Answers to Frequently Asked Questions

Ask The Mentor of Mentors

Answers to Frequently Asked Questions
© 2008, Barry Sweeny

In addition to working as a mentoring & coaching consultant, trainer, and presenter, Barry Sweeny loves to BE A MENTOR and coach and to continually refine and develop his mentoring & coaching skills in new settings.

That's why he is the Mentor of Mentors (M.o.M.). Every day, Barry uses email and the telephone to provide limited free advice to any person working in mentoring or coaching. Have YOU got a burning question? Here are the answers to some of the most frequently asked questions about mentoring, coaching, and induction. Check these first.
If your question is not addressed below, then...Ask the Mentor of Mentors

INDEX:
What's the difference between a quality program and an effective program?
What is "Mentoring"?
How is "coaching" different from mentoring? Do we need both?
How is coaching & mentoring different from supervision?
To what extent can mentoring and coaching really improve employee performance?
What is "Induction" and WHY is it needed in business?
What should be the most basic goals of a quality induction program?
What are the essential components of a quality induction program?
Why don't all excellent employees also make excellent mentors?
Why do mentors in some programs seem incapable of providing quality mentoring?
What evaluation questions should an existing mentor program be asking itself?
Our mentor program seems fine. Is there anything else we should be doing?
What are the financial benefits of mentoring? - the hidden costs of employee attrition
What are the non-financial benefits in attracting new quality employees?
What are the non-financial costs of employee attrition?
How can an organization help staff define and attain their career goals?
Mentors are also employees so don't they already know what's needed?

Why should you hire Barry as a consultant to help you?

What's the Difference Between a Quality Program and an Effective Program?

You may be surprised to know that there are some critical distinctios. They are critical because they are fundamental to the way you improve your program and practices.

1. QUALITY is a condition that must exist relative to something else

I am a better quality mentor that you. (Not a very professional statement however)
I am a quality mentor as measured against the standards for mentoring practice
Our program is a quality program, as measured against mentoring program standards.

Given this definition, the effort to become a higher QUALITY mentoring program will require some mentoring program standards. The effort to promote QUALITY mentoring requires standards of mentoring as a professional practice. I have recently been giving this considerable attention, but it is an evolving picture. Never-the-less, a quality program is one that "has arrived", not one that is "in process".

2. EFFECTIVENESS also must exist relative to something else. In this case, the something else is a set of goals. In other words, a program is deemed "effective" if:

It is getting closer to it's goals, or...
It is successful in accomplishing it's goals (that is, it does what it was designed to do).

This is helpful from the perspective of continually improving a program, sustaining the resources that support it, and accomplishing important and valued things. However, these distinctions are not as simple as they might seem.

FOR EXAMPLE: A program that has as its sole purpose to "orient new employees to their job", may assign a mentor to help accomplish that purpose. If, later on, all new employees feel "well oriented", then it could then be said that this is an effective mentoring program . In other words, the program has accomplished what it intended to do, regardless of whether it meets some standard for quality or not.

However, placed against a set of program standards, or compared to another program with additional purposes (such as the improvement of productivity and result), the orientation program seems of less quality and to be less effective than those which accomplish more. This suggests that there is a consensus that such peer support programs as mentoring and coaching should at least address improving productivity and results.

You may not agree. However, that is my position and that is what I am specifically known for helping others to accomplish.

What is "Mentoring"?

THE RANGE OF POSSIBILITIES - Mentoring is an age old method of supporting development which we find in business, education, and all areas of life, with adults and with youth. For our purposes mentoring is for adults in professional settings. With that understanding, mentoring can occur any time during a career, but especially when someone seeks to learn from someone else who has experience in the topic for learning.

This conception of career-long learning means that people in pre-employment education and training, new employees in orientation and training (what I call induction), experienced employees, middle managers, and executives should all have mentors. That list suggests that the goal is for everyone to be learning and working with a mentor. That is exactly what we are trying to define when we use the term "learning organization". The fast-paced, competitive, and global nature of information flow, changes in business and other professional transactions, and new models for decision making all require that we all be actively and continually learning. Such continual learning is not the norm and so, it requires a high level of support to attain and sustain. That is why we all need a mentor.

