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6 Top Tips For Mentoring Women

6 Top Tips For Mentoring Women

These tips are for men who mentor women, but many apply for woman-to-woman mentoring as well.

 

1. Code of conduct

For any cross-gender mentoring partnership, let it be known you are in a formal mentoring relationship, preferably as part of a structured program with a clear code of conduct.

 

2. Understanding stereotype and gender dynamics

Seek to understand your culture’s dominant leadership stereotype and gender dynamics. For example, the heroic leader in Australia is stoic, courageous and capable, able to respond to relentless demands to do a job that is barely do-able. Women who do not fit this mould can feel marginalised. They feel pressure to conform in an environment where women are subtly or, not so subtly, sexualised. They may lack support from family and friends for pursuing a high-level corporate job and they almost certainly don’t have the kind of support at home that men enjoy. These are some of the real obstacles for many women. Make sure you seek to learn about what it’s like for the woman you are mentoring, be curious and ask questions rather than make assumptions.

 

3. Motives and biases

Examine your own motives and biases. You may enjoy and feel flattered by guiding a younger woman’s career – beware the unconscious move to a father-daughter relationship within which you hold the power and the woman cannot grow and move on. Closely look at your own leadership stereotypes and gender biases – how do you expect women to behave in the workplace and are you (even ever so slightly) threatened by the idea of women holding and exercising power?

 

4. Encourage leadership

Women can under-value their contributions and potential. Mentors can assist by helping women define their eligibility for leadership. Encourage them to try new things or act on opportunities and actively seek to nourish their self-confidence. Help them to see their strengths.

 

5. Professional boundaries

Maintain professional boundaries to avoid the innuendo and sexualisation that can occur, especially when women enter male cultures. Meet in public, choose time of day and environment wisely (for example, opt for a cafe breakfast meeting rather than meeting in a darkened bar after work).

 

6. Avoid giving advice

As in any mentoring relationship, avoid giving advice in the first instance. It is almost impossible not to view her dilemmas through the lens of your own gendered experience. Help her explore solutions that will work for her, in her context. 

 

© Melissa Richardson 2018

Discovering the Science of a Mentoring Program

Discovering the Science of a Mentoring Program

By Toni Brearley, Chief Executive Officer of The Australasian Society of  Association Executives (AuSAE)

For the uninitiated, mentoring looks like an opportunity for a junior employee to have coffee and a chat with someone more senior.  One hopes that some of the senior person’s wisdom and experience will rub off.  Perhaps she will be able to point her mentee in the right direction or help him to avoid pitfalls.  Plenty of “feel good” and “hope for the best”.

After 18 months of working closely with the Art of Mentoring to develop the AuSAE mentoring program, the key lesson I have learned is that there is actually a science to running an effective mentoring program.

The Beginning

We initially partnered with Art of Mentoring in 2016, with a view to launching a mentoring program in 2017.  Our aim was to develop the capacity of the sector, nurturing the talent of the CEOs and senior executives new to industry association roles.  Recognising that we had neither the expertise nor the resources to develop, implement or manage a mentoring program, we outsourced the lot.

An extensive piece of research was undertaken prior to even setting up the program.  This ensured that the program that ultimately launched was specific to the needs of our industry.

There was no assumption that mentors somehow knew how to be mentors simply by virtue of their years on the job.  Art of Mentoring provided extensive training to mentors to ensure they had the skills needed to guide their mentee and hold them accountable.

How We Did It

Mentees undertook a skills audit and structured goal setting exercises to ensure they were clear about why they were going into the mentoring program and what they hoped to get out of it.  This upfront work helped mentees to understand the difference between “this would be a really great thing to do” and “this is something I’m prepared to commit to doing”.  This process makes it much easier for mentors to hold mentees to account.

Mentoring pairs were also trained to understand that goals can change.  Mentees may go into the mentoring process heading in one direction, but after unpacking things, discover that direction changes.  Participants learned not to let rigidity get in the way of development.

