by Center for Mentoring Excellence | Aug 12, 2013 | Uncategorized
Mentoring is a proven way to promote employee growth and development, accelerate learning, fast track leadership, improve retention, elevate morale, strengthen recruitment and promote diversity. Too often, people step into their mentoring roles without sufficient training, relying on their good intention or past experience to carry the day.
Successful relationships require a mentor to be adept at building trusting relationships with mentees, who often may be intimidated working with a more senior leader, or uncomfortable sharing vulnerabilities or challenges. Mentors need to understand the key components of mentoring, including negotiating agreements, creating accountability assurances and how to avoid common pitfalls and that tend to upend mentoring relationships.
Meet Mike, Kim and Jeff. Each of them had good intentions but missed the mark because they weren’t fully prepared for their role.
In the past, Mike had informally mentored a number of junior associates, and enjoyed these relationships. However, this was the first time he had actually participated in a formal mentoring relationship. After four months, his mentee, Aaron, had made little progress. Aaron’s low level goals were getting him nowhere and he frequently cancelled meetings at the last moment. More than once, Mike encouraged Aaron to become a more active participant in his own growth and development, but nothing seemed to shift. Mike was not enjoying this relationship.
Kim had been assigned as Trina’s mentor. Since she and Trina had worked together on projects, Kim thought it would be easy to mentor her. She assumed that they could skip over the relationship-building component and dive right into goal setting. Kim was confused when Trina seemed to be withholding, and profoundly disappointed when, after three months, the relationship completely stalled out.
Jeff held a deep passion for helping young talent in the company come up through the ranks. He took great pride in his role as a mentor and relished the opportunity to share his wisdom and provide sound advice. He always had a list of business books and journal articles to recommend to help mentees acquire leadership skills. Despite his own enthusiasm for mentoring, his mentees never seemed as satisfied or committed. He didn’t understand why.
Mike, Kim and Jeff all had good intentions. They all wanted to help their mentees grow and develop. Like most mentors, they assumed their past experiences with informal mentoring would be sufficient. As it turned out, they could have each benefited from mentoring training.
With training, Mike would have discovered why Aaron was lacking enthusiasm and energy for achieving his goals. He would have learned how to set expectations up front that put the mentee in the driver’s seat. He would have learned strategies to help his mentee set robust and SMART goals that facilitate growth and development.
Even though Kim knew Trina in a work setting, a successful mentoring relationship requires trust and safety. Mentoring training would have helped Kim understand the importance of taking the time to set the stage for the work ahead. She would not have made the assumption that Trina felt safe enough to be open and honest with a senior colleague. Kim would have learned which questions to ask to get to know Trina in a different way. She would probably have been surprised to learn that she had skipped over the most important phase of the mentoring cycle, preparing the relationship.
Jeff was driving his mentoring relationships instead of creating a partnership with his mentees. While his mentees might have appreciated the many resources he shared with them, mentoring isn’t about reading books and journals. Mentoring isn’t about listening to the wisdom of the mentor and hearing about their experiences. In this kind of relationship, the mentee never fully engages. Had Jeff had some training under his belt, he would have discovered that open two-way conversation was an essential part of mentoring right from the get-go. He would have learned that the only way for mentees to achieve good results is to feel a sense of ownership in the relationship. Knowing more about the different learning styles of his mentees would have helped him better support them in their learning.
Learning Point: Being an effective mentor requires more than just good intention. It also requires knowledge, competency and skill to be successful. Mentoring training plays a key role in the development all three of these important keys to success. It also impacts the quality of mentoring relationships. Mentors who are well-prepared do indeed report more fulfilling and mutually satisfying mentoring relationships.
by Center for Mentoring Excellence | Jun 28, 2013 | Mentoring Questions
Q: How important is it to reward mentors?
A: It depends on the culture in your organization. Some organizations reward everything. Some do not. Appreciation and recognition go a long way and are often sufficient.
