RSS feedsEmployees who have worked with a business mentor deliver higher standards of work than their peers, and are more motivated and confident than colleagues who haven’t experienced mentoring. So, it’s little wonder that blue chip firms have been using one-to-one development schemes for many years. But there is no reason why SMEs can’t deploy mentoring to attract, retain and encourage staff.
What is mentoring?
A mentor is someone with a wide range of personal and professional skills and experience who acts as coach, counsellor, networker, and guardian, according to the needs of their mentee. Mentor and mentee, who should share common goals or values to create an immediate chemistry, normally work on a structured programme of learning over either a six or 12 month period, covering the core skills relevant to the industry sector or specialism that the mentee wants to progress in.
Good mentors are often from outside the organisation, bringing an invaluable external perspective, as well as an ability to ‘wire’ their mentee into the wider industry, exposing them to new business tools and techniques, industry contacts, professional events and case studies.
How does the partnership work?
A good mentor will use a mix of face-to-face, email and telephone contact, and provide various tools such as podcasts and e-learning to suit the mentees’ needs.
What makes mentoring different from coaching is that the primary objective is for the mentee to become increasingly self-reliant and a more independent, self-managing learner. Mentoring embeds new knowledge and ways of learning, so eventually the mentee becomes independently adept at learning, practising new skills and developing others.
The mentee should take responsibility for their own learning by identifying
the specific learning need and objective for each session. The mentor’s
responsibility is to guide and set the right approach, as well as providing
direct and indirect experience and relevant external inputs to enable it.
When matching mentors and mentees a natural chemistry between them is vital, so
make sure they have common ground and things to achieve together. Basic values
and commitment to the partnership should also be agreed early on by both
parties.
Plan of action
There should be a clear plan of action and a framework for reviewing progress and integrating new learning. The plan should include where the mentee wants to get to and how they will achieve their goal. The framework should set out how meetings will be documented, who will action what and how, and when the ongoing quality and success of the relationship will be assessed.
A framework that allows for reflection and assessment of both the mentor and mentee roles and their success is important. It should be a simple yet carefully staged process.
This ensures that the mentor explores subjects adequately with the mentee, finds the right knowledge and experience to generate relevant new understanding, and arrive at actions to transfer the new understanding to the workplace, so the mentee and their organisation and colleagues see the benefits.
What’s the value?
Being able to draw on knowledge and experience tailored to your needs is hugely stimulating, and given the time, space and encouragement to then use it to achieve your own goals is a great motivator.
And it’s not just the individual that benefits. Developing capability and one-to-one learning can provide a 15%-40% return on investment to participating companies. Proactive schemes such as mentoring help improve a company’s value and reputation with stakeholders, strategic partners and even clients.
With great practitioners central to strategic success, can you afford not to give your key staff this valuable one-to-one time?
TOP TIPS
Take the lead – by listening
A mentor should listen, guide, and counsel the mentee to find their own solution. This passive role is often hard for mentors to accept, but it is crucial. In ‘leading by listening’, a mentor understands the mentee’s true position and avoids taking the onus of responsibility away from the mentee, who becomes more independent and self-managing.
Don’t rush to action
Once a mentee starts to see things differently, it’s easy to get caught up in success and rush into actions. Don’t – take it slowly. Determining and planning actions is essential to ensure they are relevant and lead to the most effective retention of learning and transference of skills and knowledge to the programme or project the mentee is working on.
Consolidate and apply learning frequently
The mentee should fully ‘own’ their goals, but it is the mentor’s responsibility to bring significant additional value in the relationship. Sharing experiences, contacts and wider industry or managerial knowledge is a great way of doing this.
Keith Clark is a consultant with programme and project management business Moorhouse Consulting