As a “program manager” with a lot more on my plate than this mentoring program, I appreciated Art of Mentoring’s platform and systems.  With multiple mentoring pairs in the program, it was easy for me to quickly check in on the program and know how things were progressing.  Melissa Richardson from Art of Mentoring is a stickler for deadlines, so she was invaluable at keeping things on track.

Of course, good science demands continuous improvement.  At the conclusion of our first mentoring cohort, a review was undertaken and the program was tweaked and adjusted to be even stronger for our second round.

Participants were very positive following the first mentoring program, and we have seen increased interest in participating in the second program.  We believe the program is genuinely adding value and demand is building.

Conclusion

We outsourced the AuSAE mentoring program in part due to lack of resources.  However, even if we woke up one morning with the resources to manage everything in-house, I would still outsource to experts.  I am now so aware that this is a specialist area, requiring a high level of expertise to get good outcomes.

Mentoring programs are not for every organisation.  However, if you have identified the development of talent or nurturing of emerging leaders as a goal in your association, then I would absolutely recommend implementing a mentoring program.  When you decide to head down this path, look to mentoring experts to help you build science into your program.  The outcomes will be stronger, more measurable and easier to build upon.

What Technology Do I Need to Run an Effective Mentoring Program?

What Technology Do I Need to Run an Effective Mentoring Program?

The Oxford Dictionary defines technology as “the application of scientific knowledge for practical purposes.”  The key word in that sentence is “practical”.  With mentoring programs, as with everything in business, technology can add tremendous value, but there is no value in technology for technology’s sake.

So let’s identify how technology can add value to a mentoring program and where this technology is most practically employed.

How Technology Enhances Mentoring

There are three primary ways that technology can enhance your mentoring program.

  1. Accessibility: a host of different technologies are available to make mentoring programs more accessible to a wider range of people, both geographically and demographically.
  2. Administration: as with most other business arenas, technology can be invaluable in reducing the administrative burden of running a mentoring program.
  3. Education: technologies can be employed to improve the educational outcomes for all participants.

The Mentoring Technology Continuum

All mentoring programs sit somewhere on a technology continuum that stretches from completely manual management to a fully integrated mentoring platform with all the bells and whistles.

The question for anyone launching a mentoring program, is, where on that continuum does it make sense to sit?  The answer depends on the purpose, size and scope of your program.

Planning Comes First

It is critical that you do the upfront planning and preparation before you commit to technology.  Unfortunately, at least for now, technology is not a substitute for thinking.  Ensure that you are clear about the purpose of your program and the likely size.  Have key stakeholders on board and some idea of the resources that will be available for the program.

Now you are ready to consider where technology can add value.

Technology for Small Programs

A small mentoring program with up to 15 pairs in a central location does not warrant investment in a full-scale mentoring platform.  It is certainly possible to manage a program of this size completely manually, particularly if you have in-house or outsourced mentoring expertise.

However, there are technologies available that can make even a small program run more smoothly and provide greater value to participants.  The following are the technologies we would most recommend for smaller programs:

Virtual Meeting Software

If program participants are not centrally located or have significant time restrictions, then virtual meeting software such as GoTo Meeting will enable you to include everyone in training sessions or group meetings.

eLearning for Mentors & Mentees

Research by David Clutterbuck suggests that 2 out of 3 mentoring pairs will fail when mentors and mentees do not receive training.  If you don’t have access to mentoring expertise internally, consider using eLearning packages such as our Mentor and Mentee Online Training to add expert education to your program.

 

Program Design

Very often, a well-meaning staff member with absolutely no mentoring experience ends up managing smaller mentoring programs.  Instead of hiring an outside consultant, you can use technology to assist internal staff to manage the program using best practice.  Our self-paced online Mentoring Program Manager’s Training prepares your program manager to deliver a high quality program, without even having to leave their desk.

