ABSTRACT
This chapter proposes a thinking task to enable readers to take a closer look at their context and determine how far it is likely to be supportive of their mentoring work. This task, this ‘contextual mentoring audit’ (CMA), is one that mentors, as well as those developing and/or leading mentoring schemes, might usefully undertake even before any mentoring begins. Once a context has been thought about in this way, strategies can be devised, and/or selected from those used by other mentors given in examples in the chapter, which can help mentors take advantage of the positive aspects or ‘protect’ mentees from the more negative ones.
