Your RTO mentor should help you drive, not take the wheel
RTO mentoring is often seen as a ‘gauzy topic’ which can be tough to pin down. Our RTO mentors and advisors help you drive, not take the wheel.
RTO mentoring is often seen as a ‘gauzy topic’ which can be tough to pin down. What does success look like? Are there any tangible deliverables? What’s the difference between mentoring and coaching? Quite often business mentors or advisors will keep it vague because if you can’t define it, then there’s no obligation to really deliver on anything except a warm, fuzzy, mentor-y feeling.
In our explanation of coaching we use the analogy of asking a tennis coach to help you with your serve. The coach works on this skill alone because that’s what you paid for. Mentoring gives you the full picture and talks about the why; how the serve fits into the rest of the game, why you should care about the other aspects of the game, and all the insights in between.
From RTO Setup Help to Major Troubleshooting
So what does mentoring look like in the context of your RTO? When we mentor you, we are effectively educating you by providing a semi-structured learning and sharing experience rather than just advice.
As such, we may not always give you the answer straight away. Instead, we challenge you to think and grow your understanding of the situation. That’s not because we enjoy watching you struggle, but because that’s where the true magic happens as you have breakthroughs in understanding and learn to trust yourself.
We develop a supportive—not dependent— relationship where you feel safe to ask any question knowing we will do our best to provide you with the support and guidance you need. The questions can be about your RTO specifically or even about something personal, like balancing life with running an RTO. We’ve been there! We’ll share as much knowledge with you as possible in order to empower you to be your best.
Because an RTO Mentor Should Be Just That
Mentor dependency is a topic we watch closely. Everyone is different, but there are some telltale signs of someone who has become dependent on their mentor. We know we have a clinger if:
- They feel the need to contact us before making any decision in their RTO
- We have received 10 emails/missed calls in a day (and we didn’t have an appointment)
- They stand outside our front door in the rain. (Okay, that last one hasn’t happened yet.)
Our job is to be your bouncing board for ideas and your safety blanket if things don’t go to plan. But it’s not our job to leave you unable to make any decision without our input.
Mentoring is all about growth. This growth can only happen through transparency and accountability. This is why we place such stock in developing our relationships with our clients: we need you to trust us. We need you to trust that we know what we’re talking about and that we truly care about the success of your RTO as well as you – a human being independent of your RTO.
Online, Organic, and Optimised RTO Mentoring
The great thing about mentoring as part of our CMC (Coaching, Mentoring & Consultancy) Program is that it all happens as part of our online sessions. We don’t break up our time into specific time blocks. (“OK, the first 20 minutes is coaching, then we will mentor, and we will end with consultancy!”) Instead, we shift in and out of each area organically and as required based on the needs of you and your RTO.
Mentoring is key to growing your RTO. We teach you what you don’t know, why you should know it, and how it fits into the bigger picture of your RTO.
