Establishing a Mentoring Program

What is Mentoring?  Mentoring is defined as dealing with individuals in terms of their total personality in order to advise, counsel, and/or guide them with regard to problems that may be resolved by legal, scientific, clinical, spiritual, and/or other professional principles.  In short, mentoring is essentially formal or informal educational and professional developmental support provided by experienced colleagues.

Some larger corporations have peer mentoring or traditional mentoring programs in place.  Other companies have  mentor programs for a limited time to newly hired employees.  There are also many smaller companies who informally mentor and may not even refer to those activities as such. 

Establishing a formal mentoring program can be quite an extensive process—it all depends on how structured you want your mentoring program.  If your company doesn’t have a process in place, or it is very loose and would like to formalize it further, you must first develop the scope and parameters around the program and also identify how the program will be managed.  From there, you will need to establish the mentoring program operation and components for success.  Some examples of those activities might include:

-      Recruiting mentors and mentees

-      Screening potential program participants

-      Orientation and training of both mentors and mentees

-      Matching of mentors to mentees

-      Providing ongoing support to participants

-      Recognition of  the contribution of all mentor program participants

-      Helping mentors and mentees reach closure

-      Providing a method by which to evaluate the program and do so regularly

As you scan the list above, you will realize that each of these high-level activities requires many more subtasks.  For example, regarding orientation and training, resources must be identified to develop the training materials and deliver it.  This may be a third party, someone in your HR department working with you, or someone hired specifically for this purpose.  Again, the process can get as formal and structured as you need.  The most important thing to remember is that it must meet the program objectives that you have identified for your business.

The Value of Mentoring

Mentee’s can benefit from a mentoring program in many ways including:

-      Focusing on their career path and setting goals

-      Accelerating  the learning process

-      Establishing new relationships with management and expanding their network

-      Gaining access to new areas of the business and special projects

-      Opening doors to new job opportunities within other areas of the company

-      Gaining a better understanding of the culture of the company and industry

-      Learning of new ideas and facts to better understand people

-      Preparation for the mentee to become a mentor in the future

 Mentor’s can also benefit from mentoring, such as:

 -      Making a favorable impression within their company

-      Learning new ideas and facts to better understand and manage people similar to the Mentee that may report to the Mentor

-      Using the Mentee as a conduit to other people and increasing the reach of their network

-      Seeing the results of Mentor/Mentee collaboration is often a way to modify future decisions

For most leaders, mentoring should actually be second nature. If we truly love our associates as I try to encourage, then mentoring is really just part of the job of being a leader who is committed to the principles found in my book, Lead with Love.

Every time we have an interaction with an associate, we should be personally and professionally committed to provide not just feedback on performance, but candid and “loving” support for their development. Mentoring obviously can, and often is done, by other than bosses. The best mentor I ever had was also my boss. He cared for me and nurtured me every step of the way.

I was so comfortable with him as my boss, that I would go to him for advice openly and without fear that it would be “held against me” or viewed as weakness. He was always available to give me support and guidance. This level of trust and comfort in the integrity of our relationship was essential to my successful development. Every leader must understand that he/she is the single most influential person in the life of a subordinate. The “power” we have is obvious, but the ability to influence the development and success of our associates goes well beyond just “functional power,” it is the ultimate power to facilitate learning and development, and to encourage and reinforce success.