MENTORING PROGRAM

HANDBOOK
2024

This program is proudly supported by:

TABLE OF CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION 3

PROGRAM REQUIREMENTS 3

PROGRAM EXPECTATIONS 5

PROGRAM STRUCTURE 8

FUNDAMENTALS OF EFFECTIVE
17
MENTORING PROGRAMS

IMPORTANT CONSIDERATIONS 19

RELEASE AND COPYRIGHT 21

GOT QUESTIONS? 21
INTRODUCTION
The Geospatial Council of Australia Mentoring Program is designed to provide a
structured and supportive relationship between mentors (experienced and
knowledgeable professionals) and mentees (less experienced or novice individuals) to
facilitate their personal and professional growth and development.

Through regular meetings and interactions, mentors offer guidance, advice, feedback,
and support to mentees, helping them acquire new knowledge, and competencies that
will benefit their careers and personal lives. The program emphasises goal setting,
reflective practices, and continuous assessment to track progress and identify areas for
improvement.

Program Requirements
Within the program, each mentor and mentee will choose five soft skills topics in the
topic pool. Meetings between mentors and mentees are at least one hour per topic in
the meetings, as well as time for preparation and completion of the pre-and-post
meeting questions.

You will need to commit to approximately 6 - 7 hours over the course of the three
months of the program to effectively participate in this program. This will roughly
equate to about 1 – 1.5 hours for every topic.

Completion Requirements
To complete the mentoring program, participants are required to actively participate in
four out of five meetings, which are to be recorded on the mentoring software
(Mentornity).

Participants who achieve this will receive a certificate of completion and are able to
claim one GCA CPD point per hour (up to 6 max) if required.

Recommended:
1. Session Questions: participants are encouraged to complete the pre- and post-
meeting questions for each session.
2. Event Participation: all participants are encouraged to join the orientation and
networking events to engage with other participants.
3. Goal Setting: mentees are recommended to set goals and identify areas for
improvement to make the most of the program.
Important Dates

EVENT DATE DURATION

Program Welcoming
Thursday 23 May Online Session
Session

Orientation Meeting 27 - 31 May 1 week

Topic 1 4 - 15 June 2 weeks

Topic 2 18 - 29 June 2 weeks

Speed Networking Event Thursday 4 July (TBC) Online Session

Topic 3 1 - 12 July 2 weeks

Topic 4 15 - 26 July 2 weeks

Industry Roundtable
Thursday 1 August (TBC) Online Session
Event

Topic 5 29 July - 9 August 2 weeks

Deadline for record

Friday 23 August
keeping

Graduation Event Thursday 12 September Online Session

We value your feedback! Thursday 19 September

PROGRAM EXPECTATIONS
Roles within Mentoring
The mentoring relationship is made of the mentor and the mentee - and in some cases,
two peer mentees.

The role of the mentor covers many areas. The mentor can provide advice or guidance,
share stories and experiences of their own, be an advocate or sponsor, be a role model,
a challenger, a sounding board to help develop ideas or unearth career direction, or be a
professional friend.

Similarly, the role of the mentee can take many shapes. The mentee can be a curious
early-career professional looking to better understand how to navigate certain
situations or what career paths are possible, or someone who would like to better
understand their professional goals and leadership style.
Peer mentees can offer a particularly valuable opportunity to share insights at similar
career stages which will complement discussions with your mentor.
For Mentors
As a mentor, you will likely guide the mentoring relationship in terms of establishing
ground rules. Actively listen to your mentee to understand their individual needs and
questions. You will be in a unique and powerful position to gently challenge your
mentee by asking them to be accountable to their decisions on action. This engagement
is an excellent opportunity to cultivate within yourself better management and
leadership skills.

In this program, mentors are expected to:

Commit their time as per the program encouraged:
a minimum of one hour per meeting.
a moderate amount of time before the meeting to read the chosen topic’s key
card and answer the pre-meeting questions.
a short amount of time after the meeting to complete the post-meeting
questions.
Be open-minded, enthusiastic, curious, and self-reflective.
Cultivate trust and respect within the mentoring relationship, and respect
confidentiality.
Be willing to share their own experiences and insights where appropriate.
Assist the mentee with goal setting and seeing their potential.
Communicate clearly, openly, and compassionately.
Model effective leadership and management skills and values.
Have a genuine desire to give back to the industry and help their mentee learn and
develop.
For Mentees
Being a mentee can be a significantly positive life-changing experience. It requires you
to be curious, open-minded, proactive, and willing to ask questions. As a mentee, you
will be in a unique position to help your mentor see the perspective that their
experiences have brought them, and to challenge their assumptions and ways of
thinking and acting.

