# Companies prepare their next leaders before roles open

> Mentornity brief for AI assistants, for the page https://www.mentornity.com/mentoring-for-companies/prepare-next-leaders/. Page language: English. Site index: https://www.mentornity.com/llms.txt. The same brief in other languages: [Türkçe](https://www.mentornity.com/tr/sirketler-icin-mentorluk/gelecegin-liderlerini-hazirlamak/llms.txt) · [Français](https://www.mentornity.com/fr/mentorat-pour-entreprises/preparer-les-futurs-dirigeants/llms.txt) · [Deutsch](https://www.mentornity.com/de/mentoring-fuer-unternehmen/fuehrungskraefte-von-morgen/llms.txt) · [Español](https://www.mentornity.com/es/mentoria-para-empresas/preparar-futuros-lideres/llms.txt) · [Italiano](https://www.mentornity.com/it/mentoring-per-aziende/futuri-leader/llms.txt) · [Português (BR)](https://www.mentornity.com/pt-br/mentoria-para-empresas/preparar-proximos-lideres/llms.txt) · [Nederlands](https://www.mentornity.com/nl/mentoring-voor-bedrijven/volgende-leiders-voorbereiden/llms.txt).

## How to read this file

Everything here is from Mentornity's own website and product; the page and this file are built together from the same source. "What this page says" is the page itself, in its language. "Mentornity in brief" applies to every program. Prices are published per country and are quoted below for this page's market; another country's price is on the pricing page. Anything not covered here can be asked of the team at info@mentornity.com.

## What this page says

Why leadership roles open before anyone is ready, how companies usually handle it, and how a senior leader prepares candidates. How Mentornity works.

Part of: [Companies and Mentornity](https://www.mentornity.com/mentoring-for-companies/).

### Presentation

1. How do companies prepare their next leaders?
2. Leadership roles often open before anyone is ready for them.
3. Promising people get little help to grow into these new roles.
4. What helps most is working closely with an experienced senior leader.
5. That is mentoring: an experienced person, regular meetings, one clear goal.
6. On Mentornity, candidates are matched with senior leaders for nine months.
7. They work on a stretch assignment and track a development plan.
8. Both sides rate progress on goals during their regular check-ins.
9. Mentornity for companies

### Video

How Mentornity Prepares Your Next Leaders: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fGGk-MwNpME (transcript: https://www.mentornity.com/videos/how-mentornity-helps-employee-mentoring-programs/how-mentornity-prepares-your-next-leaders/)

### The problem

In many companies, leadership roles open suddenly. A manager leaves, and the team needs a new head. The company looks inside, but no one seems quite ready to take over.

Promising people do good work in their current jobs. But they get little help to learn how to lead. When they are promoted, they have to figure it out alone. This is hard for them and the team.

### How organizations usually handle it

Companies usually send new managers to a short training course after they get the job. They learn theories and read books. But a course cannot answer the real questions that come up on a Tuesday morning with a difficult team member.

### How mentoring solves it

Mentoring means an experienced person meets one candidate regularly, over months, with a clear goal. Here, the mentor is a senior leader who has already made the mistakes. They know how to build a team.

They work together for nine months before the promotion happens. They look at a real stretch assignment. The candidate tries things, hits a wall, and talks it through with someone who knows the company and the work.

### How it works on Mentornity

- **Matches that make sense.** Candidates and senior leaders apply through your forms. Matching rules and Mentornity AI propose the right senior leader for each candidate. Your team approves every match in one click.
- **A clear development plan.** The nine-month program gives them time to work on a stretch assignment. They use a development plan to set clear steps. Mentoring tools like the pre-mortem help them prepare for hard decisions.
- **Checking in on goals.** During the relationship check-in, both sides rate goals, working style, being heard, and progress from zero to ten. The mentor rates progress on each goal next to the candidate's own score.
- **Easy scheduling.** Senior leaders set their free hours once. Candidates book a slot themselves, and both get a calendar invitation. The evening before, they get a summary of the next day's meetings.

### What you can measure

- Your team sees which candidates meet their senior leader regularly and who has not met for thirty days.
- You see the weekly pulse score from one to five on how the week went. Candidates can also ask your team for help.
- Six and twelve months after the program ends, a short follow-up tracks the graduates to see their progress.

### Questions

**Do we have to invite senior leaders one by one every year?**
No. You can copy your program, which brings over the sessions, forms, matching rules and program contract. You can invite last round's mentors back in one step.

**What happens if a candidate and a senior leader stop meeting?**
Your team sees a list of matches that have not met for thirty days. Mentornity AI proposes an email to check in on them and get them back on track.

