How important is mentoring to young women?

Mentoring is discussing in all sorts of ways, and I am positive to that. I mean that mentoring is the right way for an boost in personal life and in job life. I come across this Lily7 (www.lily7.com) which exists to encourage and equip young women to develop Godly character and to find their self-worth in Christ alone. I am not going to discuss Christ pro contra, but point out the value of mentoring as a good tool.

And I think they answer very correct in a question they got from one reader. She thinks that mentoring could be a scary word to people. When people at lily7 responded that it could sound really formal and intimidating. But further more they say that mentoring can be as casual as you going to someone you trust and respect for advice. It can also be specific to a particular part of your life, too. For example says Sally, from lily7, I’ve got professors and lawyers who I seek out for how to write a legal argument, and I’ve got totally different people who I seek out for their thoughts on things in my everyday life. These people all see different aspects of my life, but the one thing that they have in common, which makes me call them mentors rather than regular friends, is that my relationship with them involves a lot of me learning from them and them giving their thoughts on whatever it is I’m doing. By contrast, I learn with or alongside friends. And in the end she asks “Does that make sense as a definition of mentoring?”

I say that it is a good definition because it is important for me to make everybody understand what it is, how to use it and that it isn`t intimidated.
To read the whole answer and more from lily7, follow this link:
http://www.lily7.com/consider-lily/

Success history 3

An adept from my latest mentor program called me some days ago to tell me about his new job. He got the job through his mentors’ network, his dream job.
His mentor was in a different branch than this adept wanted to job in, but the mentor has a friend who needed a new employee. He applied, got to the interview and got the job.

This was a job he never thought he could get at his stage in life, and he told me that this has never happened without the mentor program.

This feedback is a joy to get, and it shows that mentoring works.
He got more wise, stayed with his mentor the whole period and manage to use his mentors network to get a job.
Excellent work Jimmy!

ooVoo the next evolution in online communication

ooVoo has many great features — from video calls with up to six people at once to video messaging to chat and file transfer capabilities. This could be possibilities to have mentors also far away, and for mentors to have more adepts at meeting the same time. Click the link for some of the highlighted features http://www.oovoo.com/

This is a recommendation from Krishna De (in the article «Ten tips for finding a mentor»), I have not yet had time to try it out.

Good luck and please come with feedback!

Wisdom on demand

Surfing the internet I came across www.cwerty.com, they provides individuals with-on-demand access to expertise and guidance from the world’s most experienced business leaders.
Cwerty.com provides a broad range of topics that reflect the most common challenges facing business professionals today. The short (5 minute or less) format provides users with easily digestible segments that they can immediately apply to the challenges they face daily.

Fifty Lessons (www.50lessons.com), is the world’s leading digital video business library has created Cwerty.com.

Video is a powerful and complete learning tool combining a range of proven learning styles within one single, easy-to-access format. Since learning styles vary from visual and/or auditory, to action learning such as note taking, most people favor one learning style over another. Further complicating the learning landscape, time of day plays an important role in recall.
Some people retain new information better in the morning while others are sharper at night. Online video delivers a variety of ways to learn and allows each person or organization to customize the experience to suit their own preferences, schedules, and specific learning needs.

Note that each video costs $0.99

Success history 2

Some say that you got a mentor for a restricted time you finished the adept/mentor relationship and then the contact stop. If you got a good relation with your mentor, the relation don`t stop.
For some time ago I talked to an adept in the very first mentor program I coordinate in 2000/2001 as a project within an organization called Junior Chamber International (www.jci.cc) and she still got contact with her mentor after 8 years.

This was a mentor program JCI offered for young people within Young Enterprise (www.ja-ye.org) in Norway (www.ue.no) and she was 16 years old.

So she had contact with the mentor from 16 to 24, so this was a really good job from the mentor. And the adept really understand what mentoring could do for here in a period in life where there is a lot happening.

My book project

I am writing two books about mentoring. They are handbooks for the involved part in a mentoring relationship.
I have learned in my years working with mentoring that both adepts and mentors don`t get the full potential out of the time they spend together.
The reflection part and the overall perspective is less because they take easy on the fact that writing down all thoughts is important.
It is important if you want personal growth to take notes. So my project is to find some tool to make it more easy for both adepts and mentors.

I am writing one book for the adept and one for the mentor. Mentoring is an exciting topic and it is easy to find a lot of material, but more difficult to select the most important.

Care to comments or tip me of topics you are more than welcome

Trainings

I do a lot of training together with a good partner Kai Roer (www.bebetter.no). We do training in a lot of themes within mentoring, coaching and leadership.

Trainings like: «The leader as an educator», «Coaching to lead» and «Mentoring tools».

We both do it in Junior Chamber International and in companies.

Success story

I will use this title to tell you small histories happened because of mentoring and networking.

I got a mail for a couple days ago, with a request from a young boy. He ask if I would like to be his mentor, because he was going to start up his own company. He got my name from a colleague at work, the colleague was an adept at a mentor program I had 6 years ago. And she told him that he should contact me because I was a good mentor, and could help him.
This was a very pleasant request and I am looking forward to meet him and hear more about his business idea. Maybe I will be traveling with him on his journey as an entrepreneur, I keep you posted.
This is a good story because it shows how important networking is, and how old acquaintances suddenly can give exciting new jobs.