Technology for Large, Complex Programs

Once a program grows beyond 15 – 20 pairs or has added complexity, such as geographic spread of participants or time-sharing program managers, it really makes sense to explore the available mentoring platforms. Employing a good platform will save administration time, enhance the experience for participants and enable you to integrate mentoring with other business systems.

There is a wide range of mentoring platforms available.  When comparing these it’s important to be clear about the purpose and scope of your program, and what features you are likely to need.  Avoid bells and whistles you don’t need.  Not only will these add to the cost, they can also clutter up your dashboard, making the platform unnecessarily difficult to use.

As an example, some platforms include in-app messaging and a workspace for the mentoring pairs.  This sounds good in principle.  But in our experience most people end up reverting to the communication methods they are comfortable with – text, Messenger, email – and this feature generally goes unused.

To help you choose the right platform, here are some questions we would recommend you ask of the various providers:

  1. How does the matching algorithm work? The automation of the matching process is one of the key benefits of a mentoring platform so you want to be clear about how it works.  Make sure you can manually override the algorithm when needed, and that it can be changed easily.
  2. How scalable is the platform? Will your mentoring program be able to grow without having to change platform?
  3. What is the level of support and service? Particularly for first time Program Managers it’s important that help is available when you need it.
  4. What resources are built into the system? Some platforms are simply glorified matching software, others come with tools and eLearning modules to help manage the entire program more effectively.
  5. How is the platform secured? It’s important to know that mentors’ and mentees’ personal data is safe.
  6. Who was involved in the design of the software? Ensure that someone with genuine mentoring experience and expertise has been involved in the development.
  7. Can the platform integrate with other internal software? If you want information about your mentoring programs to be available in more widely-used software such as an HRIS or AMS then it’s important to understand if and how the mentoring platform will integrate.

We like to think that our newly developed mentoring platform has everything you need and nothing you don’t.  But do not take our word for this.  We encourage you to review the many platforms available, compare the features and choose the one that most practically fits your needs.

Mentoring Software: Program Coordinators

Mentoring Software that Program Coordinators Love

On Building Experience into Technology

It’s a little more than 20 years ago that I first organised a formal mentoring program.  I had already enjoyed a successful marketing career, and hoped to establish a mentoring program for women starting out in marketing as a way of giving back to my business community.

What I quickly learned was that running a mentoring program was not the same as running a marketing department. Those of you who have been asked by your organisation to create a brand new mentoring program, will know that out-of-control feeling of not being sure what a good mentoring program actually looks like, let alone how to get one off the ground.

I decided to employ someone with experience to lead our mentoring program.  I look back now and thank goodness I did.  The mentoring program we established lasted for nearly fifteen years because, with the advantage of experience, we built a program that really worked.

That long-ago mentoring program set me on a new career path.  Witnessing the incredible value of a well-run mentoring program, I decided to make the delivery of quality mentoring my life’s work.  So now here I am, older and wiser, and gifted with an incredible twenty years of experience in delivering formal mentoring programs.

Over those years we have embraced technology as a valuable tool to make good mentoring programs more accessible and easier to administer. But when it came time to build our own platform (which will formally launch in early February of this year) I remembered those very early days of my first ever mentoring program and knew that what needed to be built into our technology, was not the bells and whistles of the tech-world, but the wisdom of experience.  We needed to find a way to build a platform that would provide program managers today, and in the future, with the benefit of our experience.

I’m going to share with you just how we did this, in part so you will better understand our platform when it launches, but also because you never know when you, too, will be required to build your experience into technology.

Building In Training

One thing I learned in those earliest days, that has been continually reinforced over the years, is the importance of training mentors and mentees.  It’s so easy to fall into the trap of thinking mentoring is something that should just come naturally.  But it doesn’t – and there are still far too many organisations either not doing mentoring because they don’t know where to start, or running mentoring programs that don’t work.

