Page 15 – ART OF MENTORING

How Mentoring Can Facilitate Acquisition

mentoring facilitate acquisition shaking hands

The immediate aftermath of an acquisition poses a number of major challenges. While many of these challenges relate to integration of systems and structures, the people challenges are often the most difficult and long lasting. In particular:

Ensuring that senior level talent does not leave. Headhunters target merger situations, because the uncertainty causes people to seek security by looking at other job possibilities “just in case”
Developing trust between executives in the formerly separate companies. The level of trust is especially diminished, when there is a real or perceived difference in power between the merging organisations. “Conqueror syndrome” is a commonly observed phenomenon that obstructs whole-hearted engagement of executives in creating the new organisation.
Cross-organisational communications. In a typical acquisition situation, communication quality and openness diminish, partly because of a lack of trust but also because it takes time to build new informal networks.
Survivor syndrome. If there have to be job losses, the survivors often feel guilty and relived at the same time. Their motivation and their ability to take the managed risks that the new business needs both decrease and it may take a year or more before they recover confidence.

How mentoring helps?

Introducing a well-designed mentoring programme for top talent can make radical and positive difference to managing each of these challenges, for very little cost. In well-designed mentoring programmes, people engaged in mentoring are typically at least one third less likely to leave. (One classic case study shows a 1300% differential!) Because mentoring relationships work by building rapid rapport amongst people, who have different background or experience, they are arguably the fastest method of creating intra-organisational trust.

Mentors and mentees typically help each other build networks and in a merger situation, this activity comes it the fore. And, if survivor syndrome does become an issue, mentors (if they have been properly trained) provide the safe environment, where people can discuss their fears and concerns, and regain their resilience and refocus upon performance, both for themselves and for their teams.

There has been no empirical research around the impact of mentoring within company acquisition, but a rough estimate, based on experience, is that it has the potential to contribute over the first year a minimum of 5% to productivity, profitability, share price, and retention of talent – not least by how it helps overcome the four key challenges above.

Coaching: How Much Should Line Managers Give Direct Reports?

Coaching: it’s a natural assumption that the more coaching and mentoring a line manager gives his or her direct reports, the greater the positive impact on performance and engagement. In reality, however, according to a study by Gartner[1], there is very little correlation. The study suggests instead that quantity of coaching is much less important than quality. It also finds that the most effective managers focus on identifying the skills and development needs of their direct reports and on finding the best learning resource for them. Rather than assume they must coach, they recognise that may best be done by peers or people outside the team – especially when it is related to tasks, where they do not have specific expertise.

Steps to Coaching your Direct Report

All of which reinforces the perspective that line manager coaching is less about doing coaching than about creating the environment, where coaching can happen. Practical steps a line manager can take include:

Recognition

Making sure that individual strengths and expertise are recognised and valued within the team, by talking about them in team meetings and creating opportunities for people to demonstrate expertise to colleagues

Safety

Building an environment of psychological safety, where everyone feels confident enough to ask colleagues for coaching

Knowledge Sharing

Rewarding knowledge sharing and peer coaching; one simple method is to have an appreciation system, based on peer recognition for both task help and learning help

Outside Influence

Getting to know who outside the team might be a good learning resource for team members and creating connections

Learning check-ins

Fostering amongst team members the habit of asking for coaching. “Learning check-ins” help to overcome people’s tendency to plough on without seeking input, for fear of looking stupid or wasting other people’s time. The check-in process is very simple. It asks:

Am I missing anything?
What else would be useful to know?
What do I need to watch out for?
Very often, all that is needed, is a simple assurance – and that usually takes only moments. But every now and then a need or opportunity for coaching will arise.
Making sure that everyone’s development needs (including their own) are included in a transparent Team Development Plan, which clarifies and integrates individual and collective learning requirements.

One of the benefits, when team leaders and managers adopt this kind of approach, is that they spread the burden of development across the team – which, frees up time for them to think, and perhaps invest a bit more time in their own development….!

Want to help your direct report further? Check out this great article on providing conservation with context!

[1] 2018, Managers can’t be great coaches all by themselves, Harvard Business Review, May-June 2018, 22-24

Why Boards Can’t Let #MeToo Scare Them

Why Boards Can’t Let #MeToo Scare Them Off Diversity Mentoring

Recent research by Art of Mentoring showed a marked increase in the percentage of men who are nervous about working alone with women in a post #MeToo world. No doubt there are also board members and executives with growing concerns about the perceptions of men in power positions working too closely with junior women. It’s tempting to back away from programs that involve men mentoring women altogether: simply sever any risk of scandal or innuendo.

