Here’s another question we often get about mentoring. Again, we hope it helps you in your own mentoring adventures.
Note: These questions are compiled from several questions we receive, and do not necessarily reflect any one person’s submission.
Q: I’ve been tasked by my HR VP to start a mentoring program to prepare our managers for new roles with greater responsibilities. Our VPs and senior leaders are the mentors and I’m supposed to put together a training session for them. I have never developed a training program before and I have never trained senior leaders. I’m shaking in my boots. Help!
A: Help is on the way! Your leadership has identified an important business imperative behind mentoring efforts, which is a great first step. Mentoring is not just a “feel-good” activity. It should address the strategic business goals of the organization. You need to ensure that your efforts and investments pay off. It can be overwhelming to create a dynamic mentor training program that is engaging, participative and informative.
An organization that identifies mentoring as a strategic tool must develop its in-house capacity for mentoring training. To be a truly effective mentor trainer, you have to develop some expertise in mentoring. We have a solution for you. Our Mentoring Facilitator Trainer Certification Program will prepare you to deliver Mentoring: Strategies for Success in your organization. The content of that program will ensure your mentor leaders:
Understand the purpose and key concepts of mentoring and how it differs from coaching
Identify their learning style and the role of learning in facilitating mentee growth and development
Recognize the four predictable phases in the mentoring cycle and the key components of each phase
Structure the initial mentoring conversation to get started on the right foot
Explore how to set learning goals, set priorities and identify milestones
Recognize and overcome common stumbling blocks in a mentoring relationship
Support, challenge and provide effective feedback to mentees
Bring the relationship to successful closure
Our training certification process will allow you to master the content and gain experience delivering the material to your audience. You will walk away after three days with all the tools, competencies and confidence you need to be successful.
And you’re in luck. Our next training event is coming up, Monday, September 29 – Wednesday, October 1. Registration is open now, but it fills up fast, so register today!
People often ask us questions about mentoring or seek mentoring advice. We decided to answer a few of these questions on the blog this month. Hopefully their questions (and our answers) will shed some light on your own mentoring questions.
Note: These questions are compiled from several questions we receive, and do not necessarily reflect any one person’s submission.
Q: Six months ago, our mentoring program was announced. Everyone, and I mean everyone, was buzzing about it and our people were eager to get started. At first, there was a flurry of activity and everyone was meeting with their mentee and really pretty excited. But all that energy was short-lived. About six weeks in, our mentors started telling us they had run out of things to talk about. As it turns out, most of them were just having coffee and catching up. It seems like we’ve missed the boat somehow. What would you suggest?
A: What you are describing is the Three Cups of Coffee Syndrome. The mentor/mentee relationship has been established, but it lacks direction, focus or goals to move mentoring forward. This is what often happens when organizations launch a mentoring program without providing sufficient and consistent training for their mentors.
Good mentoring requires specific skill sets. Even leaders who engage in informal mentoring throughout their entire careers struggle with creating successful mentoring partnerships.
Mentoring training builds more confident and competent mentors. It promotes mentor readiness, creates a standard of mentoring practice, provides guidelines for ensuring mentoring success and offers a safe climate of support. Mentor training offers a roadmap and a benchmark for mentors to measure their success as well as strategies to address stumbling blocks quickly.
Good mentoring training saves time. It keeps mentoring interesting, productive and on track from the get-go.
If you’re interested in mentoring training, register for our 3-day training certification program. The Mentoring: Strategies for Success program will teach you how to lead your own one-day training for your organization. Our next program is Monday, September 29 – Wednesday, October 1. Seats are limited, so register today!
Mentoring is an investment of time and effort. To get it right, it is important to prepare the people in your organization and make sure everyone is on the same page. Are your HR and learning/development specialists ready?
Our “Mentoring: Strategies for Success” Trainer Certification Program might be just what your organization needs right now. The Center for Mentoring Excellence’s most popular one-day workshop has been presented to organizations throughout the world for over a decade. This comprehensive workshop provides all the tools and strategies mentors and mentees will need to engage in productive, learner-centered relationships.
Make the investment to train your trainers in mentoring and watch how quickly you reap these rewards. We think you will agree, it is well worth the effort.
Increased talent retention
Heightened employee engagement and productivity
Support for diversity and inclusion
Enhanced employee and career development
Fast-tracked leadership development
Stronger leadership bench
More commitment and collaboration
Enrollment is limited. Take advantage of this limited opportunity and sign up now!