Some institutions of higher education for example offer their mentors release time for mentoring or count mentoring time as committee service time. In professional service firms, a special code is sometimes developed for mentoring so that it is not docked from hours.
Q: What are the right incentives for the mentors to spend more time with mentees?
A: Each organization needs to create its own compelling business case for mentoring that speaks to those engaged in mentoring in significant and meaningful ways. We call it the WIIFM (what’s in it for me). Your WIFFM should speak to the organization benefits, individual benefits in a language that is meaningful to them.
Q: How long should a mentoring relationship last (e.g., 1 year, 6 month, etc.)?
It depends on the goals of the program and/or the nature of the learning goal. There is no “should” standard but most last from 9 months to 18 months. Some last two years and encourage mentoring closure conversations at the end of each year.
Q: Is there a risk in never closing a mentoring relationship, if it is okay with both parties?
A: Without a closure conversation, you lose out on a powerful opportunity to reflect and leverage your learning, and plan your next development step with someone who really knows and gets you.
Q: What is the recommended regular meeting /contact frequency?
A: The rule of thumb is to meet regularly and consistently, whether it is weekly, bi-weekly or monthly. Having a pre-established meeting date on the calendar helps ensure mutual accountability for making sure that meetings take place or are rescheduled.
Q: If your mentor appears always busy and harassed, how do you handle this as a mentee?
A: You might be making assumptions, so check them out! What you see is not always what you get. Engaging in a frank and honest conversation is a start, i.e., “I’m concerned….” “Is this working for you?” Checking in and checking things out once you have established a relationship will help you stay on track.
Q: How do you evaluate the impact of mentoring programs?
A: Carefully! Set goals for each of your mentoring programs and identify success factors. You will want to use qualitative, quantitative and baseline data to measure your success. See Creating a Mentoring Culture in which Lois Zachary discusses the issue of evaluation and measurement in depth.
by Center for Mentoring Excellence | Jun 28, 2013 | Uncategorized
Creating and building a mentoring culture requires ongoing participation and commitment of executive leadership. (more…)
by Center for Mentoring Excellence | Jun 26, 2013 | Uncategorized
If your organization is preparing to launch a mentoring initiative, you may be wondering where to begin. Here are six tasks to add to your to-do list:
1. Make sure the business case for mentoring aligns with your organization’s strategic direction.
2. Develop job descriptions for your Mentoring Oversight/Advisory Team, their individual member roles and responsibilities, and the person who will manage your mentoring program.
3. Develop a policy statement outlining mentoring expectations.
4. Create a budget that covers training and resources, including a salary/stipend for the mentoring point person.
5. Develop a strategic communication plan for broadcasting mentoring messages to all stakeholders.
6. Allocate virtual space to house information and mentoring resources.
by Center for Mentoring Excellence | Jun 12, 2013 | Uncategorized
A good mentoring closure experience offers mentors and mentees an opportunity to take stock and plan for the future. Not everyone is comfortable with having a closure conversation.
“There’s a trick to the ‘graceful exit.’ It begins with the vision to recognize when a job, a life stage, or a relationship is over — and let it go. It means leaving what’s over without denying its validity or its past importance to our lives. It involves a sense of future, a belief that every exit line is an entry that we are moving up, rather than out.” (Ellen Goodman)
The Payoff:
- Good closure offers an opportunity to maximize and leverage learning. Spend time creating a shared sense of progress as you bring your relationship to a close. Whether you are a mentor or mentee, preparing in advance for final mentoring meeting will help you maximize and leverage your learning. Ask yourself the following questions: In what ways have I grown and developed? What have I learned about myself? How has that learning contributed to my professional development?
- Good closure offers an opportunity for both mentor and mentee to move on gracefully. Never close the door to a mentoring relationship without opening the next door. Once you’ve reviewed what you’ve learned, spend time talking about the future and the next step in your learning and development journey.
