To the Mentor:

Coaching and mentoring others can be one of the most rewarding activities an experienced professional can take part in. This Mentoring experience is designed to allow you, the experienced emergency manager, to share information about emergency management programs with others in our discipline. Wisconsin Certified Emergency Manager Professional Level candidates, and others entering the career field, often have training but may not have applied experience. Sharing your first-hand experience in communications, planning, incident management and support, resource coordination, hotwashes (following both actual incidents as well as exercises), and HSEEP will help expand the candidates’ knowledge and understanding. This program is designed for you, the experienced mentor, to assist an individual who is an emergency manager or otherwise has responsibility for preparedness activities. The mentoring experience should be conducted over the course of at least two sessions, totaling a minimum of 8 hours over at least a 30-day period, but may be extended if mutually agreed upon.

As a Mentor, you will be expected to facilitate a learning process for the person you are mentoring. You will also provide an honest and objective overview of their performance while fulfilling the learning objectives and tasks outlined below. You have the flexibility to supplement actual activities, if none are available, with an informal discussion format that is conducive to achieving the objectives.

If you are mentoring a candidate in the Wisconsin Certified Emergency Manager (WCEM) Professional level program, use the worksheet provided in the WCEM Professional Level Mentoring Guidelines and Worksheet document (Wisconsin Emergency Management Directive 5005.8.5). If you are instead working with someone outside of the WCEM program, you have some additional freedom on how to proceed; you can use that worksheet and conduct to conduct a generalized mentoring process covering a wide variety of topics and responsibilities, or alternately you can focus on a specialized area within the Emergency Management realm to help develop your mentee into a subject matter expert, in which case you are free to develop your own outline. A final option is to coach your candidate through a major project, from concept through to execution or completion.

We sincerely hope that you, as a Mentor, will view this assignment with the seriousness and professionalism it deserves, which will ultimately benefit the operational effectiveness of the candidate’s agency. You also have an opportunity to make a major contribution to the advancement of the emergency management discipline by imparting your expertise to a new class of emergency managers and preparedness professionals.

Mentoring Checklist

Option A:

1. Work with either a candidate working to achieve the WCEM Professional level certification, or a less-experienced emergency manager, by collaborating with them and mentoring them using the WCEM Professional Level Mentoring Guidelines and Worksheet.
2. If you are mentoring a WCEM Professional Level candidate, upon completion of the mentoring checklist, that candidate will develop a three-page report on the mentoring experience.
   1. The requirements for this report are contained in 5005.8.5.
   2. The candidate will share that report with you prior to submitting their request to test for the WCEM Professional level; you should review that report with the candidate and give them honest feedback for incorporation or to make final edits.
3. You as the mentor will also complete a summary of no less than three pages (in PDF or Microsoft Word document format using a 12 pt. font, one-inch margins, double-spaced with correct spelling, grammar, and punctuation) reflecting on your experience including the following:
   1. The mentoring experience: who, what, where, when, and how.
   2. How that experience helped you better understand emergency management.
   3. A reflection on how that experience helped the mentee / candidate.
   4. What worked well and what the mentor could do differently in future mentoring activities.

Option B:

1. Coach an emergency manager through a project. This could be a newer emergency manager, or an existing professional who needs subject matter expertise, to develop on a plan, exercise, or other major emergency management or preparedness program.
   
   Example: you have a well-developed debris management plan and the new emergency manager in the neighboring county is starting to develop one. You can coach and help them through the process.
2. The person you mentored will develop a paper on no less than one page that includes the following:
   1. Details about the project.
   2. The experience.
   3. How that experience helped them better understand the emergency management program and operation.
   4. What worked well and what the mentor could do differently in future mentoring activities.
3. You as the mentor will complete a summary of no less than three pages (in PDF or Microsoft Word document format using a 12 pt. font, one-inch margins, double-spaced with correct spelling, grammar, and punctuation) reflecting on your experience including the following:
   1. The mentoring experience: who, what, where, when, and how.
   2. How that experience helped them better understand emergency management.
   3. A reflection on how that experience helped the mentor.
   4. What worked well and what the mentor could do differently in future mentoring activities.

WCEM Advanced Professional candidate: you will submit both your mentee’s report as well as your own summary report developed as part of this program along with the rest of your application package (including proof of completion of prerequisites and other supporting materials).