One-to-one mentoring for Members in Scotland, matched to where you are now and where you want to get to.

Sometimes the most useful thing you can do for your career is spend an hour with someone who’s been there. Someone who will listen, ask the questions you haven’t asked yourself and give you an honest view.

The Scotland Mentoring Programme pairs Members in Scotland with an experienced mentor from within our community. It runs all year round, so you can sign up whenever the timing is right for you. You can take part as a mentee, a mentor or both.

What you’ll get out of it

A good mentor helps you believe in yourself. They’ll ask questions and challenge you, while giving you guidance and encouragement along the way.

It’s a chance to step back and look properly at where you are: the challenges in front of you, the opportunities you might be missing and what you actually want from your career.

You might want to talk about:

• Stepping up into a bigger role
• Leading a team for the first time
• Getting buy-in from senior people
• Working out what’s next for you
• Building your confidence
• Balancing a demanding job with everything else

Or bring something else entirely. If it matters to you, it’s worth talking about.

Who will be my mentor?

We’ll match you with someone whose experience fits what you want to work on. Your mentor will usually be one membership level ahead of you:

• First Role Members are mentored by Future Leaders
• Future Leaders are mentored by Leaders
• Leaders are mentored by Fellows

Where it’s a better fit, we’ll match you peer to peer. We also offer female-to-female mentoring upon request.

How it works

1. Register your interest. Email [email protected] to sign up as a mentee, a mentor or both, and we’ll send you a short questionnaire to fill in.

2. We match you. We’ll look at what you want to get out of it and find the right person.

3. You get in touch. Once you’ve been matched, it’s up to you to contact your mentor and set up your first meeting.

4. Agree how it will work. Use your first meeting to agree your goals, how often you’ll meet and for how long, whether you’ll be in touch between meetings, and how you’ll handle confidentiality.

5. Meet, reflect and review. We recommend four meetings over the year, each lasting 60 to 90 minutes. They can be in person, online or a mix of both, whatever suits you.

6. Bring it to a close. Agree together when the arrangement will come to a formal end, so you both know where you stand.

Making it work

The more you put in, the more you’ll get back. We ask every mentee to:

• Set an agenda for what you want to work through
• Prepare for each meeting
• Take equal responsibility for the relationship, rather than leaving it all to your mentor
• Agree from the start when the arrangement will close

Your mentor is giving you their time, so turning up prepared and keeping them posted if plans change goes a long way.

Become a mentor

If you’ve been in the industry a while, you probably have more to offer than you think. Mentoring is a way to give something back to the Scottish marketing community, and a good way to sharpen your own thinking and stay close to the challenges people are facing earlier in their careers.

Email [email protected] to register as a mentor.

Scotland or Global?

The Marketing Society also runs The Global Leadership Mentoring Programme, which offers three one-hour conversations with Fellows from across the international network, with one intake a year.

The Scotland programme works differently. It’s a longer relationship with one mentor, it’s open all year round and it’s for Members at every level.