More involving and complex than starting a new venture is the decision to walk out of a promising career in the corporate world and take up a demanding, risky, questionable path into the world of entrepreneurship and start-ups.

With countless biographies on successful individuals and their stories, such reads serve as great inspiration when attempting to discover yourself, your capabilities and the market potential. When at the start of your career, it is important to socialize and network with individuals who have in depth knowledge in the field and can serve as mentors, able to influence the latter part of your career and stand by you through your growth cycle from a novice to a veteran.

 

Devising a Mentorship program involves key aspects in order to see its success.

8925389391_6b2e5c3063_oFirstly, know your target audience.

In order to answer this question, you should be able to answer this one first; Who is this program for and why have you devised one in the first place?

Make sure you understand who your target audience is, where they are, their development needs and their key motivations to participate.

Successful mentoring programs offer both structure and flexibility. Structure provides participants a mentoring workflow to follow and is critical to help participants achieve productive learning that reaches defined goals. Similarly, flexibility is essential to support varying individual mentoring needs across specific learning goals, preferences, and learning style.

Secondly, attract individuals towards your mentorship program. Even the best mentorship programs require promotion to boost participation. Beyond participants, key leaders and stakeholders will need to be educated on the benefits of the program and strategic value to the organization. Mentors are individuals of repute who may or may not be already burdened with work. Squeezing in sufficient time for their mentee’s, requires strict scheduling of a timetable with the respective hours they will be able to devote. Dedication and efficiency of Mentors towards the program and their mentees will be able to generate substantial interest from many more individuals looking to consider a Mentor.entrepreneur-593362_640

Thirdly, Training and reinforcement of both the parties is very essential.  Knowledge and experience can only get you so far, here after; training, motivation and communicating with each other will allow individuals the opportunity to benefit from one another’s insights of the industry. Rewards and recognition can be used to complement the program and reinforce participation.

Finally, in order to get the best out of the program, a meticulous matching mechanism has to be in place, where by the goals of the Mentor and Mentee are consonant to one another. The more you know your participants, the better the productivity of the program.

Crisp Social Ventures also has a Mentorship program in place for social entrepreneurs. To apply to the program, kindly visit www.crispsocialventures.com

 

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