Creating a Climate of Openness: What Mentors Can Do
Part of the mentor’s role is to create a space that encourages a mentee to feel comfortable being open with you (more…)
Matchmaker, Matchmaker Make Me a Match
Every mentee who participates in a mentoring program where matches are made for them hopes that their mentor will be a perfect match.
While some formal programs make the matches for mentees, many solicit mentee input or top choices before the final match is made. Some programs provide support and resources, but leave the sole discretion for mentor selection to the mentee.
The hope for a perfect match springs eternal. Whether you are responsible for pairing mentors and mentees, or looking for a mentor yourself, there are many criteria to consider. In this blog, we highlight four of them. These factors impact how a mentor and mentee relate to each other and affect the long-term success of the relationship.
1. Attitude and Values
Mentees report a greater level of satisfaction from their mentoring relationship when they share similar values and attitudes with their mentor. These points of connection, discovered early in the relationship, help the mentee and mentor bond and develop trust more quickly. Mentors connect more easily with a mentee who shares similar work values and attitudes (i.e. work ethic, focus on organizational benefit). On the flipside, having similar attitudes and values sometimes limits exposure to a diversity of perspectives. If mentor and mentee both share sensitivity to employee feelings, for example, there might not be as much gain in areas of accountability and conflict management.
2. Style
Style is the manner someone uses to influence others and convey information. It is sometimes used as a synonym for “personality.” Style is about “how” someone delivers a message. It is a strong determining factor in how someone is perceived regarding their approachability, intimidation, friendliness, or coolness. Style can play an overly important role in the selection of a mentor. While opposites can attract, that may not be the case at the beginning of a mentoring relationship. Style differences —soft or hard, informal or formal, head v. heart, left-brained or right-brained, optimistic or pessimistic—play out in the way the mentee receives feedback and support.
Similarity in style increases the mentee’s comfort and ease in navigating a new relationship. When the mentor and mentee share similar styles, a preference for analysis and detail, for example, the mentee is more likely to satisfy their mentor’s expectations. On the other hand, differences can produce significant learning for both mentor and mentee. The detailed-oriented, analytical mentee may be served better by a mentor with a more global, big picture perspective. A mentee who is conflict averse may benefit from a relationship with a mentor with a more direct style.
3. Learning Fit
Learning is the purpose of mentoring. It is why people engage in the relationship, what they do while they are in it, and what they want out of. Ultimately it is the learning fit that is important. Is there a match between what the mentee needs/wants to learn and what the mentor has to offer (experience, expertise, etc.)?
Mentors don’t have to be subject matter experts in the area the mentee is focused on, but they do have to understand the goals, challenges and requirements the mentee faces to ensure accountability for results. Recently, a mentor, the director of customer service, helped his mentee, the director of construction, learn how to improve his team’s engagement and ownership. Expertise and experience were aligned with the mentee’s goals and needs, not the mentee’s technical field.
4. Time
Good intention alone does not ensure good mentoring. Even when values, style and learning fit match perfectly, a mentoring relationship can be compromised when the mentor doesn’t have or make the time to commit to the partnership. Mentees look to mentors to act as sounding boards, encourage them to test out ideas, to “be there for them,” and provide a safety net. All of this requires regularly scheduled meetings, ad hoc availability for questions, occasional check-ins and a continuum of feedback. Time is the biggest challenge for busy mentors, but it is the glue that holds the relationship together. Most importantly, it sends an important message to the mentee: YOU matter.
From Our Mailbox
Confidentiality: A Slippery Slope
Does the conversation that occurs between a mentor and mentee necessarily remain confidential during a time when the mentee is being considered for a career move? Or, when a leadership team sits to talk about whether to move someone who has been a mentee, can the mentor add to the conversation from his or her experience with the mentee? Or, is the conversation between the mentor and the mentee always strictly confidential?
Do you have any guidelines on this question? (more…)
Mentoring Culture Check-In: Are You Minding Your P’s and Q’s?
Creating a mentoring culture is a work in progress. This means you need to be minding your Ps and Qs: continuously monitoring, assessing and enhancing your efforts. If you keep these six Ps in mind – preparation, priority, position, pool, politics and progress – they should enhance your efforts and further help you embed good mentoring practice in your organization. (more…)
4 Frequently Missed Mentoring Opportunities …. And, What You Can Do About Them
Author and missionary William Arthur Ward once said, “Opportunity is often difficult to recognize; we usually expect it to beckon us with beepers and billboards.” While many believe that mentoring opportunities arise organically and in the moment, we believe that effective mentoring programs require continuous optimization of opportunity. Often opportunities are right there in front of us and yet we fail to recognize them or bargain them away, thinking that we will find the time to get to them later. (more…)
12 “Must-Dos” for Mentoring Program Administrators and Managers
1. Be actively engaged in a mentoring relationship, or have had previous mentoring experience.
2. Make your own growth and development in the role a priority. Continue to grow your knowledge, information and resources so that you can bring energy and enthusiasm to your mentoring program.
3. Get the data collection process started early on and keep the momentum going.
4. Stay in contact with past participants. Find out how they are applying what they’ve learned, get their feedback on your program and consider them as possible future mentor candidates.
5. Always ask yourself, “What more can I be doing to raise the bar on our mentoring program?”
6. Be on the lookout for opportunities to creative value and visibility for mentoring. Make sure that your leaders are continuously updated on mentoring activities and successes.
7. Be selective in whom you choose to be your program mentors. Remember not everyone should be a mentor.
8. Provide your mentors with feedback so they can continue to elevate their mentoring practices.
9. Ensure time, resources, and leadership support are part of your program infrastructure.
10. Develop a leadership succession plan for the next leader of your mentoring program.
11. Make sure you have enough champions throughout the organization; creating a mentoring culture requires mentoring advocacy.
12. Create a continuum of mentoring education and training programs.
10 Ways To Turbocharge Your Team
How are you leading? What could you do better to improve your team’s performance and level of satisfaction? (more…)
5 Quick Tips for Enhancing Your Mentoring Relationship
1. Be open and honest with your mentor about your challenges on the job, weaknesses in your leadership, and issues you need to address. Your willingness to be vulnerable demonstrates your commitment to mentoring and strengthens your relationship with your mentor.
2. Prepare an agenda or points for discussion and send them to your mentor in advance of your meetings. Outlining topics facilitates self-reflection and helps crystalize your thinking. During the meeting, an agenda keeps you focused and helps you use your time more efficiently. Your mentor will appreciate your preparedness and the serious way in which you approach the engagement.
3. Create a written mentoring agreement. It lays the groundwork for the relationship to move forward. It also provides a benchmark to measure progress and ensures that you stay on track.
4. Identify stretch goals that will truly impact your success, and push yourself to produce discernible results. Your mentor will continue to invest time in the relationship when there is tangible evidence that their efforts are making a difference. Remember that an effective mentoring relationship shouldn’t be too comfortable or complacent. .
5. Take charge of your relationship. While a strong mentor can help you be successful, the responsibility for identifying goals, developing an action plan and staying focused on your learning lies with you. You are in the driver’s seat!
Virtual Mentoring: Staying in Conversation
Lately, we’ve received a lot of “aha” comments about our Levels of Conversation Model©, particularly as it applies to virtual mentoring. For some, our model serves as wake-up call—an alert about what is missing in a mentoring relationship. For some, it provides a handy reference tool for evaluating the quality of mentoring conversations. Others, after having thought about the model, realize that they never really engaged in conversation.
Virtual mentoring, by its very nature, seems to invite transaction rather than conversation. The exchange goes back and forth very quickly and expeditiously.
EF: Did you read the email I sent to you yesterday?
GH: I did.
EF: What did you think?
GH: Very helpful. Thanks a lot.
EF: How is the goal setting coming?
GH: I could use some help. Do you have any articles about how to set a goal?
EF: I do. Sending it along in the next email.
GH: Got it. Thanks.
Mentoring partners EF and GH exchange information. Communication is clear, tangible and concrete but the conversation doesn’t move anywhere; what remains is a surface transaction.
EFGH Redux
Collaborative engagement fosters deepened insight and reflection and partners seek to understand and explore ideas and learn from each other. There is openness to new insights and learning. Let’s look at that same virtual conversation when collaborate engagement is present. Note how “the EFGH conversation” deepens and takes the relationship to the next level.
EF: I am checking in to find out if you are ready to discuss the article I emailed yesterday. The questions that it raises about leadership really resonated for me and I hope for you. I am wondering what you thought.
GH: I did receive the article and printed it out so I could review it last night.
EF: What did you think?
GH: I found it thought-provoking as well, especially when the authors talked about the concept of vision. I use to think that vision was one of those “pie in the sky” concepts that you’re suppose to talk about – but truthfully, I haven’t ever seen or heard any of my own leaders ever do the “vision” thing. To me, it was more of something you read about but conceptually, but had no place in the real world. Your article made me rethink my position. For the first time, I can see how vision can be used to bind a team together and inspire a group to move forward. I also am thinking about how it much of inspiring a shared vision is my responsibility as a leader.
EF: Yes, vision, is important. I remember also thinking early on in my career that everyone seems to talk about “the vision thing” but it never about what it is and how to achieve it. I kept waiting for others to connect the dots and it never happened.
GH: I sure would like to learn that skill but I have no clue of where to start. Do you have some resources you could send me?
EF: I do, and I also think that that we have some great resources right in front of us – including you. I’d like you to think about “the vision thing” not just read about it. How about if you start by observing the leaders around you who inspire a shared vision? Maybe jot down some notes about what they say or do that enables them to inspire a shared vision. What do you think?
GH: Unfortunately, there aren’t that many that do it effectively. Nevertheless, It might be interesting for me to notice how what they say or do impacts those around them. Like their reactions…. As well as mine.
EF: I am glad to see you are committed to learning more about vision and how you can incorporate it into your leadership toolkit.
GH: Yes, I am ready to dig in. Let’s talk more about this next time and maybe we can frame it up into one of my mentoring goals. I would like to see how I can use vision and get some tangible results.
EF: Let’s do it!
The second “EFGH conversation” has forward movement. You can feel momentum gathering as the conversation moves the relationship to a new level. A qualitative shift has taken place in the dynamic and content of the conversation. Both EF and GH put new ideas out on the table and explore them together, creating new understandings. Both EF and GH were open and present.
7 Quick Strategies for Moving Toward Collaborative Engagement
1. Use information and resources use to enrich and deepen conversation.
2. Use information and resources to enrich and deepen mentoring conversation.
3. Use probing questions. For example: What? Where? When? Why? How?
4. Use clarifying questions. For example: Is that correct? How do you define that? Is that similar to?
5. Be reflective as you respond by paraphrasing what you hear. For example: So you feel that… So you are saying that… What I think I am hearing is…
6. Make sure you allot enough time to engage in conversation.
7. Check in with your mentee to make sure that meaningful learning is taking place during your conversation.
Mentoring, A Leadership Competency
When leaders commit to their own development as mentors they enlarge their capacity to lead, support and grow their people which has a ripple effect throughout the organization. Even with the best intentions, not all mentors are fully prepared for the role. (more…)
Mentoring Resources