In this program, mentees are expected to:

Commit their time as per the program encouraged:
a minimum of one hour per topic for meetings.
a moderate amount of time before the meeting to read the chosen topic’s key
card and answer the pre-meeting questions,
a short amount of time after the meeting to complete the post-meeting
questions.
Be open-minded, enthusiastic, curious, and self-reflective.
Cultivate trust and respect within the mentoring relationship, and respect
confidentiality.
Be willing to share their own experiences and insights where appropriate.
Work with their mentor to ask questions and seek out information about ways to set
goals and understand the industry and future career in an open-minded manner.
Communicate clearly, openly, and compassionately.
Actively listen in conversations and ask well-thought-out questions where relevant.
Have a genuine desire to learn and develop. Be willing to put in the effort for their
own professional development.

Mentors are only able to offer what their experiences have been and provide guidance
and support. At the end of the day, you are responsible for your own career, actions and
decisions.

Respect the bounds of this program and understand that your mentor will not teach or
train you in technical matters, provide any arrangements for work experience through
this program, nor provide industrial advice. Any matter relating to your work
arrangements needs to be taken up with your employer.
PROGRAM STRUCTURE

Types of Mentoring Groups

In this program, there are two types of pairings:
Groups of two: a single mentor and a single mentee
Groups of three: a single mentor and two mentees

No matter which of these you are in, we only expect each group to meet once for each
topic. This means that, whether you are in a group of two or a group of three, you will
select a time to meet that suits all involved and meet once for each topic.

Mentors in groups of three need only to meet with both mentees at the same time,
unless prior arrangement is made for the mentor to meet each mentee separately.

1. Same meeting with two mentees: Mentees need to submit their answers to pre-
and-post meeting questions individually; mentors only need to submit their own
answers once.
2. Separate meeting with each mentee: mentees need to submit answers to pre-and-
post meeting questions individual; mentors will be required to submit the questions
for each mentee.

Software
The Mentoring Program will be hosted on the specialised mentoring software,
Mentornity, for all participants. This will be the place where all meetings are to be
arranged and recorded.

Further details are included in this handbook, however Mentornity has also created
guides for participants to assist with understanding how the platform works:

Guide for mentors

Guide for mentees
Orientation Meeting
We recommend all participants set an orientation meeting with their mentor/mentee.
Prior to the orientation meeting, review the 14 topic keycards (on the next page) and
create a shortlist of five topics that interest you.

For the orientation meeting, we recommend allocating time as follows:

Icebreaker: Take 20 minutes to introduce yourselves, share professional
experiences, and discover common interests or hobbies.

Topic Selection: Allocate 20 -30 minutes to review each other's topic shortlists and
collectively decide on the five topics you would like to explore. You can change your
topics throughout the program, if desired.

Check Mentornity: Ensure that all the functions on the Mentornity platform are
working properly. It is important to create and schedule your meetings on
Mentornity, regardless of whether you are meeting online or offline. You are
encouraged to use the online video chat application provided by Mentornity.

Calendar Planning: Dedicate 10 minutes to schedule the dates and times for each of
the five sessions (you are welcome to schedule your meetings on Mentornity during
orientation).

While this may initially appear to be a significant amount of work for an orientation
meeting, we assure you that the effort invested will greatly enhance the rewarding
nature of each mentoring session.
Topics
Participants will have the option to choose any five topics from 14 options, put together
as program keycards. Each keycard provides more details on the topic and links for
more reading.

To assist with selection, they are grouped by category below, participants can choose
any of the 14 for their sessions.

Career Development and Advancement

Topic 1 - Career development
Topic 2 - The value of entrepreneurship
Topic 3 - Personal branding and the importance of certification
Topic 4 - Transitioning across disciplines and between jobs

Leadership, Teamwork and Project Management

Topic 5 - Networking with peers and clients
Topic 6 - Teamwork and communication
Topic 7 - Leadership and influence
Topic 8 - Project and people management

Industry Trends and Innovation

Topic 9 - Understanding industry trends
Topic 10 - How to broaden the geospatial industry
Topic 11 - Emerging technologies

Professional Development and Wellbeing

Topic 12 - Work-life balance
Topic 13 - Dealing with uncertainty
Topic 14 - Ethics and professionalism
Pre-and-post Meeting Questions
The pre- and post- meeting questions are designed to help you prepare for your
meetings, guide your conversations and reflect on what was discussed during the
meeting.

Find these questions in the “Before/After the Meeting” section of each session in
Mentornity. The questions can look different depending on whether you are logged in as
a mentor or a mentee.

