The document provides guidance for mentors to maximize their impact when mentoring youth. It emphasizes taking a strengths-based approach rather than focusing on deficits. Mentors should pay attention to what mentees want for themselves and teach skills to help them overcome challenges, rather than trying to fix problems. When issues arise with mentees, mentors should focus on listening without judgment and empowering youth to find their own solutions.

1. Maximize Your Impact
Mentor Training

2. Mentoring Partnership of Minnesota
MPM IS THE DRIVING FORCE
IN THE MENTORING
MOVEMENT IN MINNESOTA.
WE BRING TOGETHER
DIVERSE INDIVIDUALS AND
ORGANIZATIONS AROUND
TWO STRATEGIC GOALS:
•MPM will Increase Quality
Mentoring in Minnesota
•MPM is the Leading
Champion of Quality
Mentoring Across Minnesota
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3. Mentor Training Process
1. Listen to this training
module
2. Respond to survey
April Riordan,
Director of
3. Participate in live training
Training and
Community
4. Be a mentor!
Partnerships
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4. Match items with similar functions
Disposable, trash, cheap, lost &
forgotten, thrown out, flimsy, lower
quality, doesn’t last
Sustainable, reusable, investment,
valuable, would go back for it, don’t
throw it out, strong, sturdy, durable
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5. Quality = Longer Stronger Matches
Quality Mentors
1. Support organizational & program
values
2. Keep young people safe
3. Understand youth development
4. Use a strength-based, youth-
centered approach
5. Model healthy life skills
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6. PYD: all young people have strengths
Role of mentoring is not to FIX young people
but rather to help them achieve their potential.
http://www.search-institute.org/mentoring
• MENTOR Research In Action; Issue 1 - Mentoring: A Key Resource for Promoting Positive Youth
Development;Richard M. Lerner, Ph.D., Aerika S. Brittian, and Kristen E. Fay, Tufts University
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7. External Assets
Boundaries
Support and
Expectations
Constructive
Empowerment Use of
Time
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8. Internal Assets
Commitment Social Competencies
to Learning
Positive Values Positive Identity
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9. Maximize Your Impact
Build longer, stronger relationships
• Focus on what is strong not what is wrong
• Pay attention to what mentees would like
for themselves – not just what we think
they need
• Teach and model skills to help young
people carry their baggage better
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10. Letter to Mama
XXXX XXXXXXX - ####
Minnesota Correctional Facility-
Shakopee
1010 West Sixth Avenue
Shakopee, MN 55379 I miss you Mama. At parent
night, some boys asked me where
my mom was and why my Gramma
Dear Mama, was with me. I told them you were
We are writing letters in school in jail. They asked what you did to
today. My teacher says I am a good go to jail and I just told the truth
speller and that I have nice and said I don’t know.
handwriting. Do you think so? I wish you could come to my
We had our Valentine Party on basketball games. I’m really fast and
Friday. Gramma bought Valentines am getting better at shooting.
for me and we sat at the kitchen table When can I come visit you
and put them together. During the again? I miss you. Write me back
party with all the other 3rd graders, soon!
Jessica spilled juice on her Valentines
and had to throw them all away. She
was so sad. I gave her some of my Love,
candy. Shayna
*This is a fictitious letter. 10

11. Strong Not Wrong
• Deficit-Based Mentor • Strength-Based Mentor
Agenda Agenda
– Improve basketball – Attend a basketball game
shooting skills – Spelling games
– Seek therapist for mom – Volunteering
issues
– Ask questions about her
father
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12. Darren wants to get better grades
But RIGHT NOW, he wants to play video
games and beat the record he set the last
time he was at your house. He told you
earlier that he has a paper due the day after
tomorrow. Which is a more youth centered
response?
A.Play video games.
B.Work on the paper.
C.Something in between
D.Both
E.It depends
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13. Mentors can’t carry it for them-
BAGGAGE
But mentors CAN teach and
model skills to help young
people carry it BETTER.
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14. Maximize Your Impact
• Your young person plays
basketball on her school
team. Her basketball
teammates are all buying
the same pair of
basketball shoes for the
new season and her old
shoes no longer fit. At
one of your meetings,
she talks to you privately
and asks if you can help
her out and lend her
some money. How can
you maximize your
impact as a mentor?
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15. Maximize Your Impact
• Your mentee’s teachers
say that he doesn’t listen
during class and that
when they try to talk to
him, he won’t say a word.
He started the school year
very excited but now
hates to go and his
grades are suffering.
Today, he got suspended
after getting in a fist fight
with another student. You
are scheduled to meet
with him tonight. How can
you maximize your impact
as a mentor?
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16. Maximize Your Impact
Build longer, stronger relationships
• Focus on what is strong not what is wrong
• Pay attention to what mentees would like
for themselves – not just what we think
they need
• Teach and model skills to help young
people carry their baggage better
16

17. A lost child tells of a dream…
In the dream, he is stuck in a
pitch-dark room, helpless and
confused, awkwardly feeling his
way around. His mentor is there
too in the dream, and knows just
where the light switch is. But
instead of turning it on, the
mentor waits, then aims the
beam of a flashlight at the switch.
It’s the job of the child to do the rest.
Liu, Eric; Guiding Lights: The People Who Lead Us Toward
Our Purpose in Life, Random House, New York, 2004. 17