MENTORING

1. To make sure senior management ashore is committed to the process and that senior officers at sea are secure in their own jobs and are willing to pass on their knowledge and skills to their junior officers and cadets.
2. To make sure junior officers and cadets feel secure in their jobs and are keen to learn.
3. An important decision to be made is whether each trainee is assigned a particular mentor, or whether the mentors share responsibility for a group. Each of these two systems can work well.
4. Finally, very few senior officers are born teachers and they could do with some help and advice from good teachers, in carrying out their duties.
5. Finally, make sure senior managers ashore find out if it is working!

The best references I can give you are the Videotel Leadership and Management Course.

LEADERSHIP & MANAGEMENT

Introduction

Created in conjunction with the Nautical Institute (NI) and other leading authorities, Videotel is delighted to offer this essential management course.

Who the course is designed for

All ship’s Officers - This comprehensive CD-ROM Course concentrates not only on the skills needed by senior managers at sea, but also includes skills required by junior officers and acts as a stepping stone towards more formal management training.

In the section “Working with People: Helping Individuals to Perform” where mentoring is referred to as “coaching”, there are useful tips on:

1. How to give praise and criticism
2. How to coach
3. How to delegate
4. How to appraise.

The Leadership and Management Course is excellent, but it is quite long, and I suggest that certain sections should be taken first, including the one above.

The next most important section is How to Manage Yourself. It starts off with “How to Manage Your Time” and in these days of working time regulations and small crews, the wisdom in that section can really improve performance.