FORMAL OR
INFORMAL MENTORING?
© 2008, Barry Sweeny
INDEX:
"Why do we need a formal mentoring program?
We are professionals and we always help each other. That's a part
of our job!"
Perhaps you have heard similar comments from colleagues when
discussing mentoring. Perhaps you have wondered about the need
for a formal mentoring program yourself. Is establishing a formal
mentoring program really a better way to support new staff? Is
a formal program needed to attain your organization's goals?
Take a few minutes to review what I have learned after 20 years
of mentoring experience with hundreds of different programs across
North America in every imaginable setting. When you've finished
reading this paper, I think you will agree that a formal approach
to mentoring often makes good sense. In addition to discussing
the need for a more formal mentoring program, I will also share
some strategies for working and talking with folks about the benefits
of a more formal program, since some may not see the need.
GOALS MUST GUIDE
PROGRAM APPROACH
Decisions about the degree of formality in mentoring need to
be based on the goals that your mentor program targets. Some goals
will require a very formal set of mentor roles, training and expectations
if the program's goals ares to be accomplished. Other goals can
be achieved without formal structures.
- Generally, the more your program has expectations
for improving results, the more formal your program needs to
be.
- If your organization is satisfied with
the status quo and NOT undergoing rapid change, then
your program goals are probably to transmit the organization's
culture and expectations & to support an accelerated learning
curve for the protege. In that case:
- Mentoring will primarily be an effort to
clone your better performers by asking them to share what
they know and to help build the protege's skills and job
knowledge.
- Mentors will simply orient new people to
the culture, traditions, expectations, and procedures of
their new position.
- Mentors will need few guidelines, little
training, and little or no monitoring or support themselves,
since they already know what you want the protege to learn.
- If your organization is NOT satisfied
with the status quo and IS undergoing rapid change,
then your program goals probably include BOTH:
- Transmission of the positive aspects of
the organization's culture and expectations & support
of an accelerated learning curve for the protege.
- Helping the protege develop into a continuous,
reflective, collaborative learner who sees the need for
people and organizations to constantly seek improved processes
and results.
- In this case:
- Mentors need to be models, BOTH of
excellence at work, and of the struggle to always become
better.
- Mentors need to transmit the positive
aspects of the culture, but the expectations taught
the protege should also include traits like openness
to feed back and learning from others and the need for
us all to support the professional growth of others.
- Mentors will need significant training
and on-going support because they will be challenged
to acknowledge their need to improve and to learn in
front of others, grow each day, and model work and relationship
behaviors that they themselves are still learning.
TWO LEVELS OF MENTORING:
MENTORS & GUIDES
The latter approach described above is more intensive an experience
because the expectations are that the mentor will help the protege
to grow professionally. Facilitating another adult's professional
development is not easy. It is highly individual and complex.
I would recommend reserving the term "mentor" for just
such an intense relationship.
Of course, the implication of this last statement is that any
form of support which does not have the expectation for professional
growth, should NOT be called mentoring. When the experience is
generally less intense, there will be less of a need for formal
training, formal support after training, and formal monitoring
for results. Instead of calling that less intense experience "mentoring",
I suggest calling it a "guide" or a "buddy"
role. Reserve mentoring for something very specific and special.
I will use these two terms to maintain these distinctions.
"GUIDING"
NEW, BUT EXPERIENCED STAFF
Many organizations hire people with prior experience so they
may contribute more to the organization than a novice, less experienced
employee possibly could. Employees with prior experience already
know many of the questions they will need to ask and they will
not be shy about asking them. They expect to learn AND they know
what it is that they need to learn. If the organization does not
provide them with a guide, buddy, or a mentor, they may seek one
out on their own, or at least make connections with other employees
and ask the questions for which they need answers.
If your basic purpose is to help new but experienced staff become
acclimated to their new roles and work setting then your main
concern may NOT be to help them grow professionally. You may assume
that they were hired because of what they already know professionally.
In this case, an informal approach to guiding may be sufficient.
You can usually rely on the good judgment of the experienced employees
to provide needed orientation to new employees on:
- Access to resources
- Making connections with the staff and leadership
- Orientation to the site and the organization
- Organizational culture, traditions, and procedures.