WHO WOULD BE THE MENTORS FOR ALL THOSE PEOPLE? - Just as we all need to be mentored so we are continually learning, we all also need to BE a mentor. That is necessary because of the high level of support needed to sustain continual, organization-wide learning and growth. It is also needed because the very best way for you to be a learner is for you to be a teacher too! That's right. Any one who has ever had to teach someone else knows THAT is when you really have to know and be able to do that very thing well yourself. We learn a ton by having to teach it to others. That is the second reason why everyone should also be a mentor.

A DEFINITION - Mentoring is three things all at the same time:

It is a series of tasks which effective mentors must do to promote the professional development of others.
It is the intense, trusting, supportive, positive, confidential, low risk relationship within which the partners can try new ways of working and relating, make mistakes, gain feed back, accept challenges, and learn in front of each other.
It is the complex, developmental process which mentors use to support and guide their protege through the necessary career transitions which are a part of learning how to be an effective, reflective professional , and a career-long learner.

How is coaching different from mentoring? Do we need both?

Coaching is the support for learning job-related skills which is provided by a colleague who uses observation, data collection and descriptive, non-judgmental reporting on specific requested behaviors and technical skills. The coach also must use open-ended questions to help the other employee more objectively see their own patterns of behavior and to prompt reflection, goal-setting, planning and action to increase the desired results.

Mentoring is the all-inclusive description of everything done to support protege orientation and professional development.

Coaching is one of the sets of strategies which mentors must learn and effectively use to increase their proteges' job skills. Therefore, we need both to maximize employee learning. Read the next item below for more on this.

How is coaching & mentoring different from supervision?

Supervision is the process of employee development, management, and evaluation which is used by a boss. People can grow as a result of supervision, at least to the point that the possibility of losing one's job is a motivation for growth. Learning in a supervisory situation is often a very high risk circumstance. If an employee shares his weaknesses, or her needs with a supervisor, they risk poor evaluations and dismissal. That is why supervision is often not very effective. The risk taking needed for learning and growth are not likely to occur.

Very progressive managers who are also effective leaders can be somewhat more successful in prompting professional growth in their employees, but leadership requires "followership". Leadership implies an "attracting" or "pulling" influence, and followership suggests that employees are drawn toward something, but have some degree of choice as to whether they follow the leader and whether they grow or not. Anyone who has tried to lead others knows just how true that is. Marilyn Ferguson states it so well. "The gate to change is locked on the inside."

The "High Impact Mentoring and Coaching" for which I advocate, are designed to be very separate from supervision. My approach to mentoring and coaching frames the mentor/coach as a highly effective leader WORTH following. In other words, "High Impact" mentors and coaches are MODELS and MAGNETS of best practices, increased performance, and greater results. People are attracted to them.

Also, this conception includes explicitly understanding that the employee who works with a mentor or a coach must choose:

     1. To defer to the greater experience of a mentor
     2. To learn through others' experiences and mistakes and avoid learning by trial and error
     3. To take the risks of discussing their own weaknesses and needs and of learning in front of someone more senior.

Choosing to act that way takes a very special circumstance and relationship, and that is why mentoring and coaching must NOT overlap evaluation and supervision.
Certainly supervisors MUST be trained and expected to also act as mentors and coaches. Those skills will improve their ability as supervisors and the results of their supervision. However, we ALSO need non-supervisory relationships between mentors/coaches and the employees who are their proteges, if we expect to dramatically accelerate the learning and performance within our organizations.

To what extent can mentoring and coaching really improve employee performance?

Supervision is often a fairly negative approach and it is often not the most effective way of promoting employee development and performance improvement. There is significant research* that suggests that when a supervisor states an expectation for a change in behavior:

As many as 18% of employees do the opposite behavior, and
As many as 37% of employees will do nothing different at all!