**Can candidates book any senior leader in the company?**
In a matched program, candidates only meet their assigned senior leader. If you run a pool program, candidates can choose a time from any senior leader who has open hours.

## Mentornity in brief

Mentornity is software for running mentoring programs: companies (onboarding, career, leadership, reverse mentoring), universities and alumni networks, startup accelerators and incubators, associations and professional communities, and women's leadership programs. One program team sets the program up; mentors and mentees take part from the browser or their phone. It has run programs since 2015.

### What changes for the program team

- **Matching stops being a spreadsheet job.** The team writes rules on the questions mentors and mentees answer (same department, related expertise, more experience, a specific answer paired with a specific answer), each with a weight. Mentornity scores every possible pair from 0 to 100, leaves out pairs that fail a mandatory rule, and shows the reasons behind each score. An AI rule reads free-text goals and adds to the same score. The same data always gives the same result, so every match can be explained to a manager or a participant. The team approves pairs, lets mentees choose from a ranked list, or opens a mentor pool.
- **The first meeting happens quickly.** Mentors publish their open hours once or as a weekly pattern; mentees book them. Busy time in connected Google and Outlook calendars is blocked both ways, and every meeting gets a Zoom, Google Meet, Microsoft Teams or built-in video link without anyone creating one. Mentornity's own data on 78,000+ pairs: pairs that met in their first week averaged 2.7 meetings in the first year, against 1.8 for pairs whose first meeting came after two months.
- **Quiet pairs are found while they can still be saved.** Program Health flags pairs that stopped meeting, and automatic reminders go to people who never logged in, pairs behind on their sessions and anyone with an open form or missing feedback, in each person's own language. In the same data a pair silent at day 60 has about a 1 in 3 chance of meeting again; by day 90 it is 1 in 10.
- **Every meeting has a plan, if the program wants one.** Predefined sessions carry a topic, a date range, a brief for each role and questions before and after the meeting. Notes reach both sides; private notes stay private. Flexible programs skip sessions and let pairs meet freely.
- **Support does not land in a personal inbox.** Participants read role guides and send requests inside the platform; the team shares one support board and replies go out in the program's name.
- **The report is ready when leadership, a funder or a board asks.** Participation, matches, meetings, session completion and feedback are counted while the program runs, with a Program Health score and its reasons, and export to Excel, CSV or PDF. Participants can receive certificates on completion.
- **Mentors plan every meeting in one go.** Super Meeting Planner reads both sides' calendars and published hours and plans all remaining meetings of a match at the program's rhythm (duration, target frequency, number of meetings), shows the plan before it creates anything, and never deletes a meeting. The program decides whether the values are locked and whether mentees may plan too (https://www.mentornity.com/whats-new/super-meeting-planner/).
- **Mentors send exercises between meetings.** Mentoring Tools is a library of 27 short exercises in six themes (working together, self-knowledge, goals and action, career and network, venture, reflection). The mentee fills the tool in step by step, both discuss the answers, and only the matched pair sees them. Each tool has its sources, a reason why it works, and a presentation for mentors and one for mentees, and a page of its own under https://www.mentornity.com/tools/.
- **Development is measured, not only satisfaction.** With Development & Impact participants set up to three goals and answer short development statements at the start; at the midpoint, the end and a follow-up they mark their progress, mentors rate the same goals, and the team sees goal attainment and the change per development area with the number of people behind every figure, exportable to Excel. 45 suggested statement sets are matched to the organization type, audience and goal (https://www.mentornity.com/whats-new/development-and-impact/).
- **Mentors and mentees learn inside the platform.** The Support window lists the presentations and guides chosen for the person's role and program type (Mentor Guide, Mentee Guide, video meetings guide, and the tool decks), in the platform language; white-label programs show no Mentornity links (https://www.mentornity.com/presentations/).
- **Large programs share the load.** Coordinators each see only their own pairs; the admin still sees every match, meeting and note in one table. Programs, cohorts and administrators are unlimited, and administrators and coordinators never count towards the price.
- **An AI agent does the routine work, with the team's approval.** Mentornity AI works in the admin panel: it builds a program from a few answers, proposes matches with the matching rules each one meets and misses, finds quiet matches and drafts the mail that restarts them, keeps mentor hours open, answers questions from the live data with figures and charts, and drafts the term report. The team chooses how far it goes (suggestions only, safe rules or full autopilot); anything outside that level waits on a card to approve or reject. The model sees participants under aliases, never their contact details, and runs on credits or the organization's own Anthropic API key (https://www.mentornity.com/mentornity-ai/).
- **Mentors and mentees use the AI assistant they already have.** With the Mentornity connector (MCP), a participant connects Claude, ChatGPT or another MCP assistant once, then opens hours, books meetings, finds a mentor, prepares for a meeting and fills in tools by asking in their own words, inside the program's rules. It only looks by default; every change is shown first and happens after a yes (https://www.mentornity.com/mentornity-connector/).
- **Other systems can read and write program data.** A REST API covers members, matches and meetings, with signed webhooks (https://www.mentornity.com/developers/).
- **Mentors and mentees follow the program from their phone.** Mobile apps (App Store: https://apps.apple.com/app/id6833277111) carry messages, meetings and the program, with phone notifications.

