Mentoring is about guiding the transition from mentee to mentor, not unlike how a parent helps a child become an adult. It’s based on the premise of sharing experience. It also means multiple perspectives are heard and different solutions are brought to the table.
Mentoring can be administered in a few different ways.
- One-on-one: Involves a highly experienced, potentially senior role paired with a much younger individual starting out in their career or looking to transition into a new role.
- Group: Sees a few mentors working with a group of mentees. This can be applied in the workplace for ‘immature’ teams who need some nurturing – for example, a smaller team who self-govern without a dedicated team leader.
- Peer: This one is a bit like a formalised buddy system. The goal is to provide support and impart team, role or department-based knowledge.
- Virtual: This type of mentorship program also allows for relationships across states or even countries, widening the pool of potential mentors and mentees as well as experiences and cultural perspectives.
When done right, effective mentoring relationships are mutually beneficial. Some of these benefits include:
- Improved and validated leadership capabilities. A measure of leadership competence is knowledge sharing. Mentoring affords a chance to develop knowledge sharing and develop leadership capabilities.
- Fast-track career development. Mentorship offers a chance for both parties to advance their careers. Mentors refine skills and show initiative, which can be evidence for promotion. For mentees, it’s a key way to show interest in progressing within the organisation.
- Create networking opportunities. Having points of contact you can go to for future advice, endorsement and opportunity is a great way to establish yourself in your industry (and beyond).
- Boost job confidence. Mentorships can provide emotional support on top of professional guidance. Alongside showing the lessons in failure, the right mentor can shape a growth mindset in their mentee and empathise with similar challenges they’ve faced.
- Better knowledge transfer. Without channels for knowledge transfer, you unwittingly create knowledge silos. The mentor–mentee dynamic is an important way to transfer information and create knowledge cascades and future mentors.
- Enhanced upskilling. Most mentees are looking for a guide for their career progression. Mentors provide that link between learning and application, as well as crucial experiential learning that often only happens on the job.
Implementing a formal mentoring program in your organisation is easier than you think. It involves a lot of crowdsourcing to understand what will be of value to your mentees and mentors, but also creates structured processes that ensure there are achievable outcomes.
- Define purpose and goals: Consider your business needs when starting a mentoring program. Identify the motivations for employees in signing up and what successful mentorship looks like.
- Flesh out the program: Consider the number of spaces available, how exclusive the program, how sign ups will be encouraged, how long the program will run for, how pairings will be decided and what mentoring format will be used.
- Identify mentors and mentees: Look for mentors who are not only in leadership positions, but clearly display desired leadership capabilities. Things like performance evaluations and skills gaps analyses are a good way to find who will benefit from formal mentoring.
- Define mentee objectives: A successful mentoring relationship begins with a shared goal-setting session. A mentee should have expectations of what they are looking for, and the mentor can give credence to those goals or flesh out new ones they believe are beneficial.
- Set ground rules: Having rules for interaction helps guide the path ahead. It gives mentors control over their part of the process, which ensures buy-in. Similarly, mentees gain a sense of ownership over their career development.
- Review and measure: You need to continually review the dynamics and structures between mentors and mentees. This way, you can make changes as needed, both to partnerships and the structure of the program.
Why do some mentoring programs fail? It’s no mystery. It really comes down to following the tenets you set out. Three common issues that occur include lack of training, poor matches and skipping milestones.
For a more in-depth look at mentoring, have a read of the full article.
--