Before boards allow themselves to run scared, they should remember two things. First, the evidence is that gender-balanced management teams positively impact performance. Second, mentoring is one of the best tools available to help talented young women (and men for that matter) develop into valuable assets in your C-suites. Let’s explore these points further.

Gender-Balanced Management Teams Positively Impact Performance

Recent research has put real numbers behind the value of gender-balanced management.

A ten-year study of 300 companies in 10 countries by McKinsey looked at the correlation between the presence of women in top management teams and business performance. They found a 47% increase in return on equity and a 55% increase in the average EBIT margin between businesses in the top quartile for females on the executive committee versus companies with no women on the executive.

A Sodexo study analysed the key business indicators from 100 global companies and 50,000 managers in 80 countries, and compared gender-balanced entities (defined as 40-60% women in management) with those entities without gender balance. What they found was remarkable. Gender balanced organisations enjoyed a 23% higher gross profit, 13% higher organic growth, 12% higher client retention and 5% higher brand awareness.

These two studies should make it clear that getting women into management warrants considerable effort and risk taking.

Mentoring as a Powerful Tool to Drive Gender Balance

There is one tool that successful men have acknowledged for generations as key to their rise to the top: mentoring. Enabling women to access mentorship from people in positions of power (still mainly men) is one of the best tools for guiding women into C-suites and reaping the potential rewards of gender-balanced management.

Mentoring can provide an entrée into the echelons of power to build networks and support systems that will bolster women’s careers. It also helps women to feel valued by the organisation and gain confidence in their careers.

Yet, evidence consistently shows that women face more barriers in securing mentorships than men.

A 2017 global study by professional services firm Egon Zehnder found that “if women don’t reach a critical threshold in their career early enough, they either stop reaching out for support or their organisations stop extending it.” In other words, talent is slipping through the cracks in the system.

Formal mentoring programs offer a safety net for organisations to avoid talent loss, particularly amongst women.

Mentoring Models May Need to Change

Given that men still hold the reins of power in most organisations, it is essential that men feel comfortable and confident in mentoring women if we are to achieve gender-balanced executives. This requires men and organisations to relearn and reshape traditional mentoring.

In their book Athena Rising: How and Why Men Should Mentor Women, authors Brad Johnson and David Smith explain that the traditional notion of mentoring is (not surprisingly) modelled on a male-to-male relationship. Mentoring has evolved largely informally, with a male mentor expected to introduce his male mentee at the golf club or give him a slap on the back at drinks after work. The idea is to enable your mentee to become “one of the boys”.

Women can never truly be “one of the boys” and a positive mentoring experience must show acceptance and inclusion for women as women. In Athena Rising the authors identified 46 dos and don’ts for men mentoring women. If you don’t have time to read the book, check out our blog, which highlights our top eight.

Expecting mentoring relationships to develop and evolve “naturally” will only strengthen the “boys’ club” mentality that too often stands in the way of gender balance. Boards and management teams must implement and encourage formal mentoring programs with strong mentor and mentee training components.

The time has come for boards and senior executive teams to “lean in”, to borrow Sheryl Sandberg’s now famous expression. The payoff for gender-balanced management is now clear. Boards cannot afford to let old habits or #MeToo jitters stand in the way of shareholder return.

MENTORS: Help Your Mentee Thrive

MENTORS: How to Use Positive Psychology to Help Your Mentee to Thrive

Over the last two decades a new branch of psychological study has taken academia, education and workplaces by storm. Known as “positive psychology”, it is basically the study of what makes life worth living. Rather than focusing on helping the sick to “get well”, this area of science is concerned with ensuring that life is fulfilling.

Positive psychology should not be confused with positive thinking. Unsurprisingly, there is no scientific evidence to support the idea that if you think positive thoughts, good things will happen to you. However, there is a growing body of evidence that there are small, practical actions you can take to improve your chances of flourishing.

As a mentor, some of the tools and ideas coming out of positive psychology can help you to ensure that your mentee is not simply surviving in his or her job, but thriving. This has obvious benefits not only for the mentee, but also for the entire organisation.

In his book, Flourish, Professor Martin Seligman, a leading positive psychology researcher, identifies five pillars of wellbeing: positive emotion, engagement, relationships, meaning and accomplishment, now referred to as PERMA.

