Kategori: Mentoring

Articles about mentoring.

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Why You Need To Train People For Mentoring

The purpose of training is to enable mentors and mentorees to establish effective relationships. Some programs simply introduce people and leave them to «get on with it». Occasionally, this works. But people need to know what is expected of them, how to go about it and why it is important and you need to be confident they have the skills for mentoring.Why Train?

  • Building a relationship of rapport and trust can be tricky when there are many individual differences;
  • Managing people is different from mentoring people; and
  • Motivation will be critical to success.

Mentoring is different from other workplace relationships. It is professional and personal, it deals with rational and emotional motivation and it non-directive but offers guidance and advice! The paradoxical nature of mentoring needs to be understood and the key skills developed.
In addition, participants usually need ongoing personal support and reassurance. Establishing an interactive network of participants will add value. This is most likely to happen when participants meet and work together in training sessions.

Training Mentors and Mentorees

The role of the mentor, communication styles, strategies and practical techniques for applying the mentoring process can be explored in workshops. It is usually beneficial to provide mentors with an initial session separately from the mentorees so that they are able to discuss any issues candidly.

Mentorees need to be primed to make the most of the mentoring experience. Their responsibilities, communication and goal setting are topics you want to cover in their training.

Bringing mentors and mentorees together for a workshop is highly desirable. This way you can enable them to identify expectations of each other in a non-threatening group process. You can also ensure that they have a common understanding of mentoring etiquette, procedures and reporting. Being part of a group reduces the feeling of isolation and you can set up a mechanism for ongoing group contact. Within this workshop mentoring pairs can have a structured first meeting to break the ice. Debriefing the meeting as a group, you can draw out do’s and don’ts for effective future meetings.

 

The author of this article is Ann Rolfe, and was first published 04. februar 2010 on www.mentoring-works.com.

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Reverse Mentoring

Based on old paradigm mentoring where a more senior person (in terms of age, position or experience) mentors a junior, reverse mentoring places the more junior person as the mentor.

Usually used when executives need to understand operations or technology that can be shared by shop floor, front-line or tech-savvy employees.

The key to success in reverse mentoring is the ability to create and maintain an attitude of openness to the experience and dissolve the barriers of status, power and position.

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The Mentoring Mindset

Traditional mentoring grew from the concept of the older and wiser guiding the young and aspiring. Masters and apprentices, patrons and protégés and mastermind (expert/novice) mentoring continue this paradigm.

Contemporary mentoring has many forms and frequently people regard each other as partners, colleagues or peers, ignoring age, status or power. This more egalitarian approach suits today’s generation and has much to offer.

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JCI Gothenburg

Going to Gothenburg in the end of march for training. It’s a training in leadership, personal leadership. What kind of tools do I got and how to use them.

I will post program soon and some pictures to from the two days training.

— Post From My iPhone

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Need YOUR help: European survey about mentoring

Trainifique , the company inspiring leaders worldwide, is conducting a survey to see how mentoring is used to create success in Europe. The results from the research will be published in a book later this year.

Thor-Erik Gulliksen , one of the founding partners of Trainifique, says that mentoring has been around for thousands of years, the first documented mentoring was in the story of Homer in the Odyssey. “We want to see how mentoring is used in 2010, how success is made by asking for advice and using someone who can guide you when you need some direction,” he continues.
You may also participate, just by filling in the quick survey found here . It takes less than 10 minutes.
“We are interested in all use of mentoring, you do not have to be in a leading position right now – you may have been earlier, or you may not have reached this position just yet. Perhaps you had a mentor when you studied, perhaps when you did a career transition. Or, you may have used a mentor to help you gain the success you always wanted. “ Gulliksen says that this is the first European wide survey about mentoring. “We aim to uncover the differences and the similarities of the use of mentoring throughout Europe.”
The results of the survey will be presented the fall 2010, at the Junior Chamber International World Congress 2010 in Osaka, Japan.
You may participate in the survey by filling in the form here !
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How Do You Know Mentoring Works?

Whether you use sophisticated metrics or simply ask participants, it is important to gain feedback on mentoring to evaluate whether the relationships worked, made a difference and contributed worthwhile organisational outcomes.

Plan to gather both qualitative and quantitative data before, during and after the mentoring.

Success Indicators – identify what you can measure pre and post mentoring to gauge benefits;

Early Follow-up – check in with people soon after the program launch to ensure that they have made contact and begun the mentoring relationship;

Monitor – stay in touch, build two-way communication, identify any potential problems and resolve them sooner, rather than later;

Mid-point Review – get the group together, face-to-face or via webinar. Workshop what’s working well and what could improve. Help them create strategies to gain the most value from their mentoring

Finalé – a final group session gives closure to participants. Make it special and acknowledge their contribution. This is the time to recognise their achievements and take feedback for improvement for future programs. Questionnaires can be used to elicit their evaluation and quantify qualitative input.

Post-program – schedule review of longer-term success indicators at appropriate intervals. Mentoring will show immediate benefits but the greatest gains come from the enduring effect of mentoring.

