Evaluation
We have been a part of many mentoring programs’ design evaluation where the coordinator thought the program was running very smoothly until we ran a program evaluation only to find from our surveys that 1 in 3 were dissatisfied. If you are running a mentoring program, your duty of care is to evaluate and re-evaluate. If you don’t run surveys, introduction & closure events or courtesy phone calls you are flying blind and you run the risk of program failure and reputation maiming.
Aside from risk assessment and avoidance, a mentoring program is so much more satisfying when it’s running effectively and your mentees are telling you it is life changing. And you need to try to hear from everyone – just a few anecdotes from a couple of happy participants that contact you can be very misleading.
Check on participant progress at least once or twice during the program, then do a complete and thorough evaluation at the end. This means a full participant survey and an internal re-think of your program design. Small changes can help you get that recipe right to really change people’s lives! Get the final mix right and reap the rewards of reaching your objectives or goals and boosting your reputation as value adding.
At Art of Mentoring we provide tools and resources for all aspects of the mentoring program design, implementation and evaluation. Please contact us for more information or take a look at our blog for more articles on mentoring.