Where clients benefit most from our experience is in the meetings, phone calls and strategy proposals that help program managers to construct a mentoring program that will actually be effective.  And in the many, many training sessions we have run with mentors and mentees to ensure they have the understanding and skills needed for a successful pairing.

So the question was, how to build our training into the platform.  And thanks to streaming video the answer proved quite simple (although anyone who’s ever had anything to do with developing a new technology knows that delivering that simple answer is always more complicated than it looks).

Ninety minutes of video-based training modules for both mentors and mentees have been built seamlessly into the platform.  Only one click away once you’ve logged in, and the training is thorough and accessible.

Perhaps most exciting, we have developed an online version of our mentoring program manager training. Three 90-minute e-learning modules, work in conjunction with a workplace project to walk you through the process of designing your own mentoring program.  So now when you feel like I did twenty years ago, not knowing where to start to get the program right, you have a structured e-learning program that builds your knowledge as you carefully construct a bespoke mentoring plan for your organisation.

Can you tell I’m excited?!  This means that our experience can now be leveraged from anywhere, by anyone!

Building In Structure

Anyone who has ever run a mentoring program knows that program administration can feel a bit like herding cats.  Unsurprisingly, the existing technology platforms have been designed primarily to make the administrator’s role easier.  We too wanted to ease the administrative load, but we also wanted to help program managers to build in best-practice.

Again this was simple on the surface.  Over the years we have developed processes and protocols for effectively and efficiently running a mentoring program. We just needed to build those processes into the system with sufficient flexibility to allow for the fact that every organisation is different. (OK, you’re right, maybe not that simple.)

As an example, we’ve developed a sense of when and how to communicate with mentors and mentees to ensure that a program keeps ticking along as it should.  So we built into the platform a series of pre-set communications, which will go out at the times our experience says they are most needed.  But, we also made everything easily editable so if a program manager wants to revise the wording, change the timing or simply delete a communication they can do so in one click.

We’ve also built in an entire library of resources for mentors, mentees and program managers, everything from PowerPoint slides to run a program launch, to tips for mentors about how not to jump too quickly to giving advice. These are available whenever they are needed through the program, giving everyone involved access to our expertise when it’s needed.

Building In Continuous Improvement

Something else we’ve learned is that even after twenty years, there is something new to be learned in every single mentoring program. Of course learning requires listening, so we’ve built in templated surveys to collect feedback at the mid-way point and conclusion of each mentoring program.

The templates make the surveys easier to implement and leverage our years of experience to ensure you are asking the right questions.  The survey process itself works on a micro level to prompt individual pairs to reflect, recalibrate and work together more effectively, and on a macro level to ensure that program managers can continuously improve and evolve the program to suit their organisation.

It’s been exciting spending the last twenty years refining and improving the way we run mentoring programs.  But it’s even more exciting to create technology that will help every program manager out there keep getting better.  I feel like we are unleashing the real potential of mentoring.

Building Out the Unnecessary

The one thing I really wanted to avoid in building our platform was the weight of unnecessary features.  In our experience, extraneous features make software complex and difficult to navigate and just plain get in the way.

For example, many platforms offer a feature that lets mentors and mentees book meetings through the software.  What were they thinking?  How many people do you know who would actually log in to a mentoring platform and search for the button to book a meeting, rather than simply sending a text or a calendar invitation?  Not only have they missed the point about how mentors and mentees engage, they’ve cluttered up their platform with a feature that no one uses.  Drives me nuts!

So, in my opinion, one of the most valuable things we have built in to our technology is our understanding of what you DON’T need to run a successful mentoring program.  We’ve been fierce about ensuring that this platform only includes the features you DO need.  As a result – pretty much everything is only one click away, the dashboard is clean, everything is easy to find and you can actually read the text.

I’m extremely proud of what we have created.  There is a real buzz in seeing your years of experience crystallised into a tool that will genuinely help others.

I invite you to visit our platform page, look around and see it for yourself.

