Mentoring has always been a great way to manage your career and life journey. Mentoring gives long term benefit and also needs to be evaluated from time to time, as the need of a specific specialist changes in accordance to the life journey. Mentoring can also augment your career growth -confidence and job outcomes.
However a mentoring program also needs to be well planned to get the best results. This can be in context to learning outcomes. Unlike Coaching Mentoring works as more prescriptive and advisory based. These are professionals who specialise on domains and give guidance based on their expertise and experience.
6 Essential aspects of a mentoring program which helps an organisation build their programs from the ground up are
1. Thinking with the end in mind
Clarity on the end purpose and goals in the framework is critical for the success of the mentoring journey. This also decides the team -the thought process and the tools involved. If the goal is to increase productivity and performance then you need to identify what competencies and the mentors who would lead the project. Similarly if you want to promise a longterm career to the employees you need to organise planned workshops by mentors who can showcase the same and also provide one on one support.
Thus aspects to explore in launching any mentoring initiative(for better alignment and strategy) are following:
- Outcomes you would like to accomplish
- Problems to solve
- Environment change that is going to be experienced post mentoring project
- Number specifications in terms of revenue -rewards or even recognitions for organisation and also the employees
2. Mentors who are excited to support
Mentors work better when they are sourced internally, within the organisation as this enables the mentee to understand what works for the organisations. This also a nice way of moulding leaders to comply with the internal culture and norms. However the mentor needs to be as excited as the mentee to support this journey; or else this could backfire.
External mentors, can also be a good choice, provided they understand the organisational landscape and have a transparent view of the same.
3. Mentors are best aligned when its aligned to the competence that one is trying to develop
If one is working on one’s people skills one needs to get a mentor who has mastered it or does it with accuracy 90% of the time. Thus when mentorship is aligned to the competence or a role that you are developing yourself for, it definitely works better.Remember that effective matching is about more than just skills, interests, and job descriptions. The key is to develop a well-rounded picture of each mentor and mentee and make a match based on the goals of the employee receiving mentorship.
One can always have a dialogue and chemistry session to have the final mapping of mentor with mentee. This needs to be mutually agreed upon or else it might be a challenge in terms of seeing the commitment in the path and the process.
4. Setting the Goals as per the organisational purpose, vision & share the progress
Unless the entire process is given an audience with the tracking process, the results may not be visible. Thus it’s important for the mentors and the mentees to commit to certain timelines and share the progress with their stakeholders from time to time. Also highlighting any challenges which needs senior leadership intervention to get sorted.
This mentoring journey needs to be prioritized by the participants to get maximum results and also to facilitate the organisation goals accomplishment.
5. Measure the outcomes and share with organisation for others to be excited about participation in the program
After your mentoring program launches, one needs to highlight and showcase the outcomes to the stakeholders and also others involved for optimum engagement. This includes helping your mentees track their goals, collecting feedback from participants, and looking at the overall business impact of the program. As we mentioned before, there are a lot of biases that can trickle into your mentoring programs. This can be hinderance to your ongoing mentoring plans and also building experts -leaders and visionaries in the process.
Sharing the overall progress can get more people to be excited about the learning journey facilitated through this program.
6. Trajectory Transformation through a holistic mentoring plan
A holistic mentoring plan should involve technical training, leadership workshops, coaching and live assignment -case study understanding. This approach allows a leader the exposure needed to deliver expected results along with empowerment through operational guidelines. Transformation of a leader is best seen when all these support factors are provided to the leader to grow within the system and also contribute to industry leadership and recognitions.
Whether you are a start-up, solo-preneur, entrepreneur, edupreneur, or a leader in a large organisation a mentor with the similar track record of what you are trying to achieve can definitely transform your journey. As a leader are you ensuring to have a holistic growth plan worked out for your supervisors… Do share your experience as a mentor or mentee. Do visit us @ http://www.success-studios.com to meet our team of Mentors , coaches and Experts who can support your goals.
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