In today’s connected world, mentoring for leadership and career development is easier than you might think. With collaboration and video conferencing tools, you can build relationships across the globe and develop your career from the comfort of your own home. Don’t get me wrong; meeting in person is always preferred. But, could you mentor remotely? Of course! Let me show you. Follow these five steps to launch your distance mentoring relationships into the cybersphere.
1. Incorporate Google tools in your mentoring work plan
From Google Hangouts to Google+, the search-engine super star has many gizmos that are perfect for mentoring. If you haven’t joined Google+, I highly recommend that you do so quickly. In addition, use Google Drive to share and collaborate on documents, projects and presentations with your mentors or mentees. It’s easy and makes working together simple and cooperative.
2. Create a LinkedIn group
With LinkedIn, you can produce and share content with large groups of people. But what about sharing content with a select few? The platform allows you to leverage groups to build a safe space to share experiences and to network.
3. Adopt a video conferencing tool
Meeting face-to-face is such an important part of building relationship. Now we have technology that can help. From iMeet to Fuze, there are many conferencing services available. With the right tool, you can connect with your mentees (or mentors) from anywhere and even maintain your meeting schedule. So, when you’re working on the road or traveling with your family, check in with your mentor and continue to build your relationship via video. If you have an iPhone, you can Facetime in to meetings and touch base with your mentees with the click of a button.
4. Use Twitter to connect
I expect my mentees to continuously grow their careers and develop as people. When I can’t see my mentees, or I have to miss a meeting, Twitter allows me to stay in touch. You can use the platform to check in, comment on work or add your two cents to project or personal development. Want to send a private message? The platform offers that function as well. Don’t fret the 140-character limit; it can be a blessing — trust me.
5. Encourage your mentees to use social media
Social media is an excellent place to build a professional network, find a mentor and nourish your relationships — use it. You should use Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Google+ and Pinterest to share your ideas and build a community of people that share your interests. The world has never been more connected, so get out there and meet people.
As you can see, there are many tools out there to help you stay connected and continue to build your professional relationships. It’s up to you to use them.
If you have questions, contact us. We’re here to help you.
Listening at all levels is the most important thing that I do.
Listening to others and helping them find their own way.
Listen with an open mind without being judgmental.
Truly listen so assumptions are not being made.
Listen fully and carefully before offering your advice or opinion.
Spend more time listening than talking.
Listening and questioning to help my mentee reach their solutions.
Be authentic, be warm, be honest and be an engaged listener.
Mentors should know themselves well enough to know when their personal strengths or biases cloud the way they listen to and encourage/advise their mentee.
Hear what is said in between the message, not just listening to what is said.
Read, observe, listen and ask lots of questions
There is a clear message here about the importance of listening.
Listening serves many purposes in addition to letting mentees know that you care. Listening builds mentee confidence. It lets mentees know they have something meaningful to contribute. Listening encourages them to work out their thinking. Invariably, they arrive at a solution on their own. Mentors often discover that the listening skills they develop through mentoring transfers to other functions, boosting their effectiveness in their other leadership roles.
What can you do to improve your skill at listening?
Identify the good listeners you know.
What do they do that shows they are listening?
Make a list of those behaviors and then gauge how you measure up.
What do you need to do more of?
What do you need to do less of?
What is one thing you can work on right now that will help you develop and hone your listening skills?
Whether you’re a mentor or a mentee, social media is a fantastic tool to amplify your voice and help you join communities. It provides you with the tools to reach out to those who inspire you to develop your career. Luckily, there are many social tools to help you along the way. Let’s look at the benefits of using social media as a mentor or mentee.
Finding a mentor
You could tweet a potential mentor on Twitter or send them a message on LinkedIn. But, convincing someone you’ve never met to be your mentor can be tricky. It’s critical that you know as much as possible about your prospective mentor before you reach out. Fortunately, researching is easy.
On Twitter, you can identify possible mentors by monitoring trending hashtags or creating lists of influential people. And, on LinkedIn, you can join industry-specific groups and build relationships with people you find inspiring.
Connecting with a mentor
Depending on the etiquette of the platform, reaching out to your potential mentor could be easy. On Twitter, it’s as simple as a follow. After you follow your potential mentor, make sure to add their handle to a list so that you can easily find and interact with their content.
On LinkedIn, it’s challenging. You don’t want your budding mentor to see you as spam, so be genuine and sincere. Reach out to them via InMail before you send an invitation to connect. Remember, LinkedIn is a professional platform — avoid the cat videos and silly memes.
