Mentor Training – Competence, Confidence and Striving for Self-Efficacy

Posted October 7, 2016

October 4, 2016 / shaneodonnellblog

The Importance of Mentors and Managing Self-Doubt

The importance and benefits of having a mentor(s) is irrefutable. At some point in your life, through sport, music, work or other interests, you may have considered someone your mentor. What made them standout in your mind? Their experience? Their advice and support? Maybe it was the way in which they gave advice – with empathy and understanding. To me a mentor is someone who could provide me with trusted advice, support, and guidance at a level I can understand in a non-judgemental manner. Whoever your mentor may have been or still continues to be, motivates you to be the best and inspires you to be even more.

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Active Future Programme Mentor Training

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Michael Byrne – the co-designer and coordinator of the programme – delivered an excellent session on mentor training with our Sport Science students this past week. The focus of the training was to provide our students with the tools necessary to be the best possible mentor, to answer any worries or concerns they might have and to educate on child protection and health and safety practices.

The mentors engaged in group discussions exploring how to effectively deal with various scenarios. Some of these scenarios included how to involve participants who don’t want to participate, how to deal with bullying issues and what to do in the event of participants becoming physically aggressive. An input on managing behaviours proved to be very useful to the students, outlining the do’s, don’t and tips of managing behaviours.

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Michael guided the mentors through leader boundaries and responsibilities some of which included; avoiding connection with participants on social media, how to develop a professional, supportive and appropriate relationship with participants, and how to handle different types of disclosures from participants. The mentor training was wrapped up with a very comprehensive health and safety input covering mentor safety in engaging with this cohort, child protection in sport, and screening equipment to ensure it is fit for purpose.

I know I found the mentor training extremely useful and I believe the mentors did too. It certainly has made me feel more capable to engage with the participants, dismiss some of my fears and deliver the inputs in the best possible way. If it wasn’t for self-doubt none of this would have been possible!

Read the full article in here.

The Active Future Programme begins today, 7th of October.
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