Best Practice Club mentoring programme
This section of whodoiask provides information about the following:
What is the Best Practice Club mentoring programme?
Benefits of mentoring
What a Mentor won’t do for you
Choosing a mentor
Current Best Practice Club mentors
What is the Best Practice Club mentoring programme?
Mentoring is the one-on-one sharing of practical accumulated knowledge to provide opportunities for professional and business development, growth and support.
The Best Practice Mentoring programme is designed to assist tourism businesses by facilitating one-to-one contact with a successful tourism business operator who can act as a sounding board for ideas and issues, helping you to find the right way forward for your business.
The programme provides a pool of tourism specific business mentors that have experience in operating successful businesses, who have “been there and done that” and learned from their mistakes along the way, and have a wealth of knowledge within an area of expertise.
Benefits of mentoring
The mentor is there to share ideas with and approach for help with problems and issues. Mentors typically have;
- Relevant tourism business experience
- An ability to actively listen
- Can motivate and act as an inspiration
- Open minded
The benefits to your business of accessing a mentor may include;
- Technical advice on HR or sector specific issues
- Managerial development
- Opening your eyes to new opportunities
- Utilising your businesses core strengths & identifying potential areas to work on
- Providing a confidential, supportive “ear” from someone who knows it can be tough at the top!
What a Mentor won’t do for you
The relationship you have with your mentor is largely up to you, but these are some of the things that a Mentor will not do:
- Tell you what to do – they will discuss the options, but the decision making rests with you
- Solve a problem – once the Mentor is working with you, they may not even agree with you what the problem is, but they will provide the benefit of their experience in getting to the bottom of issues and helping you find solutions that work best for your business
Choosing a mentor
Choosing your mentor is a very individual process. Each business is different and therefore may require a slightly different approach.
It is up to you to decide who you feel is ‘right’!!
However, you can expect all the Best Practice Club mentors to;
- Listen
- Guide
- Suggest options and alternatives
- Support and encourage
- Share experiences
- Maintain confidentiality
Although all Best Practice Club members are Human Resource Management “Exemplars”, each mentor will have his or her areas of special expertise and therefore it is up to you to find the right person that best matches your business need.
The cost associated with mentoring is to be decided between yourself and your mentor, and will depend on how long the mentoring relationship lasts and how it is conducted e.g. number of visits to your business, extent of phone or email contact etc. Therefore it is vital to be open and honest about what you help you feel you need, to ensure the mentor is able to assess the relevance of their experience to your issues, and to agree any associated costs.
It is up to you to negotiate any fee and the working relationship!
Current Best Practice Club mentors
Visit our Current Mentors Page to see details of the people involved with this schem currently.
Please note that the Tourism Training Forum for Wales, takes no responsibility for any business arrangement between any of the mentors.
There is no guarantee that advice & guidance provided will result in profits & or turnover.