Scheduling a session
The below instructions will guide you through how to schedule a session with your
mentor or mentee.

While the screenshots below were taken from the perspective of a mentee, mentors will
see similar user interfaces and the instructions will be largely the same. Should you
encounter any issues, send an email to [email protected].

Please note that it is mandatory that you schedule each session with your
mentor/mentee(s) using Mentornity and have the meetings’ dates, times and
venues recorded as they form part of the program’s completion criteria.

Step 1: Log in to Mentornity via https://mentornity.com/login. By now you should have

set up your account via an email from Mentornity, so please use the same credentials
from when your account was set up.

If you have not set up your account, please check your Spam or Junk mail. If you are
unable to locate the email in those folders, please check with your organisation's IT
department to see whether emails from https://mentornity can be whitelisted.

If issues persist, please reach out to us via [email protected] and

provide us with an alternative email address to help resolve the issue. Once you have
been paired, you will receive an email that looks like the below.
Step 2: Upon logging in as a mentor, you will see your paired mentee(s) in the home
page and vice-versa for mentees.

Step 3: Click the “+Schedule a meeting” button.

Step 4: You should now be able to see the sessions available for you to schedule with
your mentor/mentee(s). What is shown on your screen may look slightly different from
the screenshot below, depending on whether any of your sessions have been scheduled
and/or completed. To schedule a session, click the blue “+Schedule” button for any
session.

Step 5: Using “Orientation Meeting” as an example, the below is what you would see
upon clicking the “+Schedule” button. It will default to the current date. Pick your
desired date for the meeting.
Step 6: From here, enter your desired time and duration for the meeting.

Step 7: For a virtual meeting, under “Meeting Type”, you can either use the integrated
Jitsi Meet (a similar platform to Zoom) or Google Meet, or even set up virtual meetings
using other platforms like Zoom, Microsoft Teams and etc by using the “Custom”
meeting type.

Using Microsoft Teams as an example, all you need to do is to copy and paste the Teams
meeting’s URL into the “Address” entry.
Step 8: If you and your mentor/mentee are based in the same city, you may prefer to
meet face-to-face. Enter the address of your chosen venue using the “Custom” option.
Alternatively, use a link to the location via Google Maps.

Step 9: Confirm the details are correct, then click “Schedule meeting”.

Step 10: If you wish to change any meeting details, you can do so anytime by clicking
“Update”.
Step 11: Note-keeping in the “Meeting Note” section is optional. However, you may add
a reminder or discussion points for that meeting.

Use the “Visible Note” sliding button to show or hide your notes. Choose whether you
would like your notes to be shared with your mentor/mentee and the Mentoring
Program Working Group.

Remember to click “Save” to save your notes.

FUNDAMENTALS OF EFFECTIVE MENTORING PROGRAMS

Setting goals for the program

Before your first meeting, establish your goals for the program.

For mentees, this could be exploring potential career paths or advancements, or

fostering attributes like self-awareness, constructive feedback, or assertiveness.
For mentors, goals may include reflecting on career insights, determining future impact
in the industry, or developing qualities such as patience, open-mindedness, or effective
communication.

These goals will serve as valuable guides to assess personal growth throughout the
program. Remember, it is not about achieving perfection but rather selecting objectives
that offer opportunities for development and genuinely excite you.

Developing the mentoring relationship

Building a fruitful and rewarding mentoring relationship requires time, effort, and
nurturing, similar to any other relationship. All participants must value each other's
time, presence, and experiences, while working towards establishing rapport and trust.
The guidelines and principles outlined in this Program Handbook provide a solid
foundation for cultivating a strong mentoring relationship.

Both mentors and mentees should fulfill their responsibilities in a timely manner, which
may include:
Completing preparation tasks before the Orientation meeting.
Scheduling all topic meetings well in advance, preferably during your Orientation
meeting and allowing room for rescheduling if needed.
Checking in with your mentor or mentee to confirm availability.
Arriving punctually to all meetings and being prepared, or notifying in advance if
there will be a delay or need for rescheduling.
Practising active listening during meetings, focusing on understanding what is being
said rather than planning a response.
Respecting the boundaries of your mentor, mentee, or team in terms of preferred
communication methods and timing.

=
For mentees, while it may be acceptable (depending on the mentor) to ask for feedback
on your CV or job application, it is inappropriate to request job placements, work
experience, or complex technical training. Remember that this program focuses on soft
skills, and mentors are not trainers or teachers.

Participating in this program exposes you to diverse facets of the industry, including
different technical disciplines and interactions with individuals from various cultures,
backgrounds, and experiences. Embrace these opportunities with an open mind.
Approach situations with authenticity, compassion, and an openness for positive
outcomes.

