What is supportive accountability?
As a mentor, your role in is to provide supportive accountability for your mentee as they use their app(s) of choice. Remember, your job is to provide support to your mentee and hold them accountable. You’ll also provide supervised practice, which means you can practice the skills they’re learning from the app together in real life.
Each time you meet with your mentee, you should check in on the following areas:
1. Usability of the app(s):
- Did the app(s) work for you this week?
- Did you encounter any technical problems with the MentorHub app?
2. Knowledge of using their app(s) of choice:
- Do you have any questions about the app that you chose?
- Is there anything that I can help you with in terms of using the app?
- Do you understand how the app works?
3. Fit of their app(s) of choice:
- Do you think the app is right for you?
- Is the app helping you with things in your life that you are having trouble with?
- Do you think there are other apps that might be better for you right now?
4. Engagement with the app(s):
- Let’s talk about how often you used the app. Last time we met, we talked about you using the app ____ times before today. Were you able to accomplish that?
- Are there any barriers to using the app?
- How can we make sure you’re able to use the app before we meet again?
- What’s a realistic goal for you to accomplish before our next meeting?
5. Implementation of the skills from the app(s):
- What skills did you learn in the app since I last saw you?
- Did you have any situations in the last week where you could use those skills?
- Would it be helpful to talk about the skills you learned?
- Can we practice those skills together?
How to provide supportive accountability
Now that you’ve read about supportive accountability, we encourage you to create a plan for working with your mentee!
Step 1: Choose a challenge
After your mentee completes their first Mood Ring, they are given a list of recommendations for apps to try to for their biggest challenges. Ask your mentee if any of the apps look like a good fit for what they want to accomplish. Ask your mentee what it is that they want to work on. Our recommended apps can help with a lot of different challenges – IntelliCare helps mentees who want to overcome depression or anxiety; Duolingo helps mentees learn a new language; Headspace helps mentees learn how to calm their mind through mindfulness and meditation. Having a challenge to work on is an important first step in providing supportive accountability.
Step 2: Set a goal
Next it’s important to create a specific and measurable goal with your mentee. Your mentee’s goal should fit with the challenge they want to work on. You and your mentee should discuss which app(s) they want to use and how that fits their current challenge. Next, you should discuss how frequently they want to use the app. For example, if your mentee wants to work on learning new math skills with Khan Academy, talk about how frequently they will watch a math-related learning video on the website. A reasonable goal might be watching two per week. If your mentee wants to learn how to speak a new language, maybe they want to try to use Duolingo every day for 10 minutes. Goals should be created collaboratively with your mentee and should be reasonable to accomplish in a given period of time.
Step 3: Hold your mentee accountable!
Through the MentorHub app, you can see when your mentee uses the app(s) of their choice. If you notice your mentee used the app in line with their goal, go ahead and send them a quick message for encouragement! Did you notice that your mentee hasn’t used their app in over a week, and you both agreed that they would use the app twice a week? Go ahead and send them a quick note asking if anything has been getting in the way of accomplishing their goal of using the app. This is the time to let your mentoring skills shine! Remember, you want to hold your mentee accountable for reaching the goals that you set together, while also being supportive and understanding of any setbacks along the way.
With your mentee, decide how long you are going to work on supporting accomplishing their goals. This is a collaborative process and requires ongoing discussion. The ultimate goal is for the mentee to use the app(s) that will best help them overcome the challenges in their lives. You can use your expertise in providing a strong, supportive relationship to hold your mentee accountable for reaching their goals!
Review
- Ask your mentee what challenge they want to overcome
- Set a goal with your mentee about the app they want to use and the frequency of use
- Hold your mentee accountable
Looking for some examples? Check out our sample supportive accountability plans, here.