If you feel your mentee is not flourishing, one place to start is the PERMAH Workplace Survey. Developed by Dr. Peggy Kern, from the Centre for Positive Psychology at the University of Melbourne, this survey measures the wellbeing factors identified by Seligman, and adds health to the mix. The survey results will help you and your mentee to identify what needs to be addressed, to enable your mentee to consistently thrive.

Depending on the outcomes of this survey, here are some ideas and tools that can help you work with your mentee.

Positive Emotions

No one can be happy all of the time, but if your mentee is not regularly experiencing positive emotions at work then something has to change.

Explore with your mentee whether she is actively using her strengths and talents in her current role. Consider asking her to prepare a personal SWOT analysis and then use your session together to brainstorm ways that she can better employ her strengths in her current role, or possibly explore a new career trajectory.

It’s not always necessary to think in terms of major career decisions. Focus on the small stuff as well. Take time to identify what brings joy to your mentee and explore ways that she can tap into that in the workplace. For example, if she loves being surrounded by nature, consider bringing plants into the workspace.

If your mentee is a glass half-empty sort of person, help her to find ways to shift her perspective. For example, get her to make a habit of finishing each day by noting down a few things she has done well. Regularly practising this sort of thinking will counteract her natural bias to ruminate about what went wrong.

Engagement

In order to truly thrive, it’s important that your mentee feels engaged in his career.

Quite often disengagement is less about big picture career goals and more about an inability to focus. So if your mentee is struggling to engage you might start by helping him to minimise distractions. In today’s world this usually involves setting guidelines around personal technology. This short video offers some simple, but effective ideas on improving concentration.

Positive Relationships

We spend a lot of time at work, so it’s important that we build a strong network of good work relationships. Sometimes that can feel difficult in a fast-paced competitive workplace.

It may seem obvious, but simple acts of kindness and showing genuine appreciation are very effective ways to start building relationships. Not only do they make people feel better about you, they tend to also make you feel better about yourself. If your mentee is feeling isolated at work, explore the small steps he can take to start establishing rapport with others in the workplace.

Meaning

You don’t have to be curing cancer or stopping global warming to find purpose in your work. Almost any job can be meaningful.

Your mentee may feel unclear about what gives him meaning. A great question to ask in this case is, “what would you do if you weren’t afraid.” The answer will often provide strong indicators of what your mentee really wants to do and it will help you to provide guidance.

You can also help your mentee to find the meaning in her job. Ask why she does what she does, and who benefits from her work. Everyone has difficult or mundane aspects to their job. But when viewed as an act of service, even the most routine task can feel meaningful.

Achievement

In the PERMA model, achievement is less about actual success and more about internal recognition and appreciation of success. There are a number of ways that you may be able to help your mentee improve his sense of achievement.

Help him to celebrate his successes, however small. Perhaps insist that he email you a list of three wins each week, and then drink a toast to the biggest wins at each meeting.

Explore whether your mentee makes a habit of comparing himself to others. It’s easy for one’s own accomplishments to feel diminished in the shadow of grander successes. Help your mentee to recognise the significance of his own achievements by exploring the fears he may have to overcome, or the new lessons he has had to learn.

Final Note:

While you are working with your mentee, keep in mind that mentoring itself is a form of positive psychology. As a mentor, you symbolise the degree to which the organisation cares about your mentee’s development. You provide a place where your mentee can let his or her guard down and be honest. You offer support and guidance when your mentee is faced with stressful situations.

Simply by being there you are helping to promote positive psychology. Give yourself a pat on the back!

Coaching and Mentoring as Conversations About Context

If coaches and mentors rarely, if ever, offer advice, what do they do? They offer context. Context is “relevant information, which the learner does not hold, but which may have a significant effect upon the quality of the decisions they take”. Context might include:

Feedback the learner hasn’t received from elsewhere or that emerges from the coach-mentor’s interaction with them
Metaphor or story that shows up an aspect of a situation, which the learner hadn’t recognised or appreciated before
Relevant personal experiences the mentor or coach can use to draw parallels
A model (for example, the urgent-important matrix) that opens up different perspectives
Factual data – for example, how politics work in the organization

The diagram below shows two core contexts that encompass the coaching conversation. The internal context is about raising the client’s awareness of their own thinking processes, their values, aspirations, belief systems, strengths and weaknesses — and a host of other things that define who they are and their potential to become and to achieve. The external context is about how they interact with other people and the wider world – for example, who or what influences them and who or what they influence. It is about understanding both threats and opportunities.