- Good closure creates developmental momentum that extends far beyond the lifecycle of the mentoring relationship. Mentoring partners often come away with significantly deep learning that is sustainable over time. Think about your mentors, past and present. Chances are your mentors’ wisdom resides within you as the “voice in your head.”
- Good closure offers an opportunity to return. Your relationship with your mentoring partner will be different once the mentoring relationship ends. You may decide to continue the relationship on an ad hoc basis or informally. Be proactive and talk about these changes before they take place. Once you have redefined your relationship, it is time to “let go” of the relationship as it was and embrace it as it will be.
Takeaway: According to author Sara Lawrence-Lightfoot , “We’re always in a hurry to move forward. We don’t like to look back,” to reflect (USA Weekend, September 9, 2012). And yet, this is precisely what is required to experience good closure of a mentoring relationship.
by Center for Mentoring Excellence | Jun 10, 2013 | Advice for Leaders
If you are like most people, you want to look good in front of your boss. (more…)
by Center for Mentoring Excellence | Jun 7, 2013 | Advice for Leaders
Many organizations incorporate 360-degree feedback assessment into leadership development programs. (more…)
by Center for Mentoring Excellence | Jun 5, 2013 | Making Mentoring Work For You
Organizations need to support and pay attention to informal as well as formal mentoring within their organization. Both are important and critical to employee growth and development.
How do you differentiate the two?
Formal mentoring is commonly associated with the words organized, proscribed, structured, facilitated and supported. While these words describe many mentoring programs, the term itself actually refers to mentoring that is conducted under the umbrella of an organizational entity. Program parameters are defined and include structural and accountability mechanisms. There are programmatic and relationship expectations, requirements for eligibility and program goals and outcomes that give mentoring its formal feel.
Informal mentoring, in contrast, is usually described as unstructured, casual, need-based, and natural. For example, you may have identified someone in whom you see great promise and who could benefit your experience or someone may have approached you and asked you to mentoring them. Informal mentoring relationships can, and often do, run the gamut from casual catch-as-catch-can conversations or situational and information sharing to structured and “formalized” relationships. Each relationship proceeds at its own pace and on its own timetable.
Even in formal mentoring, each relationship structure varies depending on the learning needs and style of the mentoring partners. Once you are inside and working the relationship, it becomes a dance of two or more people coming together in partnership to move learning and development forward. As Huang and Lynch so beautifully capture it, “It is the dance between [] willing and consenting partners, a dance of giving and receiving each other’s gifts.”
by Center for Mentoring Excellence | May 5, 2013 | Uncategorized
Mentoring relationships are innately goal-centered partnerships. They are indispensable to the work of mentoring. Goals focus the work of mentoring, enable mentee growth and development, and, ultimately, determine the success of the relationship. Setting SMART — specific, measurable, action-oriented, realistic and timely—learning goals is one of the most daunting challenges mentors and mentees face.
Mentees are often reluctant to identify goals that appear too ambitious to a senior leader who, they fear, might not think the mentee capable of that level of achievement. Mentors find themselves tasked with making sure that goals will produce the kinds of tangible results that warrant time and energy and move the organization and mentee forward. Be SMART about helping your mentee set SMART goals! Here are some winning strategies for facilitating a mentee-driven goal setting process.
by Center for Mentoring Excellence | Apr 23, 2013 | Uncategorized
Letting go of one’s defenses and being truly open with a senior leader is one of the most daunting challenges new mentees face. (more…)
Jeff was driving his mentoring relationships instead of creating a partnership with his mentees. While his mentees might have appreciated the many resources he shared with them, mentoring isn’t about reading books and journals. Mentoring isn’t about listening to the wisdom of the mentor and hearing about their experiences. In this kind of relationship, the mentee never fully engages. Had Jeff had some training under his belt, he would have discovered that open two-way conversation was an essential part of mentoring right from the get-go. He would have learned that the only way for mentees to achieve good results is to feel a sense of ownership in the relationship. Knowing more about the different learning styles of his mentees would have helped him better support them in their learning.
