Tutoring exercises: 12 scenarios

Mentoring is here to stay. Here is a selection of tutorial exercises to help your company practice scenario analysis.

Situation 1:

Your Human Resources Department has just added a new member to its team. You have a lot of experience and knowledge in your industry. It appears that you were fired from a competing company and you are quite critical of the operations of your current company. You have been assigned to be their mentor.

Describe your answer.

Situation 2:

In a business plan competition, you were assigned as a mentor for a Startup. However, the Startup has not been very cooperative and does not reflect the need to be a mentor in the first place. To their own amazement, the Startup has even approached another mentor to be on their team!

You decide to stay away from them and, by chance, discover information that will help them to be more persuasive in presenting their business plan.

Will you inform them?

Situation 3:

You have a friend who just lost his job in senior management. His reduction has been an obstacle in the works, especially with regard to sending his only son to continue his studies abroad.

He approaches you and asks for a job within your Startup, preferably as Managing Director, so that your bank loans are not affected. However, he is in a dilemma because he feels there is a huge generation gap.

How will you solve this problem?

Situation 4:

You came across a blog created by your assigned workplace apprentice, which provides a lot of unfavorable comments about your current company. Your apprentice has been careful not to name specific names, but you are sure that the photos you have uploaded are taken inside the workplace.

Should I report to senior management?

Situation 5:

You have been contacted to be a mentor / advisory board member of a non-profit organization. You meet the Founder and you feel full of energy; your immediate answer is a resounding “yes”. He is also swayed by the membership of a prominent mentor who is a well-recognized figure. You convince yourself that you are in very good company.

However, as time goes by, you discover that you are not regularly updated with the progress of the organization and your membership does not have much to do with the activities and direction of the organization.

You stay? Or were you never meant to be a part of that organization? Analyze your decision-making matrix.

Situation 6:

As a mentor, how do you ensure that you make a difference in the business decisions of a startup or non-profit organization? Can you be sure that your opinions are valued, not just your immediate contacts?

Situation 7:

Your former student asks you for a favor. He has a group of talented friends in music. You see her singing on YouTube and I am very impressed. You suggest that they compose jingles so that the ads can be seen.

Do you have any other suggestions?

Situation 8:

You have been contacted to become part of a startup that is involved in creating a business strategy board game. However, your progress in the company is hampered by the lack of confidence that the creator of the board game has to reveal the complete business idea to you.

How are you going to proceed?

Situation 9:

You are the class supervisor and have been assigned as a partner to a new student who comes from a country where English is the second language. The new student is highly motivated to improve his English proficiency and insists on joining the class discussion team to improve. You are the captain of the class and you need the team to do well to increase your chances of getting into a good high school.

What should you do?

Situation 10:

You find that a subject teacher’s blog provides enough clues for their own students to do well on a science test. He is also teaching the same subject.

You should do the same?

Situation 11:

You have been asked to mentor a group of students who want to raise money for a non-profit organization. During the course of meeting with them, he feels that the group leader has aspirations to use the fundraiser as an opportunity for attention and perhaps a job in the nonprofit organization.

What should you do?

Situation 12:

You are part of a group of parents that is setting up a food stand to support the school’s fun fair. The position that raises the most will win an award and be recognized. On the morning of the fair, he sees a parent shopping at a popular street vendor, which contradicts the rules of thorough food preparation by volunteers.

As a mentor, should you help improve the quality of your own position or blow the whistle?

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *