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Running a mentorship program means managing goals on three levels at once—your own program objectives, your mentors’ professional development goals, and your mentees’ personal growth targets. Getting all three aligned is how you drive real business results, earn raving fans among your employees, and gain continued investment from your executives. And failing to achieve alignment? That’s what can cause your program to quietly fizzle out.
But as a program admin, it’s not always easy to know how to define goals for a mentorship program—or how to set all three levels up properly. You’re probably used to thinking in terms of your own goals, but participant goals often get less attention—and that's where alignment breaks down.
In this article, we’ll introduce common goals you might set as an admin as well as ones that are likely to be motivating your mentors and mentees. Plus, we’ll look at ways to align all three sets of goals so you can increase your chances of building an exceptionally effective mentorship program.
👋 Looking to start a mentorship program in your organization? Book a quick, low-pressure chat with us to learn how Together can help you launch a program that meets your goals and objectives FAST.
What is a mentoring program goal?
A mentoring program goal is the high-level outcome the program should achieve. It’s generally set and monitored by the mentorship program administrator or manager, but it is likely to be influenced by company leaders or executives.
These goals tend to be linked to business results like higher employee retention or more efficient talent pipelines for leaders. Here’s why: Having a clear outcome or metric makes it possible to measure a program’s success and it also makes it easier to prove the program’s return on investment to company leadership.
But program administrators aren’t the only people involved in mentorship programs. Let’s not forget about the participants themselves, the mentors and mentees! Here’s a quick overview of how their goals might differ: A program admin might have a goal to build a pipeline of future leaders while the mentee is hoping to earn a promotion and the mentor is trying to develop their reputation as an advisor and guide within their company.
In the next section, we’ll take a closer look at each different type of goal and how they can work together.
The 3 types of mentorship program goals (and how they work together)
The main groups of people involved in a mentorship program—the administrators, mentors, and mentees—each come into it with their own ideas of what they’d like to achieve.
As a program administrator, you have the responsibility to define program goals that are aligned with things your company leaders care about.
But at the same time, you need to consider what motivates employees to join (and stay in) the program as mentors and mentees.
Part of your challenge is finding ways to align all three sets of goals, even if they don’t overlap completely. Everyone’s goals need to work together across your mentoring program ecosystem.
Here’s a framing that can help: When a mentee achieves a career milestone, that outcome reflects well on their mentor. And it also feeds directly into your business case for the program as the program administrator.
The connection runs both ways: When you set a clear goal as a program admin—such as building a leadership pipeline—you’re giving mentors meaningful context for their role, which makes them more invested in their mentees’ growth. It’s much easier for them to frame their interactions with their mentee around a specific outcome.
You may personally find it helpful to map out your program goals along with the related mentor and mentee goals to ensure there’s alignment. Here are a few examples.
How to write SMART mentoring goals (with examples)
If you’ve ever felt discouraged by a goal that felt unattainable, it might simply be because your goal was too vague or unrealistic. Using a framework like SMART (which stands for Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Time-bound) can help increase your chances of being able to meet your goals—and it will be just as valuable for the mentors and mentees who participate in your program.
Here’s a quick overview of how it works:
- Specific: Goals need to be well defined so everyone knows exactly what to aim for. This makes it easier to figure out how to get there.
- Measurable: You need a way to track progress. For example, you might aim to increase a metric by a specific percentage or achieve an average rating score within a defined range.
- Achievable: Goals should be doable, yet still give a bit of a challenge.
- Relevant: The goals should be meaningful to the person who’s setting them, tying in to an outcome they care about and want to invest effort into.
- Time-bound: Setting a deadline keeps things moving and organized and it also makes it easier to monitor how well you’re progressing towards meeting the goal.
Here’s how we might apply the SMART framework to some of the goals we introduced in the previous section.
- Admin goal: Build a leadership pipeline → SMART version: Have X employees go through leadership mentoring program by [DATE].
- Mentor goal: Develop leadership skills → SMART version: Lead X mentoring sessions focused on [SPECIFIC SKILL] by [DATE].
