Everyone Needs a Mentor

‘So what's the business problem?' That's the first question I typically ask when working with an organisation to design a mentoring programme, because without a clear target group with a specific issue to manage, it will be very difficult to establish whether the project has been worthwhile. Very often there is a mixture of objectives, but the most common seem to be:

• to retain key staff

• to overcome institutional barriers to progress for disadvantaged groups

• to build bridges between parts of the organisation

• to support culture change, especially after a merger or major acquisition

• to support a competency programme.

Defining the business (or community) issue largely defines the selection criteria for mentees, whether these are used to identify people through some central co-ordinating mechanism or to enable people to decide for themselves whether to apply. In the Cabinet Office's Disability Leadership Programme, for example, potential mentees nominate themselves but receive endorsement from their department and have to attend an interview process that selects those who will take part in the full scheme, complete with bursary, and those who will simply receive a mentor.

At high-tech company Araya (formerly Lucent) mentees nominate themselves on to a broad self-development programme whose members meet monthly to learn together. Although intended originally for high- and low-performers, the programme has attracted a wide range of people, each of whom is offered a choice of two mentors.

Mentoring schemes for high-flyers tend to have some element of evaluation built in to ensure that they have the commitment and potential to make effective use of the opportunity they have been given.

At NatWest Bank the mentoring programme encourages potential high-flyers to move on to the fast track at an early stage. Interested candidates undergo a series of rigorous tests and interviews. If they are deemed to have potential, they then attend a week-long training course where their potential is discussed and they are given practical suggestions for personal development.

Ground rules, which have been learned the hard way in a wide variety of organisations (but that does not stop other companies repeating the mistakes), include:

• Do not assume that everyone in the target group wants to have a mentor. A large financial services company in the City dutifully followed orders from New York and set up mentoring pairs for all its middle-level women, matching them either with more senior women or male executives. In interviews, many of the women reported that they were bemused by the project. While they had had very pleasant lunches, neither they nor the mentors were clear about what the purpose of meeting was, and many felt patronised by what they saw as aheavy-handed approach. Others saw the initiative as some kind of mark of inferiority - ‘Somebody has decided I have a problem, but they haven't the balls to tell me what it is, ' said one woman.

• Do not assume that any target group sees itself as a group. One company, concerned that hardly anyone had signed up for a mentoring programme for people from ethnic minorities, discovered that the intended beneficiaries saw themselves either in their professional status or from much smaller communities - Muslims and Hindus saw their issues as very different and resented being lumped together.

• Accept that some people may have less need of a mentor at some points in their career than others. Giving the individual some say in when he or she becomes involved increases personal commitment to the process. (A recent example I encountered involved a small group of middle managers who had not met their assigned mentors more than once or twice over almost a year. When quizzed about their reluctance, they explained that the mentor was fine, but not currently needed. Each of them had an excellent and productive developmental relationship with their line manager and with the tutor on the leadership course they were taking. ‘Right now, I'm concentrating on applying what I'm learning to my current job and my performance in a couple of skills areas, ' explained one. ‘I can't cope with any more help at the moment. But I'd expect to make use of my mentor when I need to put all this into the bigger picture and establish some longer-term development goals. ')

• Sometimes a mentor is not the most appropriate form of help. Until a few years ago I would routinely recommend companies' setting up mentoring for graduate entrants to provide a mentor from Day 1. Practical experience shows this is usually a mistake. It typically takes three to six months in the organisation before the mentee understands enough of the systems and culture to ask insightful questions, but by this time one or both parties has often become bored and the relationship struggles to get back on course. Organisations are increasingly opting instead for a six-month buddy system in which the graduate is teamed up with a recruit from the previous year who can show him or her the ropes.