If mentors are good for succession and seamless continuity why don’t more companies invest time and other resources into mentoring? There are several factors that can create obstacles or derail both formal and informal mentoring programs. They can happen either in isolation or concurrently:
· The persons deemed repositories of institutional knowledge may not feel comfortable releasing information because the organization is not demonstrating that it values long tenured employees. Instead the organization highly rewards younger employees with up-to-date skills and limited experience. As a result, the long tenured employees have the experience that can improve the performance of the inexperienced highly skilled employees but the willingness, trust and the feeling of being valued are not present.
· There are organizations that exist predominantly in the present, directing their energies toward immediate issues because of a subconscious notion of immortality or a reality of not having enough time. If the state of being busy is perpetual, it forces decision makers to habitually adopt a view predominantly centered on microcosms instead of a visionary or long term perspective.
· A limited budget is often a reason why talent development plans are delayed. Executives and owners often have competing financial priorities that require attention so training and development plans are postponed, sometimes indefinitely.
· Negative attitudes toward employees based on past experiences can also obstruct the development of talented employees. While there are cases where the attitude may be justified because risks are high, there are cases where unforgiving attitudes stall the careers of strong performers who eventually leave the organization and flourish elsewhere.
Mentoring doesn’t only have to be about succession and the future career of the mentee. It can be focused on the present from the following perspectives:
Informational Mentoring – This type of mentoring helps the mentee to focus on correct procedures and processes, both formal and informal.
Friend – This type of mentor interacts with the mentee in social situations to help the mentee understand how to navigate social interactions. This is particularly useful in highly political work environments.
Reciprocal Mentoring – This type of mentoring relationship is one where persons with complementary strengths collaborate on projects. Each person learns from the other through mutual exchange.
We tend to focus on the benefits of mentoring to the mentee and the organization but there are tangible benefits for mentors. Here are a few examples:
· By interacting closely with persons from lower levels of the organization, the mentor is being exposed to information directly from a level of employee they may not connect with under normal circumstances. The direct access allows executives to skip a level of people leaders that may be providing a biased interpretation of circumstances. It can also bring a deeper understanding of diversity and how to harness differences to positively impact the performance of the organization.
· Mentoring helps leaders to develop their coaching, counseling, listening, leadership and modeling skills.
· Mentoring helps to create an impression of accessibility, connectivity and humanity between junior employees and executives. Building credibility through creating positive connections and valuing employees can also serve to build trust in organizations where trust is impaired.
Here is what organizations can consider when developing a mentoring program:
· As a mentor, decide why you want to mentor, what you want the mentoring to achieve in the present and future and who would be the best person for you to mentor. If there is no formal mentoring program, you can select someone to mentor informally.
· As an employer, understand if you have persons within the company who can mentor your employees and if not, determine if there are possible mentors, external to the company, who have the time, interest and skills.
· Determine if talent should be mentored by more than one mentor.
· As a decision maker, get buy in and participation from the business. As a best practice, companies that treat mentoring as an organization wide priority and not only an HR priority get more out of the process.
· As an HR professional, support mentoring with an improved recruitment process. No amount of training and development opportunities will improve bad hires.
· Match the right mentors and mentees. Once you identify desired outcomes of the mentoring relationships, decision makers should consider the strengths and weaknesses of the mentor.
· Create an orientation program for mentors and mentees. It should include a guide or letter outlining roles, time commitment etc. A formal mentoring agreement can also capture this type of information.
· Track the performance of persons being mentored and determine if the mentoring match is the right one.
· Some organizations use training as a primary development tool for top talent but there are some things a seminar won’t achieve that mentoring can. For instance, mentoring aligns an experiential foundation with academic training. Academic training is theoretical and does not always give the individual the opportunity to apply knowledge, make mistakes and experience variations on a theme.
· Cultivate an environment of collaboration where employees experience a sense of being valued. Otherwise your mentoring program will be perceived as a farce.
What distinguishes good mentors from great mentors is the best mentors don’t focus on creating clones of themselves, they focus on developing the individual’s inherent strengths, guiding the individual to go beyond their perceived limits.
Many companies are so entrenched in survival mode that they postpone the need for preparing for long term realities until it is too late to develop the right people. Instead, I encourage decision makers to think about ways you can match the right mentors with top talent who will represent the vision and values of the organization in the future.
Yvette Bethel is CEO of Organizational Soul, an HR Consulting and Leadership Development company. If you are interested in exploring how you can create a higher performing organization, you can contact her at info@orgsoul.com.