- Mentee goal: Earn a promotion → SMART version: Be promoted to X position by [DATE].
Throughout the rest of this article, we’ll share examples of SMART goals to help you become more familiar with this framework.
Examples of mentoring program administrator goals
One of your main objectives as a program administrator is to show how your mentorship program impacts results that your business leaders care about, which often relate to ways that your company makes or saves money.
Some common program administrator goals include:
- Increasing employee engagement: When employees are engaged at work, they’re more productive and motivated. Gallup attributes a lack of employee engagement to $438 billion in lost productivity in 2025. Engagement is especially important for people managers, whose attitudes significantly impact their teams. Mentorship programs have the potential to influence employee engagement by providing personalized support and helping employees build their networks.
- Reducing employee turnover: Losing an employee can hurt a team’s productivity and morale, and it takes a lot of resources to hire a replacement. Reducing voluntary turnover has the potential to save your company thousands (if not hundreds of thousands) of dollars. LinkedIn finds that 47% of companies are investing in mentoring to boost employee retention.
- Building a talent pipeline and nurturing high-potential employees: It costs money to make any type of hire (SHRM estimates from 50% to 200% of their annual salary), but hiring for senior leadership roles is even more expensive and time-consuming. If you create a pipeline for developing future leaders within your organization through mentoring and other L&D programs, you can improve retention and save on future costs like executive search firms.
- Improving diversity and inclusion: Many companies recognize the importance of having an employee population that reflects the world around them and the communities they serve, so they make an intentional effort to hire and retain people who come from traditionally underrepresented backgrounds. Mentorship programs can create a safe space where employees from different backgrounds can receive support and encouragement.
- Attracting talent: As we’ve already covered, recruiting can be an expensive and time-consuming process. If you’re able to show prospective employees that you’re willing to invest in their growth through mentorship, you can strengthen your employer brand and attract more motivated people to apply.
Now, let’s look at how we might translate some of these goals into the SMART format:
- Increase employee engagement by X% (measured through annual pulse surveys) year over year.
- Decrease employee churn by X% year over year.
- Extend the average employee tenure by X% within [TIME FRAME].
- Enroll X number of employees in leadership training by [DATE].
- Grow the number of employees at manager level and above who come from traditionally underrepresented backgrounds by X% year over year.
- Increase the number of inbound applicants who make it to the interview stage by X% by [DATE].
Examples of mentor goals
There are a few main reasons why people choose to become mentors, which might relate to their desire to help others and leave a lasting legacy or to continue to develop their own leadership skills and increase their stature within the company.
Some common mentor goals might include:
- Growing leadership skills: Leadership development was the top priority among HR and L&D leaders for 2026 according to Together’s research, and it’s easy to imagine that mentors see this experience as a way to become more comfortable in a leadership role, especially since it comes without the responsibility of managing someone’s performance reviews or compensation.
- Developing a reputation as an advisor and guide: Mentors don’t just have the potential to boost their own perception of their skills. They can also begin to earn a reputation within the company as an advisor or guide, which could lead to more responsibilities or opportunities to represent the company, both internally and externally.
- Learning or developing soft skills: Being a mentor involves soft skills like demonstrating emotional intelligence, active listening, problem-solving, and handling difficult conversations, which can also make mentors more effective in their jobs.
- Gaining new perspectives: Mentorship gives mentors the chance to speak with people at different stages of their careers and often from varied departments and roles within the company. While the goal is typically for the mentor to share their experience and insights with their mentee, mentors can also benefit from the different perspectives their mentees bring to their conversations.
- Giving back: For some mentors, there’s more of an altruistic goal associated with their role: They want to pay it forward and be a positive influence on others. This could be because a mentor had a positive impact on their own career or simply because they find it gratifying to help others.
- Finding new talent: Some mentors see their involvement as an opportunity to identify and nurture talent. This could be to grow their own department (and find their future successor) or more broadly to help set their company up for success.
Here’s how we might translate some of these goals into the SMART format:
- Mentor X people over the next [TIME PERIOD].
- Deliver mentee training on [TOPIC] by [DATE].
