Mentorship Program
The OPEN Houston Mentorship program promotes professional development and fosters a professional relationship across OPEN Houston members to share advice, input and feedback to help growth and success in their professional and personal goals.
The program is open to OPEN-Houston members in good standing. Interested candidates should demonstrate a willingness to build and maintain confidentiality and trust. The mentee will be responsible for maintaining communication, scheduling and correspondence.
The mentees in the program are responsible for the following:
- Develop his/her top three to four personal and professional goals to facilitate discussion with the mentor.
- Email an agenda prior to lunch for mentor’s review.
- Follow agreed upon action plan developed from the mentoring discussions.
- Provide feedback to OPEN Houston coordinator on the progress/benefits from the program
The mentors in the program are responsible for the following:
- Guide and share your experiences with the mentee
- Serve as a facilitator - if the mentee is interested in learning more about a particular field, connect them to someone in your network and the mentee can reach out to them.
- Quarterly or monthly lunch with mentee – based on mutual agreement
Optional Guidelines for New Mentees
- The first meeting can be an informal, face to face or Skype meeting so the participants can get to know each other and establish a schedule, or maintain communication if face to face meetings will be irregular. Mentees can feel free to discuss their goals and their expectations for the relationship if they feel comfortable doing so.
- After the first meeting, the mentee should develop topics of discussion consisting of personal, professional, and educational skills and/or goals they would like to develop or advance, and prioritize them. Then he/she will present them to the mentor and ask for input to add or modify the list.
- Further conversations focus on how to meet the outlined goals, as well as new ones, and establishing deadlines for set goals.
- A mentee is not obliged to follow every guidance offered by their mentors. However, they are encouraged to discuss different points of views.
- It is typically not easy to discuss opposing views and mentors can only offer guidance (which is totally optional for a mentee to follow). However, if the mentor does not see progress/improvement in the desired area - they can communicate their observation to the mentee and even decide to terminate the relationship if it is not perceived to be beneficial.
"The OPEN mentoring program provided me a fantastic opportunity to learn from successful leaders in our community. I've been able to bounce ideas off my mentors in a risk free environment and have received invaluable guidance and feedback. My mentors have played a key role in my current professional successes and in shaping my future goals."
-OPEN EL member