Mentorpilot in Norway

Today I attend a pilot mentorprogram in three counties (Hordaland, Troms and Sogn og Fjordane) within Innovation Norway (www.innovasjonnorge.no). The adepts are young entrepreneurs and mentors are more experienced business people.

It is wonderful to sit and hear a lot of people talk about mentoring and all the benefits. Especially Shahzad Rana (www.questpoint.no) with his long experience as an entrepreneur and in the judge in the program at TV2 (www.tv2.no) «Skaperen», with his dear focus on entrepreneurship. And Jeroen Scüssel (www.startnowcoaching) talking about the tools as an mentor`.

And Ingrid Roynesdal (www.roynesdal.no)talking about here experience with mentors as an adept. With here many years as an tennisplayer (winner of 14 norwegian championship and 15 years as an professional pianist. She has a very long experience as an adept using various mentors.

In the end Jennybeth Ekeland (www.aff.no) was talking about all the myths about adept and mentors and their relationship.

A very good day and I am looking forward to hear more about their year as an entrepreneur with an mentor. Good luck everyone!

Is mentoring the poor relative to coaching?

I found the article, from 20. august 2008 at: http://www.trainingzone.co.uk/cgi-bin/item.cgi?id=187519&d=680&h=0&f=0&dateformat=%25e-%25h-%25y

Finally someone with the same opinion as me, because if you read it through you find that it is pro mentoring all over.

It`s maybe a bit long, but it`s worth it!

Coaching vs. mentoring

There is no denying that coaching is the profession du jour: If it’s not advances in e-coaching making the trade press, then it’s another new product launching to make the coaches life easier. And where there is training to be imparted, there is money to be made. Add to this the impending skills gap and the current government fervour for departmental development and you have a voracious demand for more coaches.

But for all the good this tunnel vision has done for the coaching industry, it has only served to push mentoring further into the background. David Pardey, senior policy research manager at the Institute of Leadership and Management (ILM) suggests that the main reason behind the imbalance is down to coaching’s ability to sell itself.

«Mentoring is worthy but dull, coaching is sexy and professional. I don’t think that’s true or a good thing but I do think the emphasis on coaching has been to the detriment of mentoring.»
David Pardey, ILM

«Coaches are more commercial,» he admits. «There are an awful lot of people out there who are professional coaches; in fact the numbers are increasing all the time but also within businesses and organisations, there is a growing emphasis put on managers working as coaches with their own teams, and they in turn are having to learn new skills,» he says.

Pardey also believes that the popularity of coaching has been aided by lobbying groups and the government push on coaching, as well as the general perception that it is seen as a more ‘professional’ discipline. «Mentoring is worthy but dull, coaching is sexy and professional. I don’t think that’s true or a good thing but I do think the emphasis on coaching has been to the detriment of mentoring,» he reflects.

Mentoring comes of age

That said, the value of mentoring is gaining momentum particularly among managers where there is a growing appreciation of its advantages. It now plays a critical role in organisations and has been particularly important in the progression of women and other minority groups in the workplace and presents a valuable tool in long-term management and organisation development – something that short-term coaching strategies can often overlook.

Jan West heads up MentorSET , a women-only independently funded organisation that places mentees from the science, technology and engineering sectors with suitable mentors. She has seen mentoring experience a surge in popularity since the scheme’s inception in 2001.

«From our point of view mentoring seems to have become exceedingly popular. Back in the days when we first set up, mentoring was not well known but it’s all over the place now,» she says.

«People probably don’t understand what mentoring is all about. They think coaching is all about having these courageous conversations – well you can do that with mentoring, it’s no different.»
Linda Grant, Skipton Building Society

However West believes the reason for mentoring’s flagging publicity is down to the fact that most mentors aren’t doing it for a living and therefore have no reason to advertise themselves as such.

«The mentor has a profession and is helping someone else either as part of their job or in their spare time as a volunteer. As for a coach, that’s their occupation and what they have trained for.»

While few of the mentors who work with MentorSET are professional coaches, some are from an academic field such as teaching and lecturing. West finds that rather than simply acting as role models for the mentees, the relationship is far more useful in tackling the issues associated with modern working environments such as career development, confidence issues and work/life balance.

«We have actually had women who have been harassed in this sector and think this it’s actually the norm until they have a mentor to point it out that they don’t have to put up with that type of behaviour,» she says. «Some women have been ready to walk out of their career. We help people with lots of different issues and have been really successful. It does work and that’s why we keep getting the funding.»

A matter of semantics

Mentoring and coaching mean different things to different people but the fact remains that both present different and incredibly powerful methods of helping individuals develop. «People probably don’t understand what mentoring is all about,» says Grant.

«They think coaching is all about having these courageous conversations – well you can do that with mentoring, it’s no different – you should still be having very difficulty conversations with people, asking taxing questions in fact mentoring can be more far reaching,»

Coaching and mentoring could and should enjoy a more symbiotic relationship where coaches refer clients to mentors and visa versa. «When it come down to it, coaching isn’t necessarily the right thing to use, there are times when mentoring would be far more beneficial,» says Pardey. «Because the roles are different, the coach and the mentor can co-exist and that would be a really powerful support method.»