Be yourself
When you interact on social media, be yourself. Being honest with potential mentors is the key to building rewarding professional relationships. In our digital world, it’s easy to connect and build professional relationships with people in any industry.
More and more businesses and organizations are turning to group mentoring to enhance the growth and development of their employees and accelerate organizational learning.
Why is there so much interest in group mentoring?
Group Mentoring. . . .
Leverages the experience and expertise in an organization
Provides an opportunity to build and strengthen relationships across, down and through the organization
Promotes diversity and inclusion
Offers mentors and mentees an opportunity to expand knowledge
Exposes participants to multiple levels of expertise and organizational knowledge
Creates shared understanding and alignment
Maximizes time availability of qualified mentors and participants
Creates a more efficient and scalable way to promote learning and development
Complements and enhances one on one mentoring
Mentoring groups are structured in multiple ways. The possibilities are unlimited, from peer-to-peer, leader-led, virtual, nested configurations, to DIY groups . . . and the list goes on. The reasons you articulate for initiating group mentoring will drive the composition and structure of your mentoring groups.
Who will fill these seats in your organization? In which seat will you be sitting?
Group mentoring offers some very rich opportunities for promoting group and individual learning.
While group mentoring multiplies the learning, it can only do so when members of the group intentionally and effectively work at strengthening relationships between and among themselves.
What are some of the most common pitfalls to avoid when it comes to group mentoring?
1. Jumpstarting the process without first building trust. Too often group mentoring participants — particularly peer mentors — are so eager to get started that they jump right into mentoring without taking enough time to establish and build trust among themselves. In group mentoring, all mentoring partners must feel safe before they can feel comfortable enough to be open with one another and to experience significant learning.
2. Failure to acknowledge difference. It is easy to assume that by virtue of being in a group, group members share common interests. While it is quite true that they may share some things in common, they are unique individuals and each brings who they are into the relationship. When members fail to understand their own and each other’s’ uniqueness, they miss out on the opportunity to learn from different perspectives.
3. Not fully committed to the process. When individuals are required to participate in group mentoring, they may fail to engage fully in the process. They may choose instead to sit back passively or withhold their opinions. Inevitably, it is the group that misses out. Lack of engagement impacts the learning of the entire group.
4. Failure to engage in conversation. Mentoring groups may sometimes say that they engage in “conversation.” What they are actually doing, though, is participating in a series of transactions or interactions. It is only when mentoring partners fully engage in conversation that deeper insights emerge. Conversation that demands collaborative engagement accelerates learning and takes group mentoring to a whole new level.
There appears to be a groundswell of interest in group mentoring. New formats and forms of group mentoring are emerging all the time and in different industries and setting around the globe.
In group mentoring individuals either mentor each other or rely on one or more individuals to facilitate the learning of a group of mentees. Mentoring groups can be peer-led or facilitated by one or more experts who serve as group mentors.
10 Best Practices for Getting Group Mentoring Started
Get to know the members of your group— not just their business titles but who they are as people.
Clarify the purpose of the group. What is the purpose of your group and what do you want to accomplish?
Decide on the process you are going to follow. Who will lead the group? What process will be used to make sure that participants receive what they need from the group?
Define roles and responsibilities of group members so that each participant is clear about what is expected of them.
Make everyone feel safe by putting confidentiality agreements in place.
Talk about personal and group boundaries and how to address potential stumbling blocks, when and if they occur.
Establish an agreed-upon set of ground rules. Will there be an agenda? When is the group going to meet? What happens if someone’s attendance is inconsistent or infrequent?
Discuss each person’s learning style and how individual learning styles might affect the learning that goes on in the group.
Agree on when and how to bring the group to positive closure. How will you know it is time for the group to come to closure?
Establish an accountability process to help the group and its members stay on track. Is the group meeting its goals?
Without the presence of learning, mentoring doesn’t exist. It is the purpose, the process, and the product of a mentoring relationship.
Because learning is so central to mentoring, it is essential that mentors understand their mentees as learners. Mentors need to know how to engage and guide the mentee appropriately and to create a climate that supports learning. In addition, mentors must to be open to learning themselves. When you begin your relationship mentor and mentee should agree to the purpose.
What is it that the mentee wants to obtain from your meetings? Once you have figured out what you both are going to receive from the relationship, it is now time to plan the process. How frequently will we meet? What will our meetings consist of? What goals will the mentor set for the mentee? Finally, decided what you want to end product to be. Where do both mentor and mentee want to be after the relationship comes to a close? How will you measure your accomplishments?
