Mentoring within an organization is an effective, inexpensive way to improve. The value of people to an organization is directly related to what they know. Through mentoring, you can efficiently use your existing resources to increase and enrich the overall knowledge of the people. Here are some basics for establishing mentoring in your organization.
Establish a Mentoring Culture. It's important to establish mentoring as part of the organization's culture. That usually implies a combination of formal and informal mentoring. Both are important. Everyone should be aware of the presence and value of mentoring to the organization, including those that mentor and those that receive the benefits of the increased knowledge.
Formal Mentoring. Here are the basics for establishing a formal mentoring program. These should be tailored for the organization's size and situation.
1. Establish a mentoring process and ensure it is followed. It's important that the organization knows a formal mentoring program is in place and how it works. Those directly involved should know that the process must be followed. Typically, it's a simple process, but it ensures some basic structure to the mentoring program. Mentors should be trained in the process and also the techniques for conducting mentoring sessions.
2. Judiciously select those to be formally mentored. Document the criteria used to select people to be mentored, and be certain the criteria are used. Typically formal mentoring cannot be done for everyone, so it is important to ensure fairness. The criteria will relate to maximizing benefit to the organization, specific career development, and immediate need. For example, a particular employee may have demonstrated exceptional abilities. In order to better utilize those abilities, a mentor may be assigned to take the employee to the next level of maturity. Be certain the selection is defendable to the other employees who may feel slighted that they were not selected.
2. Carefully pick the mentor. Formal mentoring is no better than the mentor. Be sure the mentor has the necessary knowledge you are trying to convey and can dedicated the necessary time. Effective mentors have the "teacher spirit", and the ability to clearly explain. A good mentor relishes in the success of the student and should not feel threatened by the increased knowledge of the person. The mentor must be committed to the role of mentor and must follow the basic process.
4. Mentoring planning. The mentor and the one being mentored should develop a mutual plan. The plan should include overall objectives and a set of topics to be covered at mentoring sessions. The plan is informal and brief, but it establishes a set of mutual expectation.
5. Mentoring sessions. Conduct regularly scheduled mentoring sessions with the set of planned topics. The mentor should prepare for the session, providing supporting material, if appropriate. Sessions should focus on specifics, not be just a random discussion. Results of the session should be documented in summary form.
6. Track progress. The overall formal mentoring program should be tracked by the organization to ensure it is being accomplished and to provide a means for improvement. This includes tracking the occurrence of all mentoring sessions against the plan. Issues or problems can be corrected based on the tracking information. Tracking may also include an assessment of the mentoring sessions from the perspective of the mentor and also those being mentored. This provides indicators for how to improve the formal program.
6. Relate to performance reviews. Formal mentoring should be a factor in the performance reviews for both the mentor and those being mentored. Mentoring will usually be a specific performance objective set by management. In this way, good mentors can be rewarded for this important task.
7. Follow through. Use the results of formal mentoring to adjust assignments where they are justified. If people see that nothing changes as a result of mentoring, they will not take it seriously.
Informal Mentoring. Informal mentoring can take many forms. New people joining an organization have a learning curve that delays their effectiveness and value to the organization. Effective informal mentoring reduces that delay. Too often, the new employee is given a set of reading material and neglected for a few days. They are told, "When you finish reading these documents, come by and we'll talk." That's not a good way to start a new job or assignment. Every new employee should have an assigned person to help them get through the learning curve as quickly as possible. The informal mentor is always available for advice, guidance, information, and specific job instruction. This mentoring role should continue as long as it is needed. Management should make it clear that this type of mentoring is a high priority and is expected across the organization. It benefits everyone, because it raises the effectiveness of the overall organization.
Impediments to Mentoring. There are two factors that work against a successful mentoring program. First, in a thriving organization, most people are often quite busy. Mentoring takes time. If the participants believe they don't have time for mentoring, then it will not be effective. Formal and informal mentoring must be given high priority by management and rewarded where appropriate. The second factor that impedes mentoring is the fear of giving up the information that makes you valuable. This job security factor causes some people to selfishly protect their knowledge rather than share it. It's difficult to overcome this problem, since it relates to human nature and personalities. But a management team that enforces mentoring as a culture makes it known that everyone is expected to participate willingly in mentoring at all levels for the good of the organization.
Mentoring brings real benefit to an organization. It identifies and develops talent. It reduces learning curve delay for new employees. Through mentoring, the overall knowledge and abilities of the organization are enriched. If done correctly, mentoring establishes better working relationships across the organization. And finally, mentoring is an inexpensive way to achieve these benefits.