- Practice [SPECIFIC SOFT SKILL] with my mentee over the next [TIME PERIOD].
- Talk to X junior employees over the next [TIME PERIOD] to better understand their concerns and identify areas where the company can improve.
- Introduce my mentee to X people who could be helpful to their career by [DATE].
Examples of mentee goals
And, last but definitely not least, let’s look at the goals mentees might have from participating in a mentorship program.
- Becoming familiar with the workplace culture: For new hires or employees that join a company through an acquisition, working with a mentor can be a chance to quickly get up to speed on the company culture and ways of working.
- Learning new skills: Staying up-to-date on tech skills can be a major motivator, but mentees may also want to work with a mentor to improve soft skills like public speaking or conflict resolution.
- Growing their professional network: Depending on your company’s setup and structure, employees might not have many chances to work with people outside their department or team. Developing a relationship with a mentor can open doors to introductions outside their immediate circle to an expanded network within your company and even in their industry at large.
- Career growth and promotions: Let’s be honest: Many junior employees are seeking help navigating the career ladder and understanding what it takes to move up in their field. A mentor can help guide them through this landscape.
Here’s how we might frame some mentee goals using the SMART approach:
- To be comfortable doing [SPECIFIC ACTIVITY] within [TIME FRAME].
- To become proficient in X skill within [TIME FRAME].
- To obtain a pay increase of X% within the next [TIME FRAME].
- Make X new contacts in my field within [TIME FRAME].
Measuring your mentor program goals
Now that you have an overview of the different goals you might set for your program, let’s consider how you might measure them. Remember the SMART framework? This is where the “M” for “measurable” comes into play.
Before your program launches, you’ll need to establish a baseline for each goal so you have something to measure against. That might be your current retention rate, engagement survey score, or the number of employees in your leadership pipeline.
From there, measurement typically works on two levels:
- Program-level data: You can track your admin goals through existing sources like your HRIS, engagement surveys, and promotion records. These metrics tell you whether the program is moving the needle on those business outcomes that your executives care about.
- Participant-level data: Use mid-program and end-of-program surveys to track mentor and mentee progress against their individual goals. This gives you both qualitative feedback and goal completion data to report on.
Commit to conducting regular check-ins so you have an early warning system if goals need to be adjusted or you need to provide additional support. Doing this before the program ends means you’ll be much more likely to achieve your program goals.
Take on your mentoring program goals with Together
Goal-setting is only valuable if it leads to action—and alignment across your program is what makes that possible. When your admin goals, mentor goals, and mentee goals point in the same direction, you're building something that genuinely moves the needle for your organization.
Together makes it easier to set goals, match mentors and mentees, and track progress—all in one place. Ready to see how it works? Book a demo to chat with one of our experts.
Mentoring program goals FAQs
How many mentoring goals should mentors and mentees set?
A good rule of thumb is to aim for 2–3 goals per participant. This is enough to give the relationship focus and direction, but not so many that they become overwhelming or difficult to track. As a program admin, remind participants that each goal should be achievable within the timeframe of your program. For example, it makes sense to set smaller goals for a six-month program than for a year-long one. When in doubt, encourage participants to start with fewer goals and add more as their relationship develops.
Should mentors and mentees set goals together?
Yes—and this is one of the most overlooked steps in launching a mentoring program. While mentors and mentees will each come into the relationship with their own objectives, taking time in the first session to share and align on those goals sets clear expectations for both parties. It also helps mentors understand how to provide the most relevant support. As a program administrator, you can make this easier by giving participants a simple framework or set of prompts to guide that first conversation.
What's the difference between short-term and long-term mentoring goals?
Long-term goals are the big-picture outcomes a mentor or mentee wants to achieve—things like transitioning into a leadership role or building a strong professional network. Short-term goals are the smaller, actionable steps that build toward those outcomes—like improving public speaking skills or scheduling two informational interviews per month. Both matter, and they
work best when they're connected: Short-term goals should ladder up to long-term ones. Encouraging participants to define both at the start of the program gives them a clear path to follow and makes progress easier to track.
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