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Starting Strong: A Mentoring Fable 1st Edition

4.6 out of 5 stars 33 customer reviews
ISBN-13: 978-1118767719
ISBN-10: 1118767713
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  • Starting Strong: A Mentoring Fable
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Product Details

  • Hardcover: 224 pages
  • Publisher: Jossey-Bass; 1 edition (October 6, 2014)
  • Language: English
  • ISBN-10: 1118767713
  • ISBN-13: 978-1118767719
  • Product Dimensions: 6.4 x 0.9 x 9.3 inches
  • Shipping Weight: 14.4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
  • Average Customer Review: 4.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (33 customer reviews)
  • Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #843,444 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Top Customer Reviews

Format: Hardcover Verified Purchase
This book is filled with great insights about mentoring, how to make it more effective, and how it can impact on both mentor and mentee. It is written in a very accessible style and has great food for thought.
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Format: Hardcover
This is and excellent fictional study of a formal mentoring program. Having experienced both mentor and mentee informal relationships, I found it very useful for my understanding of formal ones. I knew the theory and examples of the practice of formal mentoring programs, but this was a page turning account that really did t read like a good story/fable. I have read the excellent books and articles of Lois Zachary's before. In "Starting Strong" she and her co-author have created another valuable source for the practice of mentoring. And a unique story of the roles of mentors and mentees in that relationship in a formal program. I think it should be valuable to not only to both mentors and mentees, but to those in organizations who create these programs. Dr. Linda Sayre
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Format: Hardcover Vine Customer Review of Free Product ( What's this? )
Very smart use of the story between Cynthia (mentor) and Rafa (mentee) to show how a mentoring relationship is like and also how the relationship should be like, without the direct manager feeling threatened by the mentee with a mentor who may be a high profile executive within the company.

The chapter settings are in the way that each mentoring session depicts a chapter and at the end of every session (chapter), there is a summary of reflective questions for both the mentor and the mentee to go through and reflect about.

Part Two of the book summarizes how the conversations of mentor/mentee activity works ie. Moving conversations from monologue to dialogue, strategies for good conversation, and summarizes the conversations into 6 essential mentoring conversations: -

1) Building a relationship
2) Establishing Mentoring agreements
3) Moving from Starter goals to Smarter goals
4) Creating learning opportunities
5) Managing stumbling blocks
6) Checking in on Progress

Overall, a very useful book for someone starting out in a career with a mentor. But may not be applicable to someone in a mid-career change, though there are some information on having an informal mentor within the company at the beginning of the book.
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Format: Hardcover Vine Customer Review of Free Product ( What's this? )
I've had varied success with mentors and mentees in the past. While most large companies and schools develop mentoring programs, it's hard to pin down what both parties' roles are and much hinges on how the personalities click.

Lois Zachary has produced several books on mentoring but this one goes from theory to describing the relationship from the discussions between the mentor and mentee as well as from their points of view. By using concrete characters, Zachary still covers some of the housekeeping details (scheduling, setting the tone, confidentiality, etc.) that are best handled early as well as the more important issues that affect the mentorship.

I found it particularly interesting when Zachary differentiated mentoring from coaching, from being a buddy, from more social interaction with a direct report. Nor should mentoring be a softer approach performance reviews or a way to give feedback to one's managers. By reading how Cynthia and Rafa discuss what goals they have and what they don't intend for the mentorship to be, you get a sense of how it should work. I hadn't expected a "mentoring fable" to be so effective but I found that it gave me a better sense of what mentoring can and should be like than the usual materials given out during my various mentorship programs. Each chapter ends with a set of questions for the mentor and for the mentee to one evaluate the material and one's thoughts on mentoring.

It's a book that will be useful to both mentors and mentees alike.
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Format: Hardcover Vine Customer Review of Free Product ( What's this? )
My company had a sponsored mentoring workshop that we attended for a leadership team I was part of. When we went to the workshop, I was paired with a mentor. At first we clicked, but after a few weeks, it kinda went south with my mentor, because the focus flipped to him. He just wasn't right. Needless to say that was a bad experience.

I liked this book for several reasons. One, being that it gives a wonderful example of the way a mentorship should be. The other was the 6 discussions. I sure wish I had this book a few years ago, as it gives a very good layout of what should have happened, granted all individual mentoring is different from one another. But I would have been a little better prepared instead of tossed into the fire, so to speak.

This was a good read and it was easy to follow along. It would be great tp expose oneself if you plan on getting coached or vice versa.
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Format: Hardcover Vine Customer Review of Free Product ( What's this? )
The whole time I was reading this, I kept thinking of a classic manufacturing book called "The Goal" which is about a new plant manager's journey to understand the theory of constraints. It too, involves a mentoring relationship, and is a "business" book told in the form of a story.
I really enjoyed this book for some of the same read ons that I enjoyed "The Goal." It's an easy read, and I was able to learn some things without straining myself too much.
I picked this book to review because I'm about a year into a company-sponsored mentoring relationship right now and this book seemed like a chance to get some pointers from the experts. It's certainly worth a read. I'd have done things differently if I had read this earlier.
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