A mentee-mentor relationship entails work, commitment, and follow-through on both sides if it’s going to be successful. Consider the following traits to assess your mentoring skills and areas that you wish to develop to ensure that the mentoring you offer is effective and has lasting value.
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- Good listener/sounding board
- Flexible
- Value diversity of perspectives
- Knowledgeable
- Nonjudgmental
- Able to give constructive feedback
- Honest and candid
- Able to network and find resources
- Successful in career
- Willing/able to devote time to developing others
- Eager to learn
Training is followed up by mentorship cycles by at least one mentor to ensure successful knowledge transfer and implementation of the QMS. During the mentorship, some elements of the QMS will be implemented directly by consultants and lab staff while others will be assigned to staff in form of a post mentorship action plan. This will enable staff to know the kind of evidence being created and to own their system for sustainability. A minimum of 6 mentorship cycles are required to have a laboratory accredited with each having its deliverables and following up on the deliverables of the previous mentorship. A report is generated for each mentorship cycle.
All mentorships cycles are supervised as provided for the operations protocols. During implementation, traceability of the methods and processes is assured.