This type of help is most likely to be available
in organizations where there is a departmental or team structure
or where the leader has stated clear expectations for a supportive
response from staff. Such an informal approach is often all that's
needed for new staff hired with experience.
MENTORING FOR NOVICE
EMPLOYEES
My experience and research have convinced me that beginning staff
(with no previous experience) will rarely find the level of assistance
that they need for success in an informal atmosphere. This is
also true for current, experienced employees who desire advancement
or are are seen as having potential for greater responsibility,
but in areas with which they have little or no prior experience.
Such novices have far too much to learn in a very short time period.
They will go in to the new job expecting that they have a lot
to learn, but are suddenly overwhelmed with the sheer volume of
tasks and responsibilities they must carry and with the necessity
to learn these fast and demonstrate mastery right away.
Beginning employees often do NOT know the questions they need
to ask and, as a result they may not seek the help they need.
When problems start, novices often internalize their struggles
and begin to feel that they may never master the job or last through
a career with such levels of stress. Like a child who blames itself
for a divorce of the parents, unsupported novice employees begin
to question their own adequacy and choices. Friendly assurances
that "Don't worry, it will get better" are not assuring
to them. Further, if novices have found the work culture isolating,
if they feel unsupported, and do not have access to others like
themselves, they will often leave when expectations increase for
them to produce greater results. Although there are other causes
too, this is a key reason for new employee attrition and high
turnover rates, a very costly situation for any organization.
There is a mountain of evidence that beginning employee needs
are not met through "traditional" informal mentoring.
If your goals for mentoring are:
- To provide beginning staff with the support
they need until they gain self confidence,
- To provide models of effective practice and
continuous growth so as to become effective very quickly,
- To provide in-depth assistance in mastering
complex work,
... then a more formal approach to mentoring IS
an absolute necessity. Finally, when you do provide more intensive
support for novices to master their work and meet expectations,
their results will improve and their retention rate will too.
INTENTIONAL OR ACCIDENTAL
?
Whether it is formally planned or the informal response of helpful
professionals, a major result of mentoring is the passing of values
and beliefs, the organizational culture, from one generation of
employees to the next. Typically, informal mentoring does not
establish collaboration as the norm, but merely transmits the
current culture, the status quo. If this were not true then most
organizations would have already changed to more collaborative,
supportive cultures long ago. Developing, improving organizations
must find ways to be more intentional about what values and cultural
norms are that are passed to novice staff. Carrying out such intentions
will require a formal approach to mentoring.
If you have decided that a goal of your mentoring program is
to cause changes in the culture of your system, you are probably
looking to transform worker roles, to create more collaborative
relationships, and to establish new norms for continual professional
learning. Such norms and relationships will only evolve in organizations
when employees have extended opportunities to practice and refine
the skills of collaborative learning. Formal mentoring is the
natural tool to accomplish this goal because it offers the emotionally
safe learning environment that is needed for risk taking in the
pursuit of improvement and because it offers an accountability
relationship.
OTHER PROBLEMS
Relying on the veteran employees to provide informal mentoring
sets you up for a series of problems which cannot be solved except
through more formal mentoring. Consider these as additional reasons
to establish a formal approach in mentoring for your target staff:
1. If you don't know who is mentoring whom,
how can you monitor it's effectiveness and provide on-going
support or training for the mentors? How would you know what
kinds of support are needed and when offering such support is
appropriate?
2. If you don't know the extent to which a person
is being mentored how will you know which staff members may
need additional assistance? How will you know the appropriate
kinds of assistance to provide? Research is very clear that
less experienced staff members will often not risk asking leaders
for help if they are also the employee evaluator.
3. If you do not know who is fulfilling a mentor
role, how can you provide recognition to the mentor?
Each organization that conducts mentoring places
itself somewhere along a continuum from informal to formal in
approach. The decision about the extent of program formality is
usually based on the level of commitment the organization is willing
to bring to the program and on the benefits that the organization
expects to capture through the program. If you are clear about
your mentoring program's goals, you should be able to weigh the
degree of commitment and formality required to gain the benefits
expected.