That indicates that in YOUR organization, there could be as little as 45% impact as a result of supervision. Not a very effective result. Certainly, these data may be better in some types of organizations and under different, more progressive styles of management and leadership.

Never-the-less, contrast the previous data with a study done by the ASTD** which found that training alone increased manager productivity by 24%. However, when combined with coaching and mentoring support strategies, the study found that productivity was increased by 88%!! That is a significant triple difference!

Clearly a combination of coaching and mentoring as a follow up support system to training is the most powerful strategy for employee performance improvement! That just makes good sense because training provides the knowledge and initial skills development, and mentoring and coaching provide the on-going support & structures for development of skill mastery and implementation of better practices in the employee's daily work.

Do YOU want to increase training implementation and productivity by 88% @!!?

Contact Barry Sweeny for help in starting a "High Impact" Mentoring and Coaching Program" today.

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* Carl Glickman
** American Society for Training and Development

What is "Induction" and why is it needed in business and other non-educational settings?

Basically, induction is the process of joining a profession, learning the specialized knowledge and skills expected of members of that profession, and being accepted as a professional by one's peers.

In some settings, that often means nothing more than signing a contract and then "poof", you are a "professional" employee. However, many feel that this narrow conception lacks some of the richness and complexity that we assign to our professions. If a professional is more than someone whose living is earned by doing a paying job, then induction to a profession must be more than signing up for the career.

Induction can be a longer process requiring up to several years, which is needed to reach some level of competence, worthy of being called a "professional". In other words, when that level of competence is achieved and you are a "professional", your induction process is completed. The trick here is determining what level of competence is enough to be called a "professional". When employee skill certification is involved in the profession, the most reasonable way to determine when a novice employee becomes a professional is when (s)he attains professional certification. That level of certification is earned because they have demonstrated a level of competence based on some set of standards.

Often our standards for professional conduct are not that well defined. That's where an effective induction program can really help. Not only does induction define the transitions and provide the help and guidance to ensure a smooth transition, but effective induction actually accelerates the rate of learning during the transition and affirms and supports the effort needed to make the transition.

Mentors, coaches, managers and supervisors can all help the induction process along. However, as defined earlier, the roles of supervisor and mentor must be played out differently to maximize the employees growth and performance.

What should be the most basic goals of a quality induction program?

Quality induction programs might address many kinds of goals (see below), but there are three fundamental goals I recommend:

Orientation to the work setting, job expectations and responsibilities, the organization, key people, organizational culture and philosophies, and the specific tasks, and expectations of the job assignment.
Induction to the profession, including making a commitment to the organization and the job, and the development of skills necessary to function at least at the performance level of the current typical employees. (Is that good enough?)
Induction into the shared vision for the profession and organization. - Every profession and organization has a vision of what it is trying to become that exceeds what it currently is capable of doing. New employees need to enlist in the journey of continual improvement, the development of the skills which are needed to become the desired employee and team member of the future, and the development of the work environment, culture, and organization which are sought for the future. In other words, an excellent mentoring and induction program must answer the question, "how shall we induct a new person into this organization and profession when we are just in the middle of redefining ourselves and what constitutes excellence?"

It is only when induction and mentoring address all three of these goals that a mentoring program can be expected to increase an organization and employees' performance.

Now, those three essential goals are often implemented through a set of more focused and specific objectives such as the following list. Such specifics are critical to success because they clearly spell out what's expected, what success will look like. That clarity is needed to plan short and long-term actions, monitor progress, and celebrate success in the end. Caution however, is in order. The following list does not suggest that all of these things should be undertaken by every mentoring and induction program. Pick those which are appropriate to the organizational and individual needs your program is designed to address.

