Hello Benny,
Its a very interesting query you had put. Personally, I feel MENTORING depends more on the person (your superior mostly) you are put under.
I am a HR executive in an organisation. To be honest, I used to hate my boss, for the simple reason that whenever I went to him with a problem he would simply tell me to go and solve it. This continued till I stopped going to him with issues. I figured out gradually how to resolve the problems myself. Little did I realise at that time that my boss was actually doing great mentoring by making me do things my own way, while occasionally prodding me to do better.
Anyway, I have a small brief about mentoring...hope that helps....
What is mentoring?
Mentoring is the process of shaping competencies or behaviors by providing feedback, usually to subordinates or even peers, about how to achieve the best in life. In their capacity as “mentors”, the HR coach may work with every manager and supervisor at all levels. The HR coach is slightly better off to blend politically deft observations with a frankness that will help the managers develop their capacity to lead people and personally excel.
I also remember reading in an article about MENTORING WHEEL
The Mentoring Wheel describes a change process made up of four phases:
Freeing Up: This describes the process of developing autonomy, responsibility and the ability to choose freely, unconstrained by personal history. When working in this phase, the mentor’s stance is nurturing and supportive and aims to help the mentee develop a strong positive self image. The basic question which the mentee seeks to answer in this phase is “Who am I?”.
Envisioning: The process of connecting with a sense of purpose, identifying and choosing values, creating a compelling and stretching vision which is aligned to and supports the corporate vision.
Implementing: Identifying the goals which will lead towards the vision, deciding on the strategies and actions to achieve these goals and then taking action. The mentor’s role here is to coach and help the mentee answer the question “How will I achieve my vision?” This may include helping the mentee improve specific management skills.
Sustaining: The process of getting feedback from the environment about what is being achieved and the extent to which the vision is being realised and its achievement sustained. When the mentees are able to see clearly what they are creating and to take responsibility for both their successes and failures, then there is an opportunity to learn from experience and gain insight into the changes necessary to deliver and expand the achievement of their vision. The mentor challenges the mentee to see clearly the impact of what they are doing and to help them answer the question “Am I creating my vision?”.
From the Industry:
Winthrop Pharmaceuticals faced the fact that all of its top-level leaders were going to retire at about the same time. This would happen in 4-5 years, and there was no one in the pipeline who was capable of moving into a higher-level leadership position.
Why not? A previously severe delayering of the organisational pyramid had prevented anyone from moving up, and many potential leaders had not even been able to move laterally. In short, the next generation of future leaders had been plateaued for so long that they were not ready for a major promotion to a higher-level position.
Corporate Human Resources department did two things, the first of which was typical: they provided Leadership Training for high potentials (who represented Winthrop's diversified workforce). When it was realised that simply taking leadership courses was not sufficient to
* Develop usable competencies,
* Gain practical wisdom and
* Understand the big picture about emerging market trends and how to be competitive,
* Corporate Mentoring Solutions Inc. (CMSI) was asked to provide a suitable solution.
What steps did CMSI take?
CMSI suggested rotational mentoring as a solution. It worked like this: The Corporate HR team identified each high potential's particular needs and strengths. Each protégé was matched with a top-level mentor for the amount of time required to meet a particular protégé need. Then, that protégé rotated through to work with another mentor, and so forth for three years.
Key to this Mentoring Solution was the 2-day training CMSI provided for the initial mentor-protégé partners. They not only acquired and applied skills for working together, but also learned how to use these with each new partner. Since everyone in the mentoring programme learned the same concepts and skills initially, it was much easier for them to transfer this to each new partner over the 3-year duration of the mentoring programme.
More specifically
Protégés applied what they were learning in Leadership Training courses. This saved mentors valuable time not having to teach this same content to each protégé in turn. Mentors learned how to equip protégés with mentor know-how and wisdom, and empower protégé’s ideas so the organization would not stagnate.
They learned to use Mentoring Action Plans to achieve important protégé goals while coping with busy work schedules.
Some outcomes:
Formal evaluation at the 18-month point revealed that protégés were
* Learning specific competencies and
* Getting a big picture perspective from each new mentor they were matched with.
Mentors were also getting a bigger perspective from each new protégé by finding out what that protégé had done and learned from previous mentors, as well as that protégé’s ideas for improving the company in some specific way.
These benefits increased for the next 18 months, until Winthrop Pharmaceuticals had developed a pool of future leaders to replace those who were retiring.
Related reading:
“Mentoring Best Practices”, by Dr. Phillips-Jones L., The Mentoring Group.
“Tips for Mentees”, by Borges K., The M-Group Inc.
“Tips for Mentors”, by Borges K., The Manager’s Guide. I'm sure this shall be of help ; < ) Warm Regards david |
