Mentoring

Articles about mentoring.

The Value Of Mentoring

Leave a Comment / Leadership development, Mentoring /

 Helping business start-ups is a rewarding activity for many retired entrepreneurs and (since selling his own company) it has even become the principal activity for Derek Barr, a business angel with a keen interest in early-stage ventures. Having grown his own specialist engineering concern into an international business, with turnover of £25 million, he sold out to international engineering group GEA in 1996.

 

 



Barr has vast experience in training and developing successful executives and his involvement with the London Business School Entrepreneurship Summer School goes right back to the beginning. He has seen the Summer School change in form and scope to what it is today. For him, however, one key part of the programme has not changed – namely the role of mentors.

 

To read more: www.growthbusiness.co.uk/channels/growth-strategies/leadership-and-management/27748/the-value-of-mentoring.thtml

 

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Why You Need To Train People For Mentoring

Leave a Comment / Mentoring, Mentoring tools /

 

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. 

 

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Reverse Mentoring

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 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

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 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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Need YOUR help: European survey about mentoring

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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?

Leave a Comment / Mentoring /

 

 

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.

 

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Goals/Goal-Setting

Leave a Comment / Leadership development, Mentee, Mentoring, Personal development /

 

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

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 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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