Common options for mentoring & induction program goals are:

To speed up the learning of a new job or skill and reduce the stress of transition
To improve employee performance through modeling and coaching by a top performer
To attract new staff in a very competitive recruiting environment
To retain excellent veteran staff in a setting where their contributions are valued
To respond to competitive or contractual forces
To promote the socialization of new staff into the organizational "family", it's values & traditions
To begin to alter the culture and the norms of the organization by creating a collaborative, team-based, results-oriented subculture that promotes daily, job-embedded learning and improvement.

What are the essential components of a quality induction program?

Since induction programs can have a range of goals, the components needed to attain those different goals will vary considerably. However, for a program intent on BOTH helping new employees into the profession AND promoting improved work, productivity and results, I have found that:

Mentoring is the most critical central strategy, but is only one induction strategy

The other induction strategies which are also needed are:

Initial beginning employee orientation sessions and on-going orientation for each new experience before it occurs
Facilitated peer support groups
Training designed specifically for the beginning employee, and then training for all levels of experience
Observation by the protege of expert employees, best done with a mentor who can help the protege debrief and learn to use the quality practices just observed
Professional development, career and project goals, and action plans
A professional development - career portfolio

Information aboutthe best practices for each of these components is available when you work with Barry Sweeny.

Why don't all excellent employees also make excellent mentors?

This is a very real and pervasive phenomena in mentoring today. The answer to this question is probably your biggest opportunity to make your mentoring program a highly valued component of your organization's success.

When I was originally trained as a new staff developer (1985) one of the training components was a review of the "Principles of Adult Learning". In fact, this topic is still an essential aspect of staff development and mentoring today. It is very interesting to me, however, that a comparison of "adult learning" principles and "leadership" principles (another hot topic today) shows that they are really one and the same principles.

Let's consider an example.

Adult learning theory states that we need to respect the experience and prior knowledge of adult learners and build on that strength in designing staff development for them. Seems logical, right? We need to do that for adult learners, because that how adults learn best.

Amazing! The principles of effective leadership suggest that effective leaders do the same thing! They understand that strong leadership requires followership and that such a following is earned, in part by respecting the prior experience of employees.

That is why I assert that if a mentor is effective in working with another adult learner, they are so because they have applied the principles of effective leadership to that process, whether they label it or think of it that way or not.

What's happening here ?! This issue is surfacing everywhere because we are in the midst of redefining what excellence in work and in leadership are. Just as we are redefining roles from just "management" to also include leadership, we need to redefine the kinds of role models our mentors are expected to be. That is why not all "good" employees (by an older definition) make good mentors (by a newer definition). That is also why the opposite IS true. Great mentors are also automatically great employees and leaders. In fact, when I examine truly effective mentoring, I find that it is the same thing as effective leadership as we are coming to know it. This is quite important, as it clearly indicates that learning to be an effective mentor is exactly the practice we need for learning how to become better employees and leaders.

My experience shows this concept to be the hidden potential of effective mentoring and one which very few mentors or mentor leaders understand. Resolving this issue has been a big focus of mine since 1992 and it is what I mean when I use the term "high impact" mentoring. It is teaching mentors HOW to mentor so it promotes performance growth in others.

Why do mentors in some programs seem incapable of providing effective mentoring?

It is true that many mentors do not provide the quality of relationship or guidance we might wish to see provided. It is also true, in a small fraction of mentoring cases, that the mentor should probably not have been selected as a mentor.

Program leaders often must work to improve mentoring but they sometimes have the cause of the problem and the problem mixed up. In other words, you must be sure to get the "cart and the horse" in the right order so you are focused on something that will improve mentoring practices.

The "horse" that must come FIRST is an effective mentoring program.

Once the program is functioning as it should, THEN it's time to start looking for the "cart" of effective mentoring to come along.

In most of the work that I do, I find I must place the success of mentoring (or lack of it) squarely at the "feet" of the mentoring programs in which the mentors work. Being an employee, even a very effective one, does not sufficiently prepare one to be a mentor. Nor can we assume that life prepares one to be an effective mentor. Even though there are some of us who might agree that we were mentored, (by some definition of that word), how would we know how to be an effective mentor if we never had a model of such effectiveness to observe ourselves? This is why I strongly urge mentoring programs to provide a Mentor of Mentors.