Melissa Richardson, Managing Director.

Fast Knowledge Transfer – FKT – is not Mentoring

Fast Knowledge Transfer – FKT – is not Mentoring

In recent months, there has been a spate of articles and webinars extolling the virtues of “speed mentoring”, “flash mentoring” or similar means of fast knowledge transfer (FKT). We have also seen the rise of “Mentoring Lite” from major dot-com providers, providing rapid matching between people with a problem and an expert.

In an era of informational instant gratification, such connections are inevitable and often valuable – but they have little to do with mentoring. Worse, corporations considering encouraging mentoring can be fooled into assuming that linking people in this way is all they need to do – a simplistic solution that carries little cost or responsibility.

 

Here’s a recent example:

Two people in different countries sign up for LinkedIn’s “mentoring” service and connect because one has a need in an area, in which the other has expertise. A while into the conversation, the one presenting the issue asks: “How do we manage the confidentiality here?” . They have to make up the rules as they go. Other concerns relate to the quality of the information given by self-rated experts and the potential for mentors to manipulate naive mentees.

Understanding FKT

We can define two main types of FKT. One relates to information – “What I need to know”. The second relates to situations – “What do I do when…?” The conversations in both cases are transactional and directive, not least because there is insufficient time to apply a mentoring or coaching style.

Additionally, the “mentor” in this transaction may not have the skill of using their knowledge to formulate powerful questions, rather than give advice; and the “mentee” may not have the skills to present their issue in a way that elicits a learning conversation. The only difference between FKT and going to, for example, a lawyer or other professional expert, is that FKT tends to be free.

Read also: The Most Important Skill for a Successful Mentoring Relationship

The advantages of FKT include:

  • Speed of response – having multiple points of expertise to call upon reduces the time between identifying a problem and finding an answer
  • Subject expertise is all that matters – you don’t have to have the skills of teaching to pass on some information
  • A “one-night-stand” requires no more support than reasonably efficient dating software. FKT is basically Tinder for information exchange.
  • You are not obliged to take any notice of the advice given. If you don’t like it, you link up with someone else!

Understanding mentoring

By contrast, genuine mentoring is not a transaction, but a relationship that differs from FKT in multiple ways:

  • It typically results in two-way learning
  • It focuses not just on the problem but on the learning the mentee can take from it and apply in other circumstances. (It’s the classic difference between giving a man a fish and teaching him how to fish.)
  • In addition to technical knowledge, it offers self-knowledge.
  • It often provides the mentee with a role model.
  • It leads to much deeper levels of change in ways of thinking, behaviour and, in many cases, personal transformation.
  • The mentor accompanies the mentee through the process of important transitions in their life, work or career. (FKT just intervenes at a few key points.) It’s one thing to take on board what you should do to address an issue; quite another to follow through to achieving change.)
  • It creates a high level of honesty (both self-honesty and towards each other) as a result of the trust that builds between mentor and mentee over time.
  • It gets behind the presented issue. By helping the mentee understand their internal context (their values, aspirations, strengths, weaknesses and so on) and linking these to deeper understanding of their external context (what’s going on around them), mentoring almost always results in a redefinition of goals. By its nature, FKT has broadly to work with the assumptions brought to the conversation, rather than challenge them.
  • It addresses issues (business or personal) from a longer-term, strategic perspective, as well as a short-term, tactical perspective.
  • It builds the habit of reflection on experience – something in serious decline in working environments that emphasise doing more rather than thinking more.
  • It can form a key part of a corporate strategy for achieving objectives such as increased diversity in the C suite and elsewhere in management, for making significant culture shifts, or for improving employee engagement. Moreover, the impact of mentoring on the business is relatively easy to measure; with FKT, the only credible measures are the volume of traffic and usefulness of the transaction. That’s not much help in looking at overall return on investment – the correlation between improvements in individual performance and team or organizational performance is generally poor.
  • Over time, it helps the mentee build a support network of additional relationships of trust, through introductions from the mentor. (It isn’t easy to turn a one-off transaction into such a relationship.)

