Capturing the “Beauty” of Group Mentoring

A practitioner recently made an important point: unless there’s a specific reason—beyond scale or efficiency—programs should think twice before choosing group over one-on-one mentoring. Group mentoring should not be a workaround for capacity constraints. Instead, it can be a powerful strategy for advancing young people’s social skills and development, particularly when it is thoughtfully designed to meet the needs of youth who share common experiences and challenges.

So what makes group mentoring distinct and worth doing?

When done right, group mentoring provides unique opportunities for social learning, connection, and mutual support among peers. Youth struggling with social anxiety, peer difficulties, or attentional challenges often benefit from practicing interpersonal skills in structured group settings where they receive real-time feedback from both peers and mentors. In these contexts, group mentoring becomes more than just a way to reach more kids—it becomes a deliberate tool for social and emotional development.

Some programs use group mentoring to deliver structured curricula aimed at building academic, social, or health competencies. While this can be valuable, it’s unclear what makes this instruction “mentoring” versus a skill-training courses. Volunteers shouldn’t be expected to carry the weight of delivering complex interventions. A better model might involve trained staff leading the content while mentors support small, consistent groups—ideally no larger than a 1:4 ratio—to build relationships that are central to mentoring outcomes. Another alternative might be to dispatch volunteers to schools and other settings to help to support and leverage the specialized academic, cognitive- behavioral, social- emotional learning, and other skills that youth are already receiving.

Others adopt a recreational approach, emphasizing fun and friendship. But if that’s the primary goal, afterschool or sports programs may offer similar benefits with greater scalability. As research has shown (e.g., Christensen et al., 2023), purely recreational programs may not meet the emotional, behavioral, or academic needs that many mentees face—needs often better addressed through intentional, relationship-centered approaches.

To truly harness the potential of group mentoring, we must design it around group relationship dynamics as the primary driver of change. Yet that design goal also makes it precarious. Youth struggling with social anxiety, poor social skills, peer relationship difficulties, or inattentiveness often show substantial improvement in group therapeutic settings where they can practice interpersonal skills with peers under therapeutic guidance.

Facilitating this kind of effective group process, however, requires training and skills that extend beyond those needed for one-on-one relationships. In professional therapeutic settings, for example, group therapists develop expertise in group dynamics, understanding how to manage multiple relationships simultaneously while attending to both individual needs and collective processes. For mentors, this might include skills for managing group cohesion, addressing interpersonal conflicts among members, balancing participation, and ensuring emotional safety. Mentors must track multiple interaction patterns simultaneously, identifying both verbal and nonverbal communication dynamics that might go unnoticed in one-on-one mentoring contexts.

Managing multiple relationships and advancing group cohesion requires a different skill set than one-on-one mentoring. Without a clear theory of change, group mentoring risks becoming a diluted version of individual mentoring—delivering less of what makes mentoring effective in the first place.That means:

• Purposeful grouping based on shared experiences

• Small, stable groups that resemble enduring 1:1 matches

• Trained staff to who can deliver curriculum and set culture

• Clearly defined roles for mentors during each session

Group mentoring should be more than a cost-saving strategy—it should be a relationship-rich experience that draws on the full potential of peer interaction, guided reflection, and collective growth.

As another practitioner told me, “I think this is where agencies lose sight of the “beauty” of a group setting and use it as a boost to serve as many mentees as possible rather than developing and delivering quality programming.” Capturing that beauty takes real planning, skilled facilitation, and an unwavering focus on relationships as the engine of change.