The mentoring program needs to improve if it does not clearly define mentor roles and tasks, the mentoring relationship, the mentoring process, and if it does not adequately prepare, support, AND provide excellent models for the mentors to help them accomplish what we ask of them.

What evaluation questions should an existing mentor program be asking itself?

Here are some questions that I frequently find I must ask when people wonder about what they are accomplishing in mentoring. Perhaps these questions will help you to "turn over" the issues involved in induction and mentoring program improvement so you can see them and your own program from a new perspective.

The critical questions to ask are:

Are there clear program purposes and expectations or goals against which to measure current mentor and/or protege performance?
Can mentor and protege performance be measured and supported so that the assessment experience is positive, growth-producing, and yet, ALSO holds participants accountable for effectiveness and results, monitors stewardship for time and other resources, and leads to actual improvement?
Are there program goals which are not evaluated?
Are there program goals which are evaluated and not attained?
How do mentors actually use their mentoring time? Is it enough time? What can they and can't they find the time to do?
Are there mentor roles and tasks defined against which to compare mentors' actual use of time?
Is there program evaluation that gives you feed back about the extent to which the desired purposes are really happening?
To what extent are mentors specifically and explicitly trained in how to use mentoring to transform their work and that of the proteges?
To what extent are mentors explicitly trained in how to increase productivity and results?
To what extent do mentors and proteges create norms in their own relationship which are different from and better than those in the rest of the organization?
To what extent are mentors specifically trained in how to respond positively when nonparticipants in mentoring make comments that are negative or that reflect a misunderstanding of mentoring?
To what extent do mentors know how to help novice employees learn and join into the organization's other improvement initiatives?
To what extent do mentors know how to enlist novice employees in the career-long commitment to be a continual learner?
To what extent is and should mentoring be used as a tool for organizational improvement?
To what extent have mentors discussed and had guidance in how to induct novice employees into a profession that is in the midst of redefining itself?
Have mentors been specifically trained in what it is that mentors are supposed to model, when they themselves feel that they are only beginning to become the kind of employees that we now know we need to be?

Almost always, mentoring programs do not have sufficient data to answer these questions with any certainty. Often we respond that we are too busy working and trying to do mentoring to evaluate what we are doing. Yet, these do seem to be very critical questions that mentoring programs would want to be able to answer, and even to address! Take the time at some point to ask and answer these questions yourself. Better yet, ask Barry Sweeny to help you design a program evaluation process and instruments to give you the data you need to answer these questions.

"Our Mentoring Program is Just Fine. What Else We Should Be Doing?"

When I hear this question, I wonder, " What is the basis for the belief that mentors and the program are doing a fine job? Doing a fine job at what?"

When I ask others questions such as, "How do you know if your program is OK?" the response is usually, "We get very few complaints", or "Everyone seems to think things are fine". My response to these statements may seem to be a bit out of "left field", but I often find it to be very appropriate. I respond, "Shouldn't there be some complaints?"

If there are few concerns and few issues surfacing, then there is good reason to believe that mentoring is only accomplishing a tiny part of its potential. In addition to reducing the stress for novice employees, orientation to a job, etc. mentoring is also one of the best tools there is to promote the creation of better norms of collegiality and collaboration, to press for finding more time for job-embedded staff development, increasing openness to professional feed back, learning the power of seeing oneself through another person's eyes, and creating a relentless focus on improving productivity and results.

If there are no complaints, there are probably few of these things occurring, little challenge to the status quo, little growth, and little professional stretching of roles, relationships, the work culture, etc. If there are few complaints, almost always that is good reason to be concerned about the effectiveness of the mentor program.