Learn more about our Online Training for Mentors and Mentees.

The way forward

FKT and mentoring each have their strengths. But each can also be undermined when people engage in one, expecting the other; or when an organisation assumes erroneously that it can do mentoring on the cheap and that people will naturally fall into an effective development alliance. A responsible and effective approach harnesses the strengths of both by clarifying expectations and the purpose of the interaction. So:

  • Are you looking for one or two pieces to complete a jigsaw, where you already have most of the pieces in place? Then FKT is likely to give all you need, for relatively little effort.
  • Are you looking for help along a longer-term journey of self-discovery, self-development and career fulfilment? Then mentoring can provide what you need.

 

Within organisations, emerging good practice involves offering both FKT and mentoring, along with a mechanism for each to lead to the other. An initial FKT transaction may be the start of a mentoring relationship, but to make it work well and avoid abuse, both parties need education in their respective roles as mentor and mentee, and ongoing support in growing into those roles.

An FKT conversation may also be the trigger, to encourage someone to seek a mentor – but then they need a simple, accessible route to finding someone suitable.

Mentoring relationships without training deliver significant value less than a third of the time.

Equally, mentoring identifies all sorts of gaps in knowledge, which can be filled through FKT, either via the mentor’s personal network of contacts or through a formal network of volunteer advisors.

The bottom line

What’s needed now is a more intelligent, perceptive approach to integrating FKT and mentoring, while preserving the benefits of both. The danger of not achieving this is that the gains resulting from mentoring’s increasing role as the most powerful method of professional and personal development, are devalued as people come to expect a quick fix, rather than stimulation to think.

© David Clutterbuck 2017

What if the Coachee or Mentee Appears Delusional

What if the coachee or mentee appears delusional

Although only one person in 500 is receiving treatment for a delusional disorder at any time, the rest of us are much more susceptible to bizarre and irrational beliefs than we like to admit. A recent study asking people about 17 delusional beliefs (for example: Do you ever feel there is a conspiracy against you? Do you feel you have been chosen by God in some way? Do you ever think that people can communicate telepathically?) found that over 90% of people held one of these beliefs weakly and 39% held at least one strongly.

Psychologists talk of cognitive biases to explain how we create and cling on to irrational beliefs. Desirability bias describes how we are drawn towards beliefs that boost our self-esteem. Conformation bias encourages us to ignore evidence that contradicts such beliefs and accept only evidence that supports it.  – Remember Florence Foster Jenkins, the American heiress with an irrational belief in her prowess as an opera singer? – Clustering bias describes how we tend to see non-existent patterns in unconnected events.

Any or all of these processes may be at work, if the coachee or mentee holds beliefs that are, to an observer, manifestly irrational. – Unless, of course, it is the observer, who holds the irrational belief! –

So, what is the role and responsibility of the coach or mentor when they observe an irrational belief in the coachee or mentee?

A pragmatic, safe and person-centred response for the coach or mentor

The first thing to be aware of is that the term delusional is normally reserved for specific clinical conditions. If the person believes, for example, that they are the Messiah, or that they have been abducted by aliens, or that a film star they have never met is deeply in love with them, this is beyond the scope of coaching or mentoring.

Your responsibility is to seek professional guidance on how to help them acquire the specialist help they need. You should not continue with the coaching or mentoring relationship in such circumstances.

If the bizarre belief is not extreme, then ask yourself:

  • Does this belief have a negative impact on their ability to achieve the goals they have brought to the coaching/ mentoring relationship?
  • Does it have a negative impact on their ability to perform their job role?
  • Will it have a negative impact on the coaching/mentoring relationship and conversation? For example, do they keep turning the conversation to an agenda aimed at convincing you to join them in their belief?

