This edition of Professional Military Education (PME) takes a close look at the art of mentoring.

Firstly, start by reading this short article on mentoring which defines some key mentoring terms. Next, read this article, and watch the videos contained within it, that explore the purpose of mentoring in detail. Finally, take a look at this website that uses software to match mentees with suitable mentors to enable mentoring programs to be created within organisations.

Want More?

For a more in depth look at mentoring in the Australian Army, read the following articles:

Discussion Questions

  1. What do you consider the role of a mentor to be?
  2. Do you think mentors can choose who they mentor? Or are mentors chosen by their mentees?
  3. If you have a mentor or mentee, how did the mentorship begin?
  4. What do you think about the mentor ‘match making’ software contained in the third article and do you think it could be beneficial to match mentees with suitable mentors in Army?
  5. What do you think the role of NCOs and WOs is when mentoring in Army? Who should you mentor and how?
  6. Have you ever had a junior officer not listen to your guidance and mentorship on a subject? What have you done in that situation?
  7. Do you think that allowing your mentee to experience failure is a part of successfully mentoring them?
  8. Do you think that having mentors outside of your own specialisation or outside of the military is beneficial? Or should your mentor be similar to you?
  9. Do you think that mentorship should be structure or adhoc?
  10. What can you do to be a better mentor? How can you get more out of your own mentors?

Other Activities

If you enjoyed this activity, why not try the other PMEs available on The Cove?

Want more material? For JNCOs to conduct with their soldiers, here is a link to our Quick Military Education resources. For Junior Officers here is a link to our Junior Officer PME sessions.

Concluding Comments

If you have suggestions for improvements – additional readings or reference material, alternative discussion points, new delivery methods – or just wish to provide feedback, please contact The Cove Team via the.cove@defence.gov.au.

Here are the facilitator notes for this PME