Mentoring Meetings
If you are uncertain about how to approach your topic meetings, we suggest following a
structure similar to this:

Prepare questions beforehand to explore specific areas of interest (mentees) or

share your learnings and personal experiences (mentors).
Start each meeting by checking in on any commitments or actions from the previous
meeting and discussing how the past few weeks have been, including any
professional wins or challenges.
Refer to the topic keycard together, discussing each section or specific question
prompts that pique your interest. Share questions, learnings, and experiences,
engaging in an open-minded discussion.

During your meetings, you may find the following skills valuable:

Giving your full attention: Avoid multitasking or interrupting. Ask curious questions
and be aware of your body language.
Being present and interested: Avoid dismissing experiences or emotions and strive
to create a psychologically safe environment for sharing questions, experiences,
concerns, or ideas.
Engaging in meaningful conversation: Pay attention to the types of questions you
ask (open, closed, probing) and maintain a respectful curiosity.
Allowing productive silence: Silence can foster reflection and deep thinking.
Embrace it when appropriate, but if it becomes unproductive, try to establish a
more meaningful connection.
Providing open, compassionate, and constructive feedback: Feedback plays a
powerful role in fostering positive change. Be specific and respectful when giving
feedback and involve the recipient in finding solutions that are actionable for them.
IMPORTANT CONSIDERATIONS
What mentoring is not:
Mentoring is not a guarantee of obtaining a job.
Mentoring does not provide technical training.
Confidential workplace information should not be shared during mentoring
sessions.
Mentoring is not a substitute for psychological counselling or mental health
support.
The program is not designed for facilitating dating relationships.
The program does not assist with visa processes for working or studying abroad.

What to do if things aren’t going so well

While efforts are made to ensure suitable mentor-mentee matches based on provided
information, perfect alignment cannot be guaranteed. If a participant is dissatisfied with
the behaviour of their mentor/mentee and believes it does not meet the outlined
standards, they should contact GCA to report their concerns. The situation will be
investigated, and if the mentor/mentee is found to be acting unprofessionally or
disrespectfully, appropriate action will be taken to address and rectify the situation.

In some instances, mentoring relationships can be challenging if there is not a strong

connection between the mentor and mentee. In such cases, we encourage you to
approach the relationship with an open mind and proactive attitude for at least two
topics. If significant challenges persist after this period, email
[email protected] for support and assistance.

If your mentor or mentee is unresponsive or not actively engaging, please inform us

promptly. We prioritise active participation and mutual respect in the mentoring
program, and we are dedicated to assisting you in getting the most out of it.
If you're experiencing issues with internet connectivity or reliability that affect your
communication with your mentor or mentee, please contact us for assistance in finding
solutions.
If you or your mentor/mentee no longer feel comfortable participating in the program or
encounter extraordinary circumstances that hinder successful completion, please
contact us. Resignation from the program affects both the mentor and mentee, so it's
crucial to consider this decision carefully. Understanding the reasons behind the
resignation will allow us to provide potential resolutions and prevent similar situations
in the future. All feedback shared with us will be treated confidentially and will not be
disclosed to the other party without your consent.

While the mentoring relationship is primarily professional, discussions during topic

meetings may touch upon personal circumstances, including mental health challenges.
If you or your mentor/mentee feel unequipped to handle such situations, we encourage
you to reach out confidentially to us. Additionally, we recommend the following support
services for times of need:

Lifeline: 24/7 crisis support and suicide prevention service - 13 11 14,

www.lifeline.org.au
Beyond Blue: 24/7 crisis support line - 1300 22 46 36, www.beyondblue.org.au
Black Dog Institute: (02) 9382 2991, www.blackdoginstitute.org.au
Headspace: National Youth Mental Health Foundation, https://headspace.org.au/
RELEASE AND COPYRIGHT

Release
By participating in this program, participants waive all rights and claims against their
mentor/mentee and Geospatial Council of Australia, both now and in the future, related
to any actions or omissions made in good faith during the program. This includes any
claims, actions, suits, legal proceedings, demands, costs, losses, damages, and
expenses.

Copyright
The content of this program, including the Participant's Handbook, Mentornity Pre and
Post meeting questions, Topic Keycards, presentations, and promotional materials, is
copyrighted by the Geospatial Council of Australia in 2024.

© Geospatial Council of Australia 2024

GOT QUESTIONS?
This program is coordinated by the Workforce team in the Geospatial Council of
Australia and a dedicated group of member volunteers.

If you have any questions about the GCA Mentoring Program, email
[email protected] or call 02 6682 2282.