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Mentoring scheme
IIRSM’s mentoring scheme helps you be a mentor or mentee to develop your skills, grow your network, receive one-to-one support from a dedicated professional to enhance your existing experience and support career progression and employability. In addition, it's a great way to maintain your CPD.
IIRSM members can benefit from a brilliant digital platform with a wealth of tools to help you find a suitable mentoring match, manage your mentoring relationships, schedule meetings and track goals, whether you’re a mentor or mentee. Register here or find out a little more in the Digital Platform section below.
Whether you’re meeting face-to-face or online, our scheme has been developed to align with the IIRSM Risk Management and Leadership Competence Framework. The framework helps you identify any knowledge or skills gaps that the mentoring relationship can help you develop and enhance.
Find out more about IIRSM mentoring and our new digital platform for members below.
“You may not think that you have the time or knowledge or confidence to give. I'd say please think about it, I'm a keen advocate of 'micro-volunteering' and doing bits and pieces to fit around your schedule. There are always people in need, so if you have skills, knowledge, and experience to share it could be invaluable to an individual that is new to the industry. If potential mentors are wary of how they present themselves or not the most confident, then this could be the opportunity to work on these attributes yourself, but to also remember that you can do things in your own way, there is no absolute right or wrong way, as long as it provides value to your mentee, don't feel overwhelmed of the prospect of getting involved. We need you!” Kevin Robins, IIRSM member
"The one thing I can genuinely say is that this has been a brilliant journey and one that I don’t regret!" IIRSM mentee
Mentoring is a method of helping an individual reflect, learn and develop professionally through the support of someone with more or different experience.
Anyone in any stage of their career can benefit from being mentored, from someone just entering the world of work through to someone in a leadership role who may be dealing with new challenges or opportunities.
Mentoring provides mentees with the opportunity to:
- acquire new knowledge and skills
- improve self-awareness and confidence
- discuss challenges and aspirations with a neutral person
- gain insight from someone with different experiences
- grow network
Mentoring provides mentors with the opportunity to:
- positively impact the performance and career development of someone else
- build and improve skills in developing others
- gain new insights from mentees
- grow network
Like mentoring, coaching is another method of helping an individual reflect, learn and develop professionally. However, there are some distinct differences.
Coaching |
Mentoring |
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|---|---|---|
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Objectives |
Coaching usually focuses on the development of a specifc skill. |
Mentoring has a broader remit. As well as helping individuals develop specific skills, the intervention can also provide broader careers support. |
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Structure |
Coaching is a regular, structured intervention. |
Mentoring may be more reactive in nature, with the individual seeking support and guidance from a mentor as and when they need it. |
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Length |
Coaching relationships are usually relatively short-term. Once the objective has been met the intervention will no longer be required. |
As mentoring is about providing broader support, the length of the relationship can be much longer. |
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Level of directiveness |
Coaches use non-directive techniques, meaning they do not tell the individual how to achieve a change but guide them in indentifying the steps they need to take. |
Whilst mentors may also use non-directive coaching techniques, they can also share examples and lessons learned from their own experiences for the individual to consider. |
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Experience |
Coaches do not necessarily need experience of the individuals work area, but will need training or experience of coaching techniques. |
Mentors usually hold experience which is directly relevant to the individual's professional objectives. They will be able to share relevant experiences from their own career. |
Webinar recording
In 2019, Hugh Maxwell FIIRSM and Grant Thompson SIIRSM, two IIRSM members who were paired under the scheme, shared their experiences and top tips for success during our webinar 'Reaping the benefits: IIRSM mentoring scheme.' You can view the recording here.
We interviewed some of our mentor/mentee pairings and you can read their thoughts on the scheme by clicking the links below:
Hugh Maxwell FIIRSM and Grant Thompson MIIRSM
Andrew Hornsby MIIRSM and Kareem Atef MIIRSM
We expect those participating in the scheme to be matched for an initial period of 3 months, however there are no set rules and the relationship can continue beyond this point if all is going well. The most important thing is that both parties agree and commit to the duration at the beginning of their relationship, and any changes to this later down the line are also mutually agreed.
The frequency and length of each meeting is to be mutually agreed by the matched individuals. It will depend on what the mentee wants to achieve as well as the time both are able to commit. As a minimum, we would expect individuals to meet at least three times over three month period. Meetings can take place face-to-face or remotely, via the IIRSM Mentoring platform, Teams or telephone.
There are three programmes available: 
Programme 1: Career Progression Mentoring Program
Join this scheme as a mentee if you are seeking support from someone who has 'been there, done that'.
Join this scheme as a mentor, if you are an experienced professional who has a strong interest and enthusiasm for developing individuals earlier on in their career.
Programme 2: Peer to Peer mentoring scheme
Peer to Peer mentoring is for you if you're looking to connect with an individual working at the same level as you but in a different function, company or industry to gain an alternative perspective on how to approach your work, to share your own experiences and support one another through similar challenges.
Programme 3: Reverse mentoring scheme
Reverse mentoring has, in recent years, become a popular approach to mentoring. The biggest difference is that reverse mentoring is where those who typically wouldn’t have considered themselves to be experienced enough to be a mentor are. The reverse mentor often mentors someone more senior to share challenges they’re facing, educating them and helping them to develop in a wider array of areas and focal points.
You must be an IIRSM member to be eligible for the Mentoring Scheme. In order to access the exclusive registration link page you must be logged in to the website. To log in please use your preferred email address and password (you can request a password reset if necessary). Once logged in, please follow this link.
As part of the process you are asked to provide some information about your experience and what are you are looking to achieve through participation in the scheme, whether as a mentor or mentee.
When you register on our mentoring platform as a IIRSM mentor and/or mentee and answer some simple questions about you and what you want to achieve, you’ll receive a list of recommended mentoring matches.
Recommendations will be based on a wide range of data sets and our platform’s algorithms take into account the following when suggesting suitable mentoring matches:
- Availability of mentors
- Location of mentors and mentees
- Organisations of mentors and mentees
- Universities or colleges of mentors and mentees
- Profile and mentoring preference keywords
- Mentoring areas of help
Once you’ve found a suitable mentor or mentee, you can click on the ‘Request’ button and then complete a very simple form to set expectations on things like length of mentorship and frequency of meetings.
And if you receive a mentoring request, either from someone requesting you as a mentor or mentee, you’ll be notified by email.
Each mentoring relationships has its own ‘management panel’ to help you view details and keep track of the goals you’ve set.
And scheduling a new mentoring meeting couldn’t be easier. You’ll be able to simply click on the ‘Schedule a Meeting’ bar and select a date, time, time zone and mentoring meeting length.
Sign up on the platform on this page and start your mentoring journey today.
If you have any questions or wish to find out more about the scheme before you apply, please contact us at: info@iirsm.org