The coaching or mentoring conversation links heightened self-awareness with heightened environmental awareness (environment meaning “anything that is not you”) to enrich how the learner analyses issues, determines what is most desirable and most important, decides what actions to take and plans how they will muster the resources and support they need to bring about change.

Non-directive questioning provides the stimulus for the learner to make sense of what they already know. But that’s not enough, when they have only a partial picture. If the coach or mentor has relevant insights, which would make a positive difference to the quality of the learner’s thinking and/or decision-making, then it would be unethical to withhold it. In some cases, it may even breach their “duty of care” towards the client.

Hence, a critical competence for both coaches and mentors is judgement about when and how to offer context. Some practical guidelines are:

Never tell “war stories” – they are almost more about the coach-mentor’s ego than useful input to the client
If you do offer an anecdote or experience, explain first why you think it may be relevant and ask for permission to share it
Offer the bare bones of a piece of contextual information first; let the client indicate what more they need
Before offering context, always ask yourself “Am I sharing this for my own benefit, or because it is truly important for the client’s thinking?”

Remember that your experience will never be more than partially relevant – the client’s circumstances, values and future path will only approximately align with your own.

What Do Mentees Fear Most?

What do mentees fear most?

A mentor enters a mentoring relationship knowing she has skills and knowledge to share with her mentee. Naturally this makes the mentor feel pretty good. Not only is she a decent and generous person, willing to share her expertise; she is also a person of value, having expertise worth sharing.

While we are all for mentors feeling good about themselves, we encourage every mentor to take into consideration how it feels to be on the other side of the mentoring relationship. For many mentees, fear is the primary emotion experienced when she first sits across from a mentor.

“But I’m not scary,” I can hear you say. It’s not about your personality or the way you dress. What drives mentees’ fear most is self-doubt. Sitting across from a more senior, more knowledgeable mentor, it is easy for a mentee to feel they don’t stack up. They worry that they will be judged by this successful person and found wanting.

As a mentor you are no doubt struggling with your own self-doubt, just like the rest of us (at least those of us who aren’t narcissists). But don’t underestimate how powerful, poised, experienced and confident you look to your mentee.

How fear gets in the way

While it’s tempting to simply bask in the reflected glory of your mentee’s awe, be aware that fear has the potential to undermine the good work you hope to achieve as a mentor.

At the heart of understanding is a willingness to ask questions. Yet mentees often fear that a “dumb” question will make them look foolish, so they simply stay silent. Without the free flow of questions, your sage guidance may be misunderstood.

As a mentor, you rely on your mentee to weigh up suggestions and advice, acting only on ideas that fit their personal goals and principles. A fearful mentee may not trust herself to reject or adapt your advice. This changes the relationship from mentor to superior, a dangerous shift for both parties.

What to do about it

As a mentor, be on the lookout for fear at the outset. This may appear as a hesitancy to ask questions, continuous deference to you and your opinions or simply an apparent shyness. Confusingly, fear may also look like self-confidence. What better way to hide self-doubt than behind bluster and bravado?

If you sense apprehension or false bravado, often the best first step is to call it out. Acknowledge the fact you are older and more experienced and may feel intimidating. Often just getting this out in the open will begin to settle the nerves.

Be prepared to knock yourself off your pedestal. Professor David Clutterbuck refers to this as “minimising the power difference”. Help your mentee to understand that you are also human and have your own self-doubts. Invite your mentee into an open relationship, letting them know you don’t want your position to get in the way of a productive rapport.

Be patient and keep yourself off that pedestal as the relationship develops. Be willing to share your own mistakes and doubts. A little fallibility gives your mentee permission to be vulnerable. If bravado is a coping strategy, then your willingness to be vulnerable will eventually allow your mentee to shed her bluster.

The role of Program Managers

Mentee fear and intimidation are particularly prevalent when there is a large gap in experience and seniority between the mentor and mentee. Program Managers should bear this in mind during the matching process. Unless there’s a very good reason for it, avoid matching a recent university graduate with a CEO or senior manager. The bigger the real power difference, the harder it will be to minimise that difference and establish a relationship that will genuinely foster mentee development.

The upside for Mentors

The good news for mentors is that helping mentees to be at ease in the mentoring relationship reaps reward for both sides. Permission to be open, honest and vulnerable not only helps mentees to gain real personal growth, it also offers mentors a safe place to develop genuine leadership and coaching skills.