If there are reasons to be concerned about the program's effectiveness, then there are also good reasons to be concerned about your ability to sustain the program in the future. Mentoring is invisible to everyone outside the mentoring relationship. That suggests that there are many decision makers in an organization who may have little or no reason to value mentoring, and THAT suggests that these decision makers will someday call into question the value of the program. Think about it. What complaints SHOULD you expect to hear given your program's goals? What strategic initiatives should your program be supporting? Need help thinking about this? Contact Barry Sweeny for help with a program audit.

What are the Financial Benefits of Mentoring? - The Cost of Employee Attrition:

The benefits of mentoring can be shown as financial and non-financial costs. This answer is focused on the former. See the answer below for information on the latter.

There are a number of ways to illustrate that there are many hidden costs already in the budget which are the current costs of NOT providing effective mentoring support to new or middle level employees. In fact, I always find that the cost of employee attrition is MORE than the cost of an effective induction and mentoring program because it can save the organization money which was an existing and hidden cost. When you show this "Return on Investment" (ROI) the program will be perceived as more "cost effective" and "worth it" than the approach of not supporting employees.

Here are three clear examples of how mentoring for employee retention PAYS, and pays BIG TIME.
1. Sandia National Laboratories has concluded that they lose about $200,000 every time a new engineer leaves their lab. Obviously, they have established a mentoring program to ensure they have done all they can to minimize losses like that!

2. The "Emerging Work Force Study" reported in Business Week (3/1/99) stated that 35% of employees who did not receive regular mentoring plan to look for other jobs within the next 12 months. Compare that to those who did have regular mentoring. In that case 1/2 of that number, or only 16% expected to change jobs. Are YOU interested in cutting your cost of employee attrition by half?

3. The American Society for Training and Development conducted a study which found that training alone increased manager productivity by 24%. However, when combined with coaching and mentoring strategies, implementation of training and productivity were increased by 88%!! Do YOU get those kinds of results from your training program?

Some other things to consider that demonstrate clear financial costs are:
What is the cost to the organization when an employee leaves the organization or is not rehired? What you need to identify are your organization's costs for:

New employee recruitment, especially for recruiting the kind of diverse staff a great organization wants
Administrative time for trips to job fairs & colleges, time for screening applications, interviewing, and meetings to make decisions
Newspaper, journal, internet and other ads
Head hunter fees
Technology specialist time for placing recruitment and job info on the organization web site
Brochure and flyer printing, folding, addressing, and mailing
Personnel staff time processing applications, answering phones, dealing with certifications, and other inquiries, etc.
Cost of background and other certification and credentials checks
New employee initial orientation
New employee training during the first year or two? (both training just for new employees and all other organization training)
Reduced productivity and results during the year or two that a new employee is learning?
Reduced productivity and results when a trained employee leaves and a different new employee is hired without that hard won experience and starts over.
Loss of continuity when employees leave or are not rehired because they are not as successful as required?
Supervisor time spent orienting, evaluating, coaching, developing, and supporting new employees who are not retained?

Collect this data and figure it out as a cost for each individual employee. Then compare that to the cost of induction per employee. In many organizations, you will be thousands of dollars ahead by doing the right thing. Also, keep in mind that the money you will save is money you already spend. It is not new money you need to find to support mentoring.

The Non-Financial Benefits in Attracting Quality New Employees -

A very common interview question now days is "Will I be assigned a mentor?" Your organization's ability to answer that question affirmatively AND to describe the quality of support you provide, is a critical lever for attracting and hiring the best employees available. Even when you may not have the best salary to offer, you can compete for the best when you treat professionals like a professional. The power of mentoring and induction programs to improve the ability of an organization to attract the best new employees and to dramatically increase retention of existing employees is very well documented.

Increased attraction is critical because:

It increases the quality of the pool of job applicants.
It increases the number of applicants from which the organization can select.
It reduces the number of new employees dismissed and the cost of that dismissal in lost time and investment.
It creates the high expectation that those who are selected for a position in this organization are exceptional employees. That helps you to establish the norm for expecting exceptional work.
It establishes the norm (even before hiring) that your organization expects and supports collaborative action to improve work and the quality of desired results. Isolated, completely autonomous work is not what you want, so clarify what you do want.

