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Do You Need
Full or Part Time Mentoring?
© 2008, Barry
Sweeny
Generally, at the start of a new mentoring program,
people do not consider this question. In fact, even the most
mature mentoring programs never seriously consider this question.
However, the possibilities and reasons for such consideration are
many and everyone should consider it.
Part Time Mentoring:
Typically, mentoring is one more "duty as assigned"
which is simply added on top of all the work of a mentor's existing,
full time responsibilities. When that happens, the time for mentoring
is either borrowed from other tasks, which are then dealt with
after hours, or the time for mentoring is pretty minimal, and
so are the resulting mentoring experience and benefits for the
protege.
Eventually, programs that expect greater results from mentoring
must face this question and realize they must provide the daily,
job-embedded professional time needed to adequately carry out
existing responsibilities and to effectively mentor someone. Solutions
range from reducing the mentor's own work load, simplifying the
challenges of that work, paying a stipend for the after-hours
work time required to allow mentoring during the day, and other
creative adjustments.
Full Time Mentoring:
It may seem to be too costly to even consider full time mentoring,
yet many organizations have found ways to do exactly that. When
they have, these organizations have captured many of the results
they expected AND they have discovered a ton of unanticipated
benefits from full time mentors. In fact, the trend is beginning
to move more and more toward this solution.
Almost always and in every kind of setting and organization,
there are multiple initiatives underway to drive improvements
in employee performance and bottom line results. Here are some
examples:
- Professional development for existing staff
to improve productivity and bottom line results also includes
work with improvement initiatives, improved materials, assessment
of progress, professional learning and performance standards,
employee evaluation, professional growth in work slills and
strategies and in content knowledge, issues of initial and on-going
certification, and alignment of all of these.
- Leadership development of middle managers
includes self, supervisor, and 360 degree peer or direct report
assessments of competencies, professional growth goals and plans,
issues of certification sometimes apply, and other strategic
initiatives for team building, skills development, and content
training.
- New employee orientation and mentoring
can include elements of orientation to the job, organization,
department, site, etc.. issues of character development, role
modeling, skill building, academic remediation and growth, personal
development and self confidence, career planning and decision
making, even leadership development.
Each one of these individual but critical initiatives
often must be addressed, and each is probably crying out for more
time to address it adequately. The question here really is, how
many initiatives must there be before an organization will decide
that more time is needed if performance and results are be to
improved? When THAT happens, consider full time mentoring to support
all those strategic initiatives.
Finding Resources to Support
Dedicated Mentoring Time
This complex mix of initiatives has a direct impact on how mentoring
is defined and what is expected of the mentoring experience. However,
this very complexity ALSO creates some terrific opportunities.
For example:
- A narrowly thinking organization may struggle
to assemble the resources it needs to support adequate mentoring
time for its proteges
- A flexibly thinking organization can see that
they have resources for several improvement initiatives which
can, in part, be used to support training, support groups, and
a host of other development activities AND mentoring.
For example, new employee mentoring and induction
can be partially supported by technology, academic, and other
professional growth initiatives which have money because the mentors
will spend a good share of their time helping new employees with
those same specific areas of need.
In other words, full time mentoring can be
supported by discovering ways in which mentoring can serve
the multiple existing agendas of the organization, in fact,
the very areas of need for growth by the protégés
in that organization.
The Factors to Consider
- Full or Part Time Mentoring?
| Part
Time Mentor & Full Work Load |
Part
Time Mentoring & Partial Work Release |
Full
Time Mentