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.

Mentoring Culture Slide

1. Preparation

Preparation is key in developing and implementing successful mentoring programs and creating the mentoring culture to support them.

  • Are your mentors and mentees ready to engage in a mentoring relationship?
  • Are you providing training to get everyone up to speed and on the same page?

 

2. Priority

Sufficient time must be honored, dedicated and allocated to mentoring.

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3. Position

Mentoring must be clearly understood as a strategy to address critical business issues for the organization. 

  • Is your business case clear?
  • Are you communicating the rationale for your mentoring efforts frequently and consistently?

 

4. Pool

The quality of a mentoring pool directly impacts the success of a mentoring program. 

  • Have you created criteria for selecting mentors and mentees?
  • Have you recruited the best possible mentor candidates?

 

5. Politics

Never underestimate the importance of politics.

 

6. Progress

Tracking progress and assessing the impact of mentoring on the organization’s strategic objectives reinforces the value of mentoring.

  • Have you identified how you will measure the impact of mentoring?
  • What are your mentoring partners doing to hold themselves and each other accountable for achieving results?

 

Are you minding your P’s and Q’s?

Ps & Qs