Everyone Needs a Mentor

Overview

Some form of spontaneous mentoring takes place in most organisations, whether acknowledged or not. A formalised programme helps harness it to the organisation's objectives. Properly managed, the programme can enhance the benefits to individuals from informal mentoring and minimise the problems that arise when the informal system bypasses talented employees.

There are usually four people involved in a mentoring programme. Together, they make up a mentoring quadrangle (see Figure 11):

• the mentee

• the mentor

• the line manager

• the programme co-ordinator, who monitors the relationships and looks at resources for training opportunities.

  Figure 11: The mentoring quadrangle

The clearer all four are about the objectives and effort required, the more successful the programme will be. All must be involved and consulted about career moves and developmental tasks that will take the mentee away from day-to-day work and responsibilities.

Each organisation has to draw up a mentoring programme that fits its particular company culture and answers the needs of its own employees. To ensure the success of the mentoring programme, a company must be prepared to be flexible in its approach and be willing to assess continuously and, if necessary, modify the methods it has implemented.

The starting-point, as with any major corporate programme, must be a clear statement of objectives against which progress may be measured. Typical objectives might be:

• to establish a cadre of broadly trained generalist managers at or just below middle management

• to speed and improve the induction of specific types of recruits and reduce wastage within the first year of their employment

• to allow top management to assess the ability of both individual young managers and the rising generation of managers as a whole

• to provide equal opportunities for disadvantaged groups of employees.

In each case, the personnel department can establish with top management a set of assessment criteria and a timetable for achieving specific levels of results.

Putting these objectives into practice requires a great deal of preparation. Usually at least six months to a year is needed to gain acceptance of the concept from the key people in the organisation, to establish objectives and measurements, to design supporting facilities, such as special training courses, and to begin the process of selecting participants.

Throughout this process, the following principles are essential to bear in mind:

• understand how the culture of the organisation will support or hinder mentoring

• ensure top management commitment

• adapt the programme to the company's development programme

• ensure commitment and participation from mentor/mentee groups

• ensure that support systems are in place

• ensure an acceptance of the time involved

• demystify the mentoring programme

• ensure confidentiality

• measure both processes and outcomes (see Chapter 8).