Mentoring Methods

The primary method that STEPUP.WORK uses in its MYCAREERMENTOR is to help professionals learn and grow is experiential learning. In addition, STEPUP.WORK and MYCAREERMENTOR provide many other learning resources, including online information and courses available only on the STEPUP.WORK website.  STEPUP.WORK provides referrals to articles in business and professional journals, resources made available by professional organizations, trade books, sources of workshops, self-pace training, in-person courses, certification programs, website-published articles, and advice on how to fine live mentors and coaches.​
​The approach we use is based on the premise that the skills a person needs in order to be successful in any profession can be practiced, using career development opportunities as the target of pro-active actions and reflection.   
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STEPUP.WORK encourages aspiring professionals to consciously identify opportunities in their daily work life in which they can practice newly acquired skills and knowledge that is designed to make them more effective employees, in the present, as a means to developing the larger skills and experience-based judgment that will help to advance their careers, in the future. 

​The table below illustrates some of these skills, and
​how they can be practiced with our approach.
SKILLS
CAN BE PRACTICED BY
Data gathering (identifying what data/information could be useful, assessing the cost/time required to gather the data, learning what sources provide useful information) 
Gathering data relevant to your own career progress
Assessment of data/information
Assessing data relevant to your career progress and acquisition of skills
Diagnostic skills (identifying and framing problems, risks and opportunities)
Diagnosing your own frustrations
Identifying opportunities for yourself
Discovery skills (cause and effect relationships, understanding of issues and their context)
Noticing effects of actions you take
Discovering issues within your own organization and learning about their context
Identifying and exploring alternative hypotheses
Identifying possible hypothesis about your own learning, and exploring different actions to see which are most effective in acquiring new skills
Assessing trade-offs, such as the value of acquiring more data/information versus the value of making an immediate decision or taking quick action
Assessing trade-offs between getting more data on issues in your organization and taking immediate action
Decision-making
Making choices about learning opportunities
​The beauty of our approach is that you do not need to explicitly
choose to do any of the actions in the second column of this table –
instead, you just need to answer a few questions, and accept at least a few of the
​learn-by-doing action learning opportunities that MYCAREERMENTOR offers you.

The Philosophy underlying
our approach includes the following elements:

People are most effectively able to use their own strengths, skills and knowledge when they have a sense of empowerment (they feel capable of making a constructive impact on their circumstances) and self-responsibility (they notice and accept the consequences of their choices and actions).
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Often our unhappiness and dissatisfaction – at work, and in the rest of our lives as well – stems from the gap between our expectations and reality.  Acquiring the information and insights that enable us to form realistic expectations can significantly improve our happiness and satisfaction.

One of our strengths as humans is recognizing patterns.  This requires systematic collection and review of data, so we can see the patterns, and move from data to information to insights.  However, most of us rarely collect systematic data on ourselves; instead, we rely on our intuitive knowledge of self.  So it is possible to make progress in our careers by systematically collecting and using data on our self, either on our own initiative, or with the help of a mentor.
The approach we use is based on the premise that the skills a person needs in order to be successful in any profession can be practiced, using career development opportunities as the target of pro-active actions and reflection.  (This can be considered to be a personal, individual version of the maxim that many start-ups companies live by: “eat your own dog food” or, in other words, use the tools/techniques/approaches you sell to others for your own work. The personal version of this is to practice in your career development efforts the use of the same skills and knowledge that will make you a more effective employee or leader.)
Directed Questions and Answers
STEPUP.WORK proposes to address these needs by offering MYCAREERMENTOR users a "self-diagnostic" interaction based on guided questioning.  A workplace-related question is offered up, to which the user selects from a set of answers the most personally-relevant answer. The selected answer is immediately assessed, and it may lead to a further question, for which the user provides yet another answer selection.  These question and answer interactions continue, until MYCAREERMENTOR can determine what immediate "learning opportunity" the user needs in order to tackle the currently explored area of challenge or frustration at work, or in their larger career.
Experiential Learning 
Based on the individual’s needs, goals, and previously drawn mentoring conclusions, MYCAREERMENTOR offers the user a "nugget" of immediately relevant information or guidance.  Then, more questions and answers might ensue, leading to richer or more nuanced "nuggets" of mentoring advice. These might include referrals to one or more immediately relevant websites, articles, books, workshops, training classes, and/or even formal courses. 

Ultimately, the user reaches an offering of an opportunity for deeper learning by following a set of suggested actions accompanied by thoughtful observation, and followed up by drawing conclusions. 

Users are free to return to MYCAREERMENTOR as often as necessary--and at their own pace--to address the same and/or other workplace frustrations, opportunities, and specific career advancement topics that are of importance to them at that moment.  The users simply start over, selecting their way through new path of diagnostic questions and answer selections. These, in turn, lead to other "nuggets" of advice and learning opportunities that are uniquely relevant to the latest line of diagnostic questioning.

On the rare occasion when a specific path of advice, guidance and learning opportunities ultimately either fails to appeal to a user--or, despite that user's having taken all appropriate advice and actions, they indicate their efforts were not successful--then,  MYCAREERMENTOR also can advise users on how to seek out "live" mentoring and/or coaching services or programs that might lead to more success.
                           Self Assessment through Reflection on Learning Experiences
So the first value of reflection is to give us the opportunity to consider our assumptions, and identify assumptions that proved inaccurate.  We human are wired very effectively for this kind of discovery: surprise is the only neutral human emotion, and it cues us to recognize gaps between our expectations and reality.
MYCAREERMENTOR encourages users to practice taking some time to reflect on their learning experiences, to better understand, articulate, and help remember longer their own personal "take-aways" from their successes and failures.  Most of us humans learn most effectively by doing.  But it turns out that merely doing is not sufficient – we also need to reflect on what we have done, the actions we have taken, and the results we obtained, in order to learn all that an experience has to offer.  We use reflection to increase the likelihood of learning, and the depth of learning from an experience.

How can reflection increase the likelihood of learning, and the depth of learning from an experience?  There are several ways in which reflection is effective.  The first is that when we act, we always make a number of assumptions – assumptions about the way the world works, and assumptions about the likely consequences of various actions we take.
The second value of reflection is to put emotional distance between events and ourselves.  When we are closely emotionally involved with events, it is harder for us to clearly see what happened, and what role our own actions and thoughts had in creating the outcome.  Reflection can offer the distance needed for us to gain perspective, and see more fully what happened, and how we influenced events.​​
The third value of reflection is that it is itself an action – and by taking time to reflect, we reinforce for ourselves the basic truth that we have the ability to take action to affect our circumstances.  Often, just reflecting on recent events allows us to see ways in which we can influence future events, and shape our future more to our liking.