MENTORING TO ACCELERATE LEADERSHIP DEVELOPMENT

Introduction

Mentoring is a relationship between two people.  It facilitates the transfer of knowledge and experience from one to the other.  It teaches junior leaders soft skills that would otherwise take years.  In an organisational context this diffusion of skills has huge potential.  While such programmes can be either formal or informal this article sets out to cover the creation of a formal mentoring programme.  

The benefits of such a programme can be hard to measure. Converting the benefits of accelerated soft skills learning for leaders into numbers takes a bit of thought.  It is possible though.  The gaps apparent from the absence of these soft skills are often referred to as a lack of experience.  This gap is normally closed by observation or trial and error and is measured in years.  A mentoring programme has the potential to shorten this learning curve significantly.

A 2018 study of mentoring by the American Society for Training and Development^[1] provides a valuable insight into the benefits achieved by running structured mentoring programmes.  The top organisational benefits listed in the study are:

• Higher employee engagement and retention (50%)
• Accelerated growth of high-potential employees (46%)
• Greater intra-organisational collaboration (37%)
• Knowledge transfer (37%)

Of the organisation’s surveyed, 66% were running some form of mentoring programme.

Assembling the Mentoring Programme

Put your mentoring programme together carefully, piece by piece.  Detailed planning is important.  The steps outlined below are a guide but some can be executed concurrently.  The steps to creating a mentoring programme are^[2]:

• Senior Leadership Buy-In – the tone is always set from the top. The support of senior leaders is key to all enterprise wide programmes – mentoring (probably) more so 
• Design – whatever mentoring programme you design it must be aligned to your organisation’s goals.  As such, be clear and set programme objectives and some simple principles from the start
• Consult – start the conversation with leaders to assess if a need exists and what that need looks like. This will help identify the target audience 
• Build – initially it might not be perfect but still better than having no mentoring programme
• Pilot – it is always a good idea to test a new concept before a full launch. This should involve all the steps to be taken when launching the wider mentoring programme
• Launch – use your senior leaders to make mentoring a topic of conversation amongst the wider leader group. The launch phase includes training
• Assess – after an initial bedding in period take the time to measure the programme’s effectiveness
• Fine-Tune – use the assessment outputs to identify opportunities for continuous programme improvement. Then re-enter a shorter more focused design phase

Identifying The Target Population 

This is how the organisation decides where mentoring is needed most.  Leaders who need support maybe reluctant to indicate that they are struggling.  But there are indicators; some factors are internal and some are external.  Areas exhibiting any combination of these symptoms are likely to be in need of support.

Mentoring Objectives

Determining the objectives of the mentoring programme is essential.  These will vary from enterprise to enterprise and must support the organisation’s goals.  These objectives should answer the programme’s fundamental “why?” question.

Adopt Simple Principles

Here are some simple principles to consider when assembling the mentoring programme:

• More experienced leaders mentor less experienced leaders
• The content of mentoring conversations remains absolutely confidential
• The mentee takes the lead – the mentor shouldn’t drive the mentoring process
• The mentee will respect the time and efforts of the mentor by being prepared, setting agendas, sending pre-read material, sticking to the allocated time etc.
• Mentoring arrangements will be changed around periodically
• The mentoring programme is embedded into the organisation’s operational processes e.g. joiners, leavers and movers processes

This is not a definitive list but it can help start the conversation.

Pairing Mentors and Mentees

In my experience there are three approaches to pairing mentees with mentors:

• Voluntary – the mentees pick their mentors
• Allocated – the organisation matches mentors to mentees
• Blended – there is a mix of the voluntary and allocated approaches

All three work to some degree.  A voluntary approach results in a few mentors being oversubscribed beyond what is practicable.  An allocated approach results in lower engagement among a segment of mentees who don’t like their mentor.  In my experience the process may start as allocate or voluntary but always ends up as a blend of the two.  Ask mentees to list three mentor choices in order of preference and pair up as best as possible.

Measuring Programme Effectiveness

This is not about how many mentees become CEOs! But management do need to have some indication as to how the programme is going and its levels of effectiveness.  Both mentors and mentees should report on:

• The number of sessions/hours per period (e.g. six months)
• Personal assessment of how effective the programme is for them (e.g. on a scale of 1 – 10 how effective is the programme for you?)

The results from this exercise will allow management to fine tune and improve the programme.

This is can be easy and cheap to do. An anonymous Survey Monkey with a short list of questions twice a year would suffice.

Always Have Rules

Clarity is essential for all participants.  The mentoring programme must be a safe and secure environment for both parties.  However, this confidentiality cannot be allowed to morph into some kind of omerta.  There must be policies, codes of behaviour and procedures to guide all participants.  Mentors should be guided on how to handle situations where mentees raise serious issues like breaches of company policy.  Also, mentees may require additional support beyond what a mentor can provide e.g. with mental health issues.

Training 

Both mentees and mentors should receive training.  Training allows the organisation to set out a consistent view of what the programme objectives are, how the programme will operate and why the programme is in existence.  Training should be tailored for mentors and mentees and should form a key component of the pilot test.

Conclusion

A mentoring programme targets the untapped potential of junior leaders.  It seeks to cultivate that potential in an accelerated manner for the benefit of the organisation.  During times of crisis – like in a pandemic – there is a more altruistic reason for mentoring leaders.  Such a programme shows junior leaders that support is available and more senior leaders are willing to invest their time in passing some pearls of wisdom.  For any organisation there is no downside to retaining competent, engaged and developing leaders.

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^[1] https://www.td.org/press-release/new-research-by-atd-mentoring-helps-employees-and-leads-to-better-business

^[2] Includes guidance from the HR Daily Advisor, 2018 (https://hrdailyadvisor.blr.com/2018/02/16/step-step-design-effective-mentorship-program-part-1/)

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