Mentoring is a highly effective way to support someone's growth, development, and career progression, while also sharing your own knowledge, skills, and experience and expanding your network.
But what do you actually do in your mentoring sessions? Below are 20 practical mentoring activities to try with your mentoring partner. Pick a few that align with your goals and weave them into your sessions over time.
Want to level up in your role as a mentor or mentee? Complete the Mentorloop Academy training course for comprehensive guidance on building a great mentoring relationship.
What activities can you do in mentoring sessions?
Mentoring activities go beyond general conversation. The best mentoring sessions include structured activities that help the mentee reflect, practise new skills, and take action. The 20 ideas below are grouped into five themes: planning, reflection, skill-building, networking, and career development.
Planning and goal setting
Starting with clear goals and a plan ensures your mentoring relationship has direction from the start.
- Set your mentoring goals together. Identify what you each want to get out of this relationship. What does success look like? Use Mentorloop's SMART goals framework to make your goals specific and trackable.
- Create a mentoring action plan. Review the activities in this list together and choose a few to work through. Map them to a rough timeline so you have a plan for the months ahead.
- Build a vision statement. Ask the mentee to write a short statement capturing where they want to be in three to five years and what they want to be known for. Review and discuss it together.
- Do a mid-point review. Halfway through your program, revisit your original goals. What progress has been made? What needs adjusting? Update your goals in Mentorloop to reflect any changes.
Reflection and storytelling
Sharing stories and reflecting on experiences builds trust and surfaces insights that pure advice-giving can't.
- Share your career stories. Each of you share the "story of your career", how you got to where you are today, the turning points, and the decisions that shaped your path.
- Discuss a challenging situation. Have the mentee describe a recent challenge they faced. What was the outcome? Brainstorm alternate approaches they could try next time.
- Exchange and review each other's CVs or LinkedIn profiles. How are key achievements represented? Are there differences in how you each present yourselves? This can reveal gaps in how the mentee positions their experience.
- Reflect on strengths and overused strengths. Discuss the mentee's key strengths, how to develop them further, and what problems can arise from over-relying on them.
Skill-building and practice
Mentoring is most powerful when it includes hands-on practice, not just conversation.
- Role-play a challenging conversation. Practise an upcoming interaction the mentee is unsure about, a difficult conversation with a manager, a salary negotiation, or a project pitch. Debrief and refine the approach together.
- Observe and give feedback. Sit in on a meeting or presentation the mentee is leading and provide specific, constructive feedback on their performance afterwards.
- Practise presenting or public speaking. Have the mentee deliver a presentation to you and provide feedback on content, delivery, and confidence. Record it on video if they're comfortable, so they can self-review.
- Work through a real problem together. Bring a live work challenge to the session and collaborate on solving it. This gives the mentee a window into your thinking process.
- Recommend and discuss resources. Suggest a book, article, podcast, or course relevant to the mentee's goals. In a follow-up session, discuss what they took from it and how they'll apply it.
Networking and exposure
Mentors can open doors that the mentee might not be able to access on their own.
- Make a strategic introduction. Introduce the mentee to someone in your network who could help with their career goals — a peer in another department, an industry contact, or a former colleague.
- Attend an event together. Go to an industry event, conference, or professional networking session together. Debrief afterwards on who you met and what you learned.
- Invite the mentee to shadow you. Have the mentee sit in on one of your meetings to see how you operate in a different context. This gives them exposure to a level or area of the business they wouldn't normally see.
- Map the mentee's stakeholder network. Help them identify the key people they need to build relationships with to progress in their career, and discuss strategies for connecting with each one.
Career development and growth
These activities focus on longer-term career planning and professional identity.
- Identify skill gaps for the next role. Research what skills, experience, or qualifications the mentee needs for the role they're working towards. Build a plan to close the gaps.
- Explore career options and trade-offs. If the mentee is at a crossroads, map out the options together, pros, cons, risks, and what each path looks like in practice. Use the mentor's experience to stress-test assumptions.
- Create a personal brand statement. Help the mentee articulate what they're known for, what they want to be known for, and how to close the gap. This can inform how they show up in meetings, on LinkedIn, and in conversations with leadership.
How to use these activities in Mentorloop
Mentorloop gives you the tools to plan, track, and follow through on these activities:
- Goals: Turn any activity into a goal with tasks and due dates. For example, "Complete three informational interviews" with individual tasks for each one.
- Meeting agendas: Use the meeting agenda templates to structure a session around a specific activity, a role-play, a CV review, or a career planning discussion.
- Notes: Capture key takeaways and actions after each session using the Notes feature. Share with your mentoring partner so you both have a record.
- Scheduling: Book your next session from within your Loop before you finish the current one. Consistent sessions are what turn good intentions into real progress.