Read also: When Mentoring Gets Emotional

If the answer is no, then you should:

  • Acknowledge their perspective, without endorsing or contradicting it
  • Contract with them to park the issue as interesting but irrelevant to what you aim to achieve together

For example, having a belief in the power of reflexology would be regarded as irrational by anyone taking a genuinely evidence-based approach, but is sufficiently common and harmless enough that confronting it would have no benefit to the person or to the coaching/ mentoring conversation. – Unless their belief prevented them seeking proper medical help for life-threatening condition.

Similarly, disbelief in climate change might be considered irrational, but is not likely to be relevant in the context of coaching and mentoring, unless, for example, it results in a significant clash between their values and those of their employer organization.

If their beliefs clash severely with your values, you should consider whether you can still be effective as a coach or mentor. If you choose to withdraw, you should ensure that all the key stakeholders (especially the coachee/mentee and any sponsor) are aware why.

If the answer is yes…

Then confronting their beliefs head on is unlikely to be effective. It may even drive them to become even more resistant to contradiction. What’s needed now is a way to open them up to alternative perspectives. A simple way to do that is to say something like: “That’s a very black and white statement. But we all know nothing is ever so simple. When is it most true and when is it less true?”

Other useful questions gradually to open up thinking include:

  • If other people don’t see it your way, what do you think they are seeing that you don’t?
  • If you assume other people have your best interests at heart when they see things differently, what can you learn from that?
  • How do you decide what evidence you will include and exclude when you think about this?
  • What was it that first made you believe this might be true?
  • What reinforced it for you?
  • If you were being sceptical, what questions might you have asked yourself at that time?
  • Which of your core values are in play here?
  • How does this belief relate to your deepest fears and your deepest hopes?

Learn about our Online Training for Mentors and Mentees.

The key here appears to be that the coach or mentor should adopt an approach of genuine curiosity towards how the coachee or mentee has come by and sustains their belief. If the person recognises that they are being listened to, they are more likely to consider rationally alternative information and views – reciprocating the spirit of open enquiry.

© David Clutterbuck, 2017

What is the conversation you need to have

What’s the conversation you need to have

We all have conversations we avoid. We can wall these conversations off to the extent that we are not even aware we are avoiding them.

In helping someone get to know themselves, a coach or mentor can encourage them to acknowledge and explore these conversations.

Some of the most common include:

  • Conversations with yourself – being honest with yourself can be the toughest conversation of all!
  • Conversations with people close to you – spouse or partner, children, living parents
  • Conversations you didn’t get to have or complete with people, who are now out of reach (through death or other loss of contact)
  • Conversations with team colleagues
  • Conversations with your boss
  • Conversations with colleagues or associates outside your team
  • Conversations with neighbours
  • And so on…

Useful questions to help explore these conversations include:

  • What is it you would like to change in how they see things?
  • Why is that important to you?
  • How important do you think it is (or might be) to them?
  • What would be the benefit of having this conversation, to you, to the other party, to others?
  • What precisely would you like to say to them?
  • What would you like them to say to you?
  • What has stopped you having this conversation?
  • What would allow you to have this conversation now?
  • What would give you the courage to have this conversation?
  • How would you feel afterwards?
  • What further help do you need from me or others to make this conversation happen?

Many, if not most of the stressors and anxieties that cause us to underperform relate to conversations we are avoiding. Facing up to them and being curious about our motivations and how things could be different emancipates us. For this reason, the conversations we have about conversations we avoid can be among the most valuable a coach or mentor can initiate.

© David Clutterbuck, 2017

Mentoring is Not Just for “Top Talent”

Mentoring is Not Just for “Top Talent”

Mentoring is increasingly recognised as a powerful tool for developing and retaining the leaders of tomorrow.  Very true and I applaud organisations for embracing mentoring and embedding it in their human resource management processes.

I am less enthusiastic, however, when I see large organisations focus their mentoring programs purely on those deemed to be “top talent”.  Yes, mentoring is a way to fast track the rise of those with high leadership potential.