Separating Out Sponsorship and Mentoring

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Various studies have demonstrated conclusively that sponsorship and mentoring are different, largely incompatible relationships [1]. Attempting to combine them leads to reduced impact in terms of both career and personal developmental outcomes for a number of reasons, including:

Mentees are less open and authentic, because they want the sponsor-mentor to present them to others at their best
There is increased expectation of reciprocal favours — for example, the sponsor-mentor may demand “political” information about the sponsee-mentee’s boss
The sponsee-mentee may feel disempowered by handing over responsibility for their reputation and advancement.

These problems may be exacerbated in the context of gender, where the power dynamics of the relationship may reinforce stereotypes that undermine aspirations and expectations of self-efficacy.

The basic practical guidelines for Human Resources are:

Have both sponsors and mentors, but make sure everyone is clear about the difference in roles and responsibilities between each and avoid combining the roles in one person. A useful distinction is: Sponsors influence your career; mentors influence your thinking and personal growth.
When discussing talent in a formal succession planning forum, ensure that everyone makes clear the role they are playing.
Do expect sponsors to give an opinion about the learner’s strengths and weaknesses; don’t expect the mentor to do so.
Information shared between mentor and mentee is privileged, except in very specific circumstances; in sponsoring the level of privilege is assumed to be much lower.
Never expect mentor and line manager to get together to discuss the mentee; however, in sponsorship, this is typically an important part of planning the sponsee’s career path.
Accept that mentoring may morph into sponsorship, or vice versa, but ensure that recontracting then takes place so that the roles are not blurred.
Get the right balance between formal and informal relationships for both mentoring and sponsorship. Too much formal sponsorship or mentoring can prevent people seeking their own networks of career support; too much informal sponsorship can lead to nepotism.
Measure the quality of sponsorship and mentoring, through the eyes of all the stakeholders (including line managers of the mentees and sponsees). Bring all stakeholders together from time to time to discuss how the programme is working. Monitor also the diversity of who gets a mentor or sponsor.
In general, formal mentoring relationships tend to last up to two years; sponsorship, because it is taking a much longer-term perspective, might last for 10 years or more. Recommended good practice is to change formal sponsors at least every five years, both to help the learner build a wider support network and to prevent the relationship becoming too cosy.
Consider what happens when a sponsor or mentor moves on. If the person only has one sponsor in your organization, the likelihood is relatively high that they will follow their sponsor to their new employer. If the person has a network of sponsors, this is less likely.
Beware of the “loyalty trap”! Sponsorship relationships can decay into fealty relationships of obligation and loyalty by the junior person to the senior. This may suit the two people concerned, at least superficially, but it drives a coach and horses through promotion on merit – undermining the whole point of having a sponsorship programme in the first place.
Expect sponsors to meet with sponsees up to three times a year; mentors twice as frequently.

The bottom line is that sponsorship can be a very useful tool in talent management, but it needs active oversight by HR and the leadership team.

[1] Bhide, V and Tootell, B (2018) Perceptions of sponsoring as a career advancement tool for women: Are they different in Europe? International Journal of Evidence Based Coaching and Mentoring 2018, 16 (1), DOI: 10.24384/000467

How Mentors Can Exercise, Use and Apply Emotional Intelligence

How mentors can exercise, use and apply emotional intelligence

By Sonja Feil, Client Development Consultant & Sophie De Haan, Psychology Intern

Thomas International

The concept of Emotional Intelligence was devised by Peter Salovey and John D. Mayer, and popularised by the author Daniel Goleman in the early 1990s. The theory states that just as people have a wide range of intellectual abilities, they also have a wide range of measurable emotional skills that profoundly affect their thinking and actions.

There is a growing body of evidence around the importance Emotional Intelligence plays in success at work. Individuals can enjoy a successful career and better relationships by relying on their emotional intelligence.

Studies have shown that people with high levels of emotional intelligence have greater career success, foster stronger personal relations, have effective leadership skills and are healthier than those with low emotional intelligence (Cooper, 1997).

Emotional intelligence (EI) is how well a person understands and manages their emotions and the emotions of others and how they use this knowledge to manage relationships. Developing these skills is critical in the workplace, with strong emotional intelligence being linked to high performance. Emotional Intelligence assessments typically provide answers to questions such as:

How aware is this person of their strengths and limitations?
How can this person understand the emotions of others?
Does this person excel at developing relationships?
How self-motivated and adaptable is this person?
How does this person react to pressure?

