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Throughout my career, I have always been a firm believer that mentors can help guide you toward your career goals. Corner (2014) explains that mentoring can be used to develop leaders, clarify organizational culture, raise engagement, increase retention and company loyalty, and foster organizational growth. While some companies have cut back on development programs due to cost, the organizations that have worked to develop their mentoring programs are able to save on external coaching costs while giving both mentors and mentees the opportunities to grow.
While mentoring may seem pretty straight forward, there are some key steps an organization should take in order to implement a successful mentoring program. Cleary and Horsfall (2015) explain that mentoring is distinctly different from coaching. Mentoring involves an ongoing relationship where mentors are more apt to use an interpersonal approach to develop their relationship, while coaching is typically completed over a more short-term period with a specific event in mind (Cleary & Horsfall, 2015). In addition, the objectives of the mentoring program should be clearly outlined with a plan of how the success of the program will be determined. The roles should be clearly defined and assessments should be utilized to track the relationship and implementation effectiveness (Solansky, 2010). By setting expectations upfront with a clear vision of what success looks like the mentee-mentor relationship can focus on sharing professional experience and knowledge (Cleary & Horsfall, 2015). Using these guidelines as a starting point to develop a mentoring program can help ensure it starts off on the right foot.
While most have great intentions, I have seen programs that unfortunately did not follow some of these key pointers such as having clearly defined roles or defining what a successful mentoring program within the organization looks like. In addition, the individuals selected to be mentors cannot just be good at their own positions. Rather, they need to have strong interpersonal and communication skills as noted above. When these careful steps are taken to plan out a mentoring program, I can see how beneficial it can be for a department especially when a company is not growing at a fast pace. Mentor opportunities allow leaders to see how well someone can do with mentoring responsibilities, which also allows mentors to develop a renewed sense of commitment and loyalty to the organization. Corner (2014) said it best “leaders developing leaders ad infinitum” should be the goal of every organization. When you can utilize your own talent to grow talent, the potential is certainly limitless.
So what are your thoughts…does your company currently have a mentoring program? Do you feel this type of program would be beneficial?
References
Cleary, M., & Horsfall, J. (2015). Coaching: Comparisons with mentoring. Issues in Mental Health Nursing, 36(3), 243–245. http://doi.org/10.3109/01612840.2015.1002344
Corner, J. (2014). The fast are eating the slow: Mentoring for leadership development as a competitive method. Industrial and Commercial Training, 46(1), 29–33. http://doi.org/10.1108/ICT-07-2013-0052
Solansky, S. T. (2010). The evaluation of two key leadership development program components: Leadership skills assessment and leadership mentoring. Leadership Quarterly, 21(4), 675–681. http://doi.org/10.1016/j.leaqua.2010.06.009
