Coaching, Mentoring and Sponsorship

Coaching and mentoring provide you with one to one and group support to help you develop in your role and career.

Coaching 

Mentoring

  • Coaching provides a space for self-reflection, allowing you to gain valuable insights into your strengths, weaknesses, and areas for improvement. 
  • Mentoring usually involves a senior colleague, the mentor, sharing their professional knowledge and experience with a less experienced individual, known as the mentee.
  • Coaches will tend to focus on agreed skills to develop through using observation, questioning, listening and feedback to provide insights for dealing with situations.
  • The mentor provides support and motivation for career aspirations and development.
  • More formal
  • More informal
  • Shorter-term
  • Longer-term

A Culture of Sponsorship is where all colleagues, especially managers and leaders, are active in sponsoring staff on their journey from career aspirations to achieving career-related goals.

Sponsorship can mean many different things to different people. Imagine there’s a door you want to step through. Sponsorship is when someone doesn’t just show you the door or even open it. Sponsorship is about actively helping you step through it to reach the other side.


  • Door Drawing

Coaching

We partner with an external coaching provider who works with a diverse network of experienced, accredited coaches. All sessions take place online, making it easy to schedule at a time convenient for you.

Mentoring

Mentoring is a supportive learning relationship between two people – usually referred to as a mentor and a mentee.

Culture of Sponsorship

This guide is designed to support a fair, transparent, and purposeful culture of sponsorship at the University of Edinburgh. It is intended to inform, not prescribe, as sponsorship is not a programme or a promise; it is a set of behaviours which all staff can demonstrate.

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