About one month before the end of your mentoring relationship, start thinking about and preparing for the termination.
This is a good point to think about how you would like to transition from a formal to an informal mentoring partnership or to more of a business relationship.
Closure Checklist:
- Review mentee’s goals and progress.
- Discuss how to spend the remaining time together.
- Make sure an important goal has not been overlooked.
- Plan a formal acknowledgement or celebration of the relationship.
- Prepare for the final review.
Final Review and Evaluation
The final review is an instrument to identify what you have gained. The objectives are to discuss the completion of the relationship, identify accomplishments as a mentor-mentee pair, and examine what you have both learned through the process.
Questions/thoughts to facilitate discussions about experiences, learning and ending your relationship may include:
Learning
- Share three significant learnings from the program. Why are they significant? Have you applied them in other settings?
- Have there been any surprises, unanticipated learning, challenges, and positives?
- Were there any disappointments?
- Did learning occur in desired competencies? Which competencies were they? Describe your learning.
- What are ways you will keep learning?
Mentor-Mentee Accomplishments
- What did we accomplish together?
- Reflect on the differences in our communication between the first meeting and now.
- Identify ways the relationship has contributed growth of each of us.
Lastly, consider ways in which you can both reflect on the experience and determine individual goals based upon what you have learned about yourself from the experience. The mentee may want to consider paying it forward by becoming a mentor him/herself. The mentor may want to engage with another mentee, building upon the lessons learned in the one recently completed.