Last Updated: 24 September 2026
Quick answer: Mentoring goals are the specific outcomes a mentor and mentee agree to work toward together, usually set early in the relationship and recorded in a mentoring agreement. They give both people a shared reference point for what the relationship is meant to achieve, and give a program administrator something concrete to check progress against, rather than judging a mentoring relationship on how it feels.
Without a goal, mentoring conversations tend to drift. Mentors start questioning whether they're adding value, and mentees struggle to come up with a clear focus for each session. A goal doesn't need to be dramatic, it just needs to be specific enough that both people know what "on track" looks like.
Mentoring goals give a mentoring relationship direction and give both sides, and the program running it, something concrete to measure progress against. This guide covers why goal-setting matters, ten real example goals, how mentor and mentee goals typically differ, and how to write a clear goal using the SMART framework.
The clearest evidence for this comes from a genuine, peer-reviewed piece of research rather than the "3% of Harvard graduates" statistic that circulates widely in goal-setting content (that one is a confirmed urban myth with no real study behind it).
Psychology professor Dr Gail Matthews, at Dominican University of California, recruited 267 participants across a range of businesses and organisations for a study on how goal achievement is affected by writing goals down, committing to specific actions, and being accountable to someone else for them. The participants who sent weekly progress updates to a friend reported successful goal achievement at more than double the rate of those who kept their goals to themselves without writing them down, over 70%, compared with 35%. The accountability and check-in structure mattered as much as the goal itself.
That's essentially what a structured mentoring relationship provides: a goal that's written down, a mentor to be accountable to, and regular check-ins to track it. Brancher's Goals Module lets mentors and mentees log goals, track ongoing progress and mark milestones complete, with visibility for program administrators too, and Ava AI can prompt participants between formal sessions to help keep a goal from quietly stalling. For the broader evidence base on mentoring's impact beyond goal-setting specifically, see our full roundup of mentoring statistics and what mentoring actually is and how it works.
Mentees often join a mentoring program without a clear goal in mind, and that's normal. Part of the value of a good mentoring relationship is helping someone reflect on their strengths and development areas and arrive at a goal, rather than expecting them to walk in with one already fully formed.
Here are ten real examples, for inspiration:
Both people in a mentoring relationship set goals, but they're usually not the same kind of goal.
At the start of every mentoring relationship, it's worth having both people write down their expectations and goals in a mentoring agreement, so there's a shared reference point from day one rather than an assumption that both people are working toward the same thing.
SMART goal-setting is a widely used method for turning a vague intention into something you can actually track. Each letter is a check:
A useful template for writing one:
"My goal is to [specific, measurable outcome] by [timeframe]. I'll work toward this by [the concrete steps]. Achieving it will mean [the result or benefit]."
For more on breaking a larger goal into something more immediately actionable, see how to set short-term goals in your mentoring program.
Mentoring goals are the specific outcomes a mentor and mentee agree to work toward together. They matter because they give the relationship direction, mentoring conversations without a goal tend to drift, and they give a program administrator something concrete to measure rather than relying on how engaged a pair seems to be.
Mentee goals usually centre on building specific skills and gaining visibility for career opportunities. Mentor goals tend to focus on sharpening their own leadership and coaching ability and building broader organisational relationships. Both should be written down, ideally in a shared mentoring agreement.
That's common, and it's not a reason to delay starting the relationship. A short reflection exercise on strengths, development areas and what "good" would look like in six months is usually enough to arrive at a first goal, which can always be refined once the relationship is underway.
Make it Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant and Time-bound. A useful template: "My goal is to [specific outcome] by [timeframe]. I'll work toward this by [concrete steps]. Achieving it will mean [the benefit]."
Brancher's Goals Module lets mentors and mentees log goals, track progress and mark milestones as complete, with visibility for program administrators across the whole program rather than relying on individual pairs to self-report.
Holly Brailsford is the Co-Founder and CEO of Brancher, and a registered organisational psychologist. She founded Brancher to bring an evidence-based, personality- and values-driven approach to workplace mentoring, and works with organisations across government, enterprise and the not-for-profit sector to design mentoring programs that deliver measurable outcomes.