodate that as well. And for the cherry on top, River lets you configure which of your mentoring programs sees which pieces of content.
Now that you are aware of a few more of the hidden gems in River, we hope that you are ready to see what all the fuss is about. Our clients come to us because they want to work hand-in-hand with experts who will be a guide throughout their journey as they implement and run a mentoring program. It goes beyond software; River is a full-service mentoring solution that blends our powerful software with our impeccable consulting and services. We look forward to showing you why that matters.