What are the Non-Financial Costs of Employee Attrition?

Decision makers seem most interested in the financial costs related to providing mentoring and induction. However, there are also some very significant "costs" of NOT using mentoring. Mentoring delivers a big impact on the quality of employees and the results they achieve but these "cost savings" are more difficult to demonstrate directly. Never-the-less, these indirect costs need to be clearly presented. Here are some ideas about calculating and demonstrating those often more hidden costs.

What is the cost of lost business when a key employee who had the main relationship with a customer leaves your organization?
When struggling novice employees receive no quality support or guidance they remain focused more on their own needs and day-to-day survival, than on the success of the organization and its mission.What is the cost of this, even when such employees are retained?
What is the cost in productivity, results and loyalty when struggling, unsupported employees adopt coping strategies that are less effective practices? This tragic effect is well documented and the cost in lost productivity and results is immeasurable but significant.
What is the number of veteran employees who leave the organization or who lose their enthusiasm and who could benefit from a new challenge, but who perceive that they have no options for career growth in your organization?
What is the cost to the organization when excellent, gifted employees want to make a greater impact but do not seek it because they have little experience as managers and leaders? Give such employees the opportunity to serve as leaders through service as mentors. When such options do not exist the resources these people can offer and the potential for leadership that is lost is immeasurable.
What is the value of a professional work environment? If mentoring is defined to do so, and mentors are prepared so they can do so, increasing the collaboration and professionalism of employees will positively impact the climate, staff morale, and the working environment.
What is the value gained when junior employees see that more senior staff must keep learning? Mentoring and coaching model the importance of being life-long learners.
What is the value gained when employees work every day at getting better at their work and at achieving better results? Mentoring establishes the norm and expectation in the minds of junior employees that career-long professional growth is an expected part of work.
What is the value gained when organizational leaders can demonstrate their support for individual employee growth and empowerment in positive directions that contribute to organization agendas. Mentoring increases the opportunities for positive leadership by employees.
What is the value of ensuring that new staff are brought into, adopt, and contribute to the initiatives of the organization (strategic plan, goals, etc.) Mentoring is a perfect means of incorporating new staff into the culture and traditions of the organization. Don't be fooled. if you have no formal mentoring program, employees are still being "taught" a work culture and norms. Are those the norms you want employees to adopt?

How can your organization help staff define and attain their career goals?

This question comes from Sreejon Deb, an HRD Manager in Dhaka, Bangladesh.

This has been a tricky issue because many organizations worry that if they build up the capacity of employees, the employees may leave and take that investment with them. When that occurs, organizations sometimes decide that they must wait until an employee demonstrates a commitment to the organization and THEN begin to invest in the person.

That is a critical financial and strategic error. What we have been learning about the factors that cause employee attrition and retention refutes that old argument. Refer to the answers to the question about employee retention (above) for more on this.

Helping employees to set career goals is not simple, but it is WELL worth it. Here's where to start.

1. Helping others set and attain career goals is essentially a process of skill building and attitude adjustment. Your purpose is primarily to give folks a sense of self-efficacy, that they can influence, to an increasing extent, what happens to them during their lives.
2. Define what your organization is willing to do to help folks attain their career goals. Frame it within an understanding of what retains quality employees.
3.Define what the organization cannot do.
4. Establish a mentoring program so that all the following "help" occurs within a long-term, collaborative program. For most people collaboration is practically a requirement for reflection and self-assessment. Without collaboration, the will and time for reflection is overwhelmed by the daily work.
5. Help the employees to define what their ideal career looks like (set a standard for comparison)
6. Help them to create, show them where to find, or provide them with self-assessment tools which compare where they perceive themselves to be relative to where they WANT to be.
7. Help them learn how to set reasonable goals and intermediate objectives to move their skills and knowledge from where they are toward where they want to be.
8. Help them learn how to define action plans that will be reasonable, yet challenging, and that will give them gradual progress toward their goals.
9. Help them identify the resources, knowledge, time, and skills they will need to attain their objectives and ultimate goals.
10. Help them learn how to measure and monitor implementation of their intentions and plans, and then, to celebrate progress when they achieve an intermediate objective. This is the major reason I advocate for career/professional development portfolios.
11. Finally, help them learn how to help others through this same process by becoming a mentor. Do this all along throughout the entire process by periodically having the mentor ask them to answer three questions:

