I’ve been on six Boards of Directors, four for-profit, venture-backed companies and two non-profit, as well as serving on several startup advisory boards. But before joining the MIT Venture Mentoring Service I had never experienced team mentoring, – the heart of the VMS practice matches up two or more mentors with MIT affiliated entrepreneurs. After an initial meeting a determination is made is other mentors, with different experience and expertise should join the team. There’s a pool of about 150 mentors to draw from.
I don’t think I’m giving away any secrets here and certainly don’t intend to. Only to say that team mentoring is qualitatively different than one-on-one mentoring. There’s far greater value to the entrepreneur in the variety of perspectives and experience and more benefit to the mentors, as they learn from each other. Obviously it takes a great system build up a stable of mentors and to successfully match them to entrepreneurs to enable team mentoring.
But if your organization, including perhaps a board of advisors, has more than one person who is a good mentor, consider mentoring individual entrepreneurs in teams. The discussions will be richer and deeper, and the entrepreneur will benefit from multiple viewpoints.
To be training in team mentoring you can go through VMS training, as fifty organizations already have.