But organisations are missing out on a world of opportunity if they reserve access to mentoring to the chosen few.

Foster Potential in All its Shapes & Sizes

The engine room of any large organisation is the masses of good employees who are never likely to rise to C-suite, but still arrive at work each day ready to get the job done.  All of these people have potential: potential to do their jobs better, potential to spark ideas and insights that result in improved products, services and productivity, potential to take your organisation where you want it to go.

Never underestimate the value of fostering excellence at all levels.  Good mentoring programs can help your entire team to perform their jobs more effectively and confidently.  Well-matched programs also encourage communication between different levels and departments within the organisation, providing the lubricant to keep your engine room running smoothly and effectively.

Learn more about our Online Training for mentors and mentees.

Retain Staff at All Levels

All those “good” employees fuelling your organisation also have the power to impose significant costs.  When any part of your engine “falls off” you not only bear the cost of replacement and recalibration, you also have to suffer with an underperforming engine for a time.

Formal mentoring programs help to build loyalty and job satisfaction, in turn improving staff retention. In a study by Hegstad and Wentling (2004) the most frequently cited impact of formal mentoring programs was retention.  A good mentoring program can boost retention at all levels, minimising engine room hiccups and interruptions.

Manage Culture Throughout the Organisation

Leadership teams work hard to establish a code of values and behaviours the organisation is expected to live by.  Offering personal development only for the “chosen few” has a whiff of elitism that will be noticed by staff.  Is this really the culture you want to foster? By broadening access to mentoring programs you immediately communicate that your organisation is a place of opportunity and support.

Perhaps even more important, wide-reaching mentoring programs inculcate a mentoring culture within the organisation as a whole – the kind of culture that is focused on helping each other to build on capabilities and grow.

Don’t Let Leadership Potential Go Unnoticed

If you insist on focusing mentoring resources on those warranting leadership positions, there is still good reason to broaden the scope of your mentoring programs.

No matter how good your internal “scouting system”, it is likely that there are junior managers with very high leadership potential who remain unnoticed.

Research has clearly shown that introverts make as good, if not better, leaders than extroverts, yet are less willing or able to put themselves forward.  Do you really want to miss out on the next great CEO because they have not yet had a formal tap on the shoulder?

A mentoring program will not only help you to suss out untapped potential, it will also help introverted team members to learn the skills needed rise to the top.

Contractors Count Too

While I’m on the subject of broadening access to mentoring programs I would like to make the case for contractors.

Organisations in all industries are increasingly reliant on contractors to provide specialist skills, manage projects and increase manpower without lifting headcount.  We tend to expect contractors to manage their own professional development.

In my opinion this is short sighted.  First of all, if every organisation takes this view we may find ourselves without a skilled contingent workforce to draw upon.  Secondly, remember that mentoring is a two-way street.  Not only do contractors stand to benefit from mentoring, but partnering with contractors gives others in your organisation an opportunity to access their unique knowledge and expertise.

© Melissa Richardson – Managing Director at Art of Mentoring.

You might also be interested in this article: How to Help a Coachee or Mentee to Develop Presence

David Clutterbuck Interview: Best Practice

David Clutterbuck Interview for Radio National show Best Practice.

During his last visit in Sydney, the world expert in mentoring Prof. David Clutterbuck lead a Mentoring Masterclass hosted by Art of Mentoring, attended many events industry related. He was also interviewed by Richard Aedy on his show Best Practice (Radio National – ABC Australia). In this interview he discusses the latest ideas and the best approaches in mentoring.

Here is an excerpt from Best Practice website followed by the link to the interview:

David Clutterbuck is an influential and pioneering figure in the world of mentoring. He says because of the changing nature of work – everyone these days should have a mentor.

But there’s a lot to get right for the process and relationship to really work – whether you’re the mentor or mentee. So how do you do it ?

Listen to the interview HERE.