Mentoring as a one-off event may be indelible for individuals but mentoring imbedded in the culture is the ultimate measure of success. If the benefits of mentoring are to be perpetuated, it is what you do after your mentoring program that will determine if mentoring works.

The author of this article is Ann Rolfe, and was first published 18. february 2010 on www.mentoring-works.com.

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5 Benefits of Working with a Coach or Mentor

Being a leader can be a really lonely existence.  Expectations are high and it can often be a real struggle to stay on top of your game and continually deliver great results.
Continuing to develop as a leader has never been so vital not least because of the major challenges facing many organisations right now.

For those at a more senior level working with a coach or mentor is often a great way of continuing to develop.  So what are the benefits?

Benefit 1: Thinking time

The pace at which leaders operate in organisations is often relentless and means that there is little or no time to stand back and take stock.  Being able to stand back from issues and challenges allows you to clearly think through the choices, look at challenges in different ways and ultimately to take better decisions.  And if you are taking better decisions it means better results for you personally and the organisation.

Benefit 2: Ongoing support

Training is great and I have been to many great training courses over the years.  Trouble is most training courses are a one shot opportunity.  What I mean by that is that you go along to the course, leave enthusiastic and an few months later find you are back where you started.  If you are a leader looking to be more effective over the long term you know that it is going to take time.  Having that ongoing support can help you make that sustained change in performance.

Benefit 3: Personal attention

In my experience of working with clients there are often some very specific areas of focus that leaders and managers want to work on.  Sometimes it might be about strategies and tactics that they can apply and other times it might be tackling areas of self doubt or misconceptions.  I also notice that they rarely need to work on all aspects of a particular topic but more on one or two areas.   The nature of the relationship means that it is much easier to tailor the programme to meet specific needs.

Benefit 4: Highly time efficient

I know that when I was in leadership and management roles, creating the time to attend a 2 or 3 day course was often a real challenge.  By comparison finding a couple of hours a month to work with a coach was much more time efficient and effective.

Benefit 5: Return on Investment

Ultimately if you are investing time, money and energy into something the return on what you have invested will be important.  Research into the benefits of coaching indicates that the return on investment is in the region of 500-700%.  Now these numbers might well look huge but let’s take a look at an example.  Imagine you are a senior manager who aspires to be a Director.  Ask yourself what’s the difference in salary and benefits?  In a field like accountancy, the differential between a number one and number two can easily be in the £30-50,000 per annum range.  If you are in the number one job for say 10 years, that could mean an extra £300-£500,000 to your earnings.  So look at your investment in terms of the lifetime value.

Bottom Line – Continuing to develop as a leader is no longer an optional extra.  If you are serious about realising your professional and personal potential, working with a coach or mentor might just be the catalyst.

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Goals/Goal-Setting

The major reason for setting a goal is for what it makes of you to accomplish it. What it makes of you will always be the far-greater value than what you get.

When Andrew Carnegie died, they discovered a sheet of paper upon which he had written one of the major goals of his life: to spend the first half of his life accumulating money and to spend the last half of his life giving it all away. And he did! Some people are disturbed by those tough days because all they have is the days. They haven’t designed or described or defined the future.

Goals. There’s no telling what you can do when you get inspired by them. There’s no telling what you can do when you believe in them. And there’s no telling what will happen when you act upon them.

We all need lots of powerful long-range goals to help us past the short-term obstacles. The ultimate reason for setting goals is to entice you to become the person it takes to achieve them. Don’t set your goals too low. If you don’t need much, you won’t become much.

If you go to work on your goals, your goals will go to work on you. If you go to work on your plan, your plan will go to work on you. Whatever good things we build end up building us.

We all have two choices: We can make a living or we can design a life.

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Harvard Business School

 A study from Harvard Business School, named: Coaching and Mentoring–A Harvard Business School Press Book Summary in Partnership with getAbstract

Tells us that:

 

Effective managers know that timely coaching can dramatically enhance their teams’ performance. "Coaching and Mentoring" offers managers comprehensive advice on how to help employees grow professionally and achieve their goals. 

 

This is very interesting and what we already know. But it´s maybe more powerful when big organizations like Harvard Business School tels us. So keep up Harvard, tell us more.

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Michelle Obama

Look here, this is big. The maybe worlds most powerful women, is talking about mentoring. This is an article from «The Washington Post».

Emotional’ Michelle Obama announces White House mentoring program for girls

By Robin Givhan

In her own version of «Pay It Forward,» first lady Michelle Obama, who has often talked about the influence of role models in her life, announced a year-long mentoring program at the White House for area high school girls.

Monday afternoon, thirteen young women gathered around a polished wood table, austerely set with water glasses and blue folders, in the State Dining room for a get to know you conversation with the senior women from the White House staff who will serve as their mentors. That list includes a who’s who of fancy titles and impressive resumes — among them, senior advisor Valerie Jarrett, domestic policy advisor Melody Barnes, Obama’s chief of staff Susan Sher and social secretary Desiree Rogers.

To read more:

voices.washingtonpost.com/44/2009/11/02/emotional_michelle_obama_annou.html