What have you just learned? (Of course, ask this after a mentoring discussion unless it was answered during the discussion.)

What did I do as your mentor that helped you to learn that? (You'd like feed back about the effectiveness of your mentoring, right?)

Is there any way you can use that knowledge to improve your effectiveness? For example, if a protege sees that their own performance is increased as a result of mentoring, perhaps THEY need to become more of a mentor to those with whom they work? (Sometimes the answer to #3 is not clear. It depends on what was learned.)

Mentors are our veteran employees so don't they already know what their proteges need?

I agree this seems so logical. It is true that, to some extent, you can trust your intuition as an employee about what new employees need today. However, I caution you that developing a high impact mentoring or induction program is not always as obvious as it seems. This is largely because the definition of what's expected in work and of leadership have changed so dramatically. As a result, our goals for mentoring and the actual practice of mentoring have changed as well.

That is why providing high impact mentoring is not just common sense and is not well known. If it were, our employees and organizations would already be as productive as we want! ARE they?

Why should YOU hire Barry as a consultant & trainer to help you?

HOW IS BARRY UNIQUE?
I have worked with hundreds of induction and mentoring programs and trained thousands of mentors. I have found that most peoples' intuition and common sense are NOT SUFFICIENT to guide them in developing mentoring programs, especially those programs which are expected to have a high impact on work quality, productivity, and results. If those are YOUR purposes, I am not just the best person with whom you can work, I may be the ONLY person who can help you attain that kind of program and those kinds of results.

I have specialized in mentoring and induction of new employees since 1985 and have tried to become an expert in all aspects of it, from program development and improvement, evaluation, training, to problem solving. I have especially worked to understand what makes a mentoring and induction program achieve major results in improved quality of work, productivity, and results. That knowledge base is the focus of all my current training and consultation.

Since this work is my only means of support, I pay very close attention to my competitors, I study their web sites, attend their presentations, and I read their books and articles. I make sure that what I provide is unique in the field. I do this to ensure that what I do makes a difference. To make a difference, I believe you must BE different. Believe me, what I have to offer you IS UNIQUE.

WHY CAN'T OTHERS HELP YOU?
I know that many people can provide you with some level of help, often because they have a mentor program in their own organization. Sometimes just seeing how others do something may be all the help you need. However, the problem with this approach is that almost all of these people know a small segment of the knowledge base about employee mentoring and induction because they have to focus all their time on work or managing programs and people. They do not have the time to gain expertise based on a broad experience base, across many kinds of settings, yet this is exactly what I have done.

They can help you, but that help is often narrowly focused, and sometimes, even misleading. Whether their help is what YOU need depends entirely on what your program's purposes are. If your purposes include transforming work and improving performance and results, you need to start accessing my expertise. For the customized help you need, you need me to consult with you. That's why I KNOW that at some point you and I will probably need to work together in some depth.

I do not mean to sound haughty or arrogant. In fact, I am not that way. I just have worked so much in mentoring that I know what else is available out there in terms of resources, web sites, books, consultants, trainers, program models, etc. etc. Lots of it is good, but I have created and I have provided the kind of resources and services I do EXACTLY BECAUSE it is NOT already available anywhere else! It is UNIQUE!

Blessings on you and your vital work on behalf of employees, teams, and organizations.
Remember, I am the "Mentor of Mentors". Let me know when I can help any further. sweenyb@sbcglobal.net