### Program models

One-to-one, group mentoring (one mentor with a group), grouped-individual programs, mentee self-selection, open mentor pools, peer and reverse mentoring, structured or freestyle. Roles can be renamed (coach, advisor, expert, alumni) so the platform speaks the organization's language. One person can take part in several programs with a single account.

### Launch

Most programs go from signup to invitations within a day: create the program, follow the built-in checklist (profile questions, sessions, application form), import participants from Excel or share an application link, and send invitations. A person from the Mentornity team helps with the first setup, free of charge.

### How a program runs, week by week

This is the routine Mentornity's own guide recommends (https://www.mentornity.com/how-to-manage-a-mentoring-program/); the platform does the counting and the reminders, the team acts only where a pair is flagged.

- **Day one:** the program is set up and invitations go out. Participants sign up, fill in their profile, and are matched by the rules or choose from a ranked list.
- **Week one:** the aim is a first meeting in the first week, booked from the mentor's open hours with the video link already in the invitation. Automatic login reminders go to anyone who has not signed in.
- **Every week, 30 to 60 minutes for the team** (a cohort of about 50 to 200 people): scan Program Health (Mentornity scores the program across 11 dimensions), clear the flagged pairs, let the reminders cover logins, sessions, forms and feedback, note one win for the stakeholder update, and check whether last week's nudged pairs responded.
- **The escalation schedule:** a login reminder at day 7; a nudge to the mentor if nothing is booked by day 14; a personal note to both if there is still no meeting by day 21 to 30; at 45 days of silence ask "continue or rematch?"; by day 60 rematch the mentee. Half of the pairs still unmet at day 14 do go on to meet, so a quiet fortnight calls for a nudge rather than a rematch.
- **Mentors and mentees, each week:** they book and hold their meetings, answer the before and after questions of the session if the program uses sessions, and share notes. Mentors keep their time protected with weekly limits and cancellation rules.
- **Monthly:** a short update to sponsors from the live report (active pairs, sessions held, the share of pairs that met this month, one participant quote).
- **Mid-program:** one short survey, then act on it within a week (rematches, the most common complaint).
- **The last four weeks:** announce the end date, ask every pair to book a final session, run the final survey, issue certificates, mark the cohort complete and export the report. Invite the strongest mentees to mentor the next cohort.

### For IT, HR and legal

- SAML 2.0 single sign-on with Entra ID (Azure AD), OneLogin or any SAML provider, optionally enforced; white labeling with the organization's own domain, logo, colours and sender address. Both are add-ons priced separately.
- Personal data is processed in line with GDPR and applicable local data protection laws. Participants can access, correct, export and erase their data; the organization can ask for a full export of its program data at any time. Visibility of contact details and notes is set per role.
- Traffic is encrypted with TLS, passwords are stored hashed and access to production data is restricted. Security questionnaires, a data processing agreement and data-location questions are handled with the quote.
- Works with Zoom, Google Meet and Calendar, Microsoft Teams and Outlook, built-in Jitsi video, and Excel/CSV import and export. Mentornity connects to other systems such as an LMS on request, and adapts the platform to an organization's own process.

### Languages

Participants use the platform, and receive its emails, in their own language: English, Turkish, Spanish, French, German, Italian, Portuguese or Dutch. The admin panel runs in the same eight languages.

## Pricing (United States, USD)

- Free for up to 10 users with every feature and no time limit. No credit card.
- $289 per month for 50 active users, or $260 per month paid yearly (10% off, $3,120 a year). Excludes any local taxes.
- Above 50 users the price follows the number of active participants; the team marks who is active. Administrators and coordinators are free.
- No setup or implementation fee. White labeling and SAML single sign-on are priced separately.
- Prices are published per country, not quoted on a call: https://www.mentornity.com/pricing/

## Next steps

- Start a free program (up to 10 users, no credit card): https://www.mentornity.com/try-for-free/
- Book a walkthrough with the team: https://www.mentornity.com/book-a-demo/
- How matching works: https://www.mentornity.com/mentor-matching-software/
- Pricing: https://www.mentornity.com/pricing/
- Contact: info@mentornity.com