For a mentor, emotional intelligence is important. It has been found that in mentors there is a positive relationship between emotional intelligence and the degree of confidence that a mentee has in them (Chun, Litzky, Sosik, Bechtold & Godshalk, 2010). In addition, there are some qualities that are useful for a mentor or coach to develop. For example, high empathy provides better career and psychological support mentoring functions (Chun et al., 2010).

Several characteristics, measured by Emotional Intelligence assessments such as The Trait Emotional Intelligence Questionnaire (TEIQue), are positively associated with giving suitable, emotional responses and performing different mentoring functions. Emotional intelligence also appears to be important in serving as a role model for mentoring (Chun et al., 2010).

A high EI is also valuable for mentees. Emotional intelligence is, in fact, positively related to the extent to which a mentee learns. This is then related to the job satisfaction and career attitude (Chun et al., 2010).

Rose Opengart and Laura Bierema’s 2016 article Emotionally Intelligent Mentoring: Reconceptualizing Effective Mentoring Relationships was a systematic review of existing literature to illustrate how EI affects the mentoring relationship and influences its effectiveness for both the mentor and protégé. They conclude that “it is essential to select a mentor who is high in EI and uses his or her emotional competence to maximize the potential of the mentoring relationship” (p252).

Cremona (2010) studied emotional responses of coaches, but her recommendations are equally relevant for mentors. She suggested that training for coaches should involve empathy, body awareness, and relationship building and connect emotions to engagement, motivation, resilience, leadership, and managing change. She advocates that management types need to “demystify their views about emotions . . . and expand and deepen their approach towards emotion . . . in the workplace” (p. 58).

Opengart and Bierema suggest that to get the most out of a mentor-mentee relationship, EI should be measured, discussed, and both parties develop self-awareness of their own EI. They argue that this may result in heightened learning, more successful mentoring relationships, improved retention, and enhanced HRD.

Our top tips for building your EI ‘muscle’ include:

Tuning in to your own moods and feelings and recognizing how they impact those around you
Developing Self-Awareness to understand how your EI impacts your behaviour and influences how you deal with others
Taking time to reflect on how the facets of EI drive your behaviour and using your self-awareness to inform the way you respond and react to others.

If you would like to find out more about Emotional Intelligence, or the TEIQue assessment, please contact John Leard of Thomas International on (02) 9042 1183 or johnl@thomasint.com.au.

References:

Akers, M & Porter, G. (2016). What is Emotional Intelligence (EQ)? Psych Central. Retrieved on March 20, 2018, from https://psychcentral.com/lib/what-is-emotional-intelligence-eq/

Chun, J., Litzky, B., Sosik, L., Bechtold, D. & Godshalk, V. (2010). Emotional Intelligence and Trust in Formal Mentoring Programs. Accessed on January 15, 2018, on file:///C:/Users/SUPPOR~1/AppData/Local/Temp/421.full.pdf

Cooper, R. (1997). Applying emotional intelligence in the workplace .Accessed on January 15, 2018, on http://go.galegroup.com/ps/anonymous?id=GALE%7CA20251750&sid=googleScholar&v=2.1&it=r&linkaccess=fulltext&issn=10559760&p=AONE&sw=w&authCount=1&isAnonymousEntry=true

Cremona, K. (2010). Coaching and emotions: An exploration of how coaches engage and think about emotion. Coaching: An International Journal of Theory, Research, and Practice, 3, 46-59.

Opengart, R. and Bierema, L. (2015). Emotionally Intelligent Mentoring Reconceptualizing Effective Mentoring Relationships. Human Resource Development Review, 14(3), pp.234-258.

Getting value for money from your mentoring investment

Are you getting value for money on your investment in mentoring?

You’d expect most companies with established mentoring programs to give an unequivocal yes, but the reality is that most organisations don’t know. So here are some basic indicators to consider. Highly effective mentoring programs:

Deliver substantial learning for at least 95% of mentees and at least 80% of mentors
Lead to at least one third higher retention amongst people mentored than peers, who are not
Demonstrate measurable improvements in mentee job commitment, engagement and relationships at work (particularly with their bosses!)
Improve and reinforce mentors’ confidence and ability in coaching their own direct reports
Provide useful insights into people management undercurrents – broader issues that can lead to improvements in HR policies and processes
Give leaders greater confidence in succession plans
In the context of diversity management, have a clear and substantial contribution towards the achievement of equal opportunity targets and have a measurable impact on cultural awareness

The issue becomes more complicated, when there are numerous mentoring programs across different divisions, regions and cultures. Achieving consistency of mentoring quality, while allowing adaptation of programs to the local context, can be a tough challenge.

The experience of a wide range of international organisations indicates that getting right this balance between quality (as measured by outcomes and by overall value for money) and local adaptation requires the following steps:

1. Understand and acknowledge what is there already. Typically, there is a wide variation in:

Program purpose and audience

The professionalism of approaches

The mentoring model used (for example, from highly directive to highly person-centred and non-directive)

Mode of delivery (face to face or virtual)

Duration of relationships

The amount and quality of training mentors and mentees receive

The level of formality/informality of program structure

Understanding of the role of mentoring program manager

How people are matched

What continuing support is available for participants

How success is measured (if at all)

It’s important to recognise that this diversity is both a strength and a weakness – and to re-assure the HR and leadership communities in each area that the intention is to build on an update what they have started, in line with international good practice.

One simple way to understand what is there is to commission an expert survey, which will pull out all of these themes and many more. Another, which can also be used in parallel, is to ask the manager of each program to complete the self-assessment guide for the International Standards for Coaching and Mentoring Programs (ISCMP)..

2. Re-affirm the business case and role for mentoring

Mentoring may be seen (sometimes by both HR and line managers) as a nice-to-have rather than a significant contributor to achieving business objectives. Defining clearly how mentoring should contribute to the business creates a platform for helping people understand how to get the most out of mentoring programs and relationships. It’s also essential in creating robust measures of mentoring return on investment.

3. Create a clear template for mentoring programs

This should cover all processes, from recruitment and selection of participants, through matching and re-matching, training, on-going support, through to winding up and evaluation.

Key questions here are:

What is it important to be consistent on?

What can be left to the discretion of local program managers? (In which, case, what additional guidance do they need?)
How can we ensure we incorporate learning from global experience and good practice?

A steering group really helps here. Ideally, it will be represent different cultures, different mentoring applications and both HR and other stakeholders.

4. Create a flexible but robust training program for mentors and mentees

Good practice here involves having a core of generic materials and messages, plus a portfolio of optional materials, which can be used according to how well they fit the program purpose and context. This ensures that:

There is a common understanding of what mentoring is about, what mentor and mentee should expect of each other, and the competencies of being an effective mentor or mentee
The level and duration of training can be adapted to the participants and the program purpose
The presentation of training can be adapted to the local cultural. (For example, the Mentor story is a European construct; other cultures often react better to myths more deeply rooted in their own cultures.)

Effective training materials tend to be very straightforward and designed so that they can easily be adapted to other languages and contextualised.

5. Develop and support a training resource and a program management resource with a real understanding of mentoring

It’s easy – and wrong – to assume that mentoring is pretty simple. Yet some of the leading lights in coaching refer to mentoring as “coaching plus” – meaning that effective mentors need all the skills of a good coach, plus a number of others. A train the trainer program for mentoring trainers is essential in achieving consistent quality. Alternatively, the global network of Coaching and Mentoring International provides an external resource of highly professional and knowledgeable mentoring trainer-consultants.

Good practice also includes educating mentoring program managers. A basic course takes two days and equips them with an understanding of all the processes required to design and maintain a high-functioning mentoring program.

6. Provide continuing support for participants and programs

This is where a centralised database of additional resources comes in. Typically, this will include self-diagnostics, tools and techniques, more detailed explanations of aspects of mentoring, as well as materials specific to different mentoring applications. It may also include video demonstrations of effective mentoring and application of mentoring techniques. This resource may be supplemented by local materials (including in other languages), as long as they are consistently “on-message”.

The support resource can usually be integrated with any IT platform used to manage matching and program logistics. Note particularly, like any other piece of IT, automating a set of poorly functioning, inadequately consistent mentoring processes is unlikely to lead to greater value for money from mentoring. Better first to get the mentoring processes right, then import a platform to support these.

Recommended good practice includes appointing an overall international manager of mentoring, tasked with guiding local program managers and acting as a focal point for communicating with senior leaders about mentoring.

7. Monitoring and evaluating program quality

Good practice here is to have a relatively unobtrusive generic process for measuring what is happening at both relationship and program level. To this, each program or region can add specific measures that relate to program purpose or context.

The ISMCP award, as a measure of program quality, can be applied for either company-wide or for specific programs.

8. Sharing learning and experiences

One of the downsides of imposing a “one model fits all” approach is that it decreases innovation and runs counter to the learning environment that underpins mentoring. Creating a forum for exchanging experience in delivering mentoring programs and training harnesses the diversity of initiatives, while maintaining the integrity of the company’s overall mentoring philosophy and practice. It can be useful to have within this community one or two people who are linked into mentoring research and evolving good practice internationally.

The bottom line

Mentoring is typically part of the answer to difficult business and people management challenges, rather than the whole answer. So it tends to be one element in a wider package of interventions. The problem is that this piecemeal, case-by-case approach isn’t very cost effective and leads to a lot of confusion about mentor and mentee roles, skills, boundaries and expectations of each other.

The following mentoring questions help to put the issue into perspective:

What would be the financial impact, if all your mentoring programs resulted in at least 33% higher retention of mentored employees?
What’s the cost of duplication of effort between mentoring programs?
What’s the cost of people not having access to a mentor when they need one (in terms of retention, motivation, performance and so on)
What’s the wastage cost of mentoring relationships that don’t work? (Taking into account time of all parties; and potential for disillusioned mentees to become less committed to the organisation)
What’s the value of line managers using mentoring as a safe place to practice development conversations outside their teams?

The investment in bringing coherence and cohesion into mentoring provision isn’t huge (for a global corporation, the external costs are typically about US $100,000 and internal costs about the same) but the pay-off in terms of return on investment typically exceeds this within the first year. Implementing all the eight items above will greatly increase the chances of ensuring that all your mentoring programs, wherever they are in the world, consistently deliver a high level of outcomes, with resultant financial benefits for the organisation.

Use Mentoring to Claim The Tiara You Deserve

Use Mentoring to Claim The Tiara You Deserve!

Guest blog by Lis Merrick, Managing Director, Coach Mentoring Ltd

Tiara Syndrome is a term originally developed by Carol Frohlinger and Deborah Kolb and then used by Sheryl Sandberg in her book ‘Lean in’. Sandberg feels that women often think they can be crowned with the tiara of success by keeping their heads down, working hard, over-preparing and passing all of their exams.

What is “Tiara Syndrome”?

Basically it is about being too modest and believing that working hard and diligence will get you promoted and paid well. As Carol Frohlinger says, “Women expect that if they keep doing their job well someone will notice them and place a tiara on their head.” It is used to describe the professional modesty that many women have, which inhibits them ‘shouting’ about their abilities as much as their male colleagues. Hard work, diligence and modesty are all great virtues, however, those virtues can also prompt people to be too self-effacing and conflict-averse. `Psychologist Cordelia Fine says such behaviour stems from socialisation, not innate differences between the sexes. Some men also suffer, just as many women may not, but similar to “Imposter Syndrome” it does appear to be more of a female behaviour.

How is it manifested?

Tiara Syndrome is demonstrated by women not being as comfortable as their male counterparts with:

Agreeing their pay and conditions — women expect to be paid fairly for their work, but the gender pay gap seems to continue to rumble on with many women still not being paid fairly for their hard work and efforts
Applying for promotions — a man is more likely to apply for a job even if he has only half of the ideal qualifications, a woman won’t apply for a new role unless she feels she fits the specification
Networking — often women’s responsibilities clash with networking events or they just don’t get invited to ‘Old Boy’s Club’ type events
Developing their own personal brand — modesty or lack of interest can just sabotage this happening
Having self-confidence as a leader — finding the right approach as a female leader is so tough. Does a woman get described as a ‘bulldozer’ or assertive?
Looking for informal mentors and sponsors to help them — men don’t fear rejection when asking for help in the way a woman might; or could a woman’s request be misinterpreted by a senior leader as an invitation to get into bed with them?

Women tend to knuckle down and ‘do’, thinking that working hard, being conscientious and performing well, will get noticed and provide them with the recognition, promotions and pay increases they deserve.

How does a woman claim her tiara?

How do those who have been schooled not to boast learn to champion their cause and get over Tiara Syndrome?

Mentoring and sponsorship can provide a focussed and fairly quick support solution to women who feel they may be impacted by Tiara Syndrome. Helping a woman with a reality check around her current situation, a sounding board to discuss her ambition and vision for the future and a role model (male or female) to copy and imitate, can be enormously enlightening and transformational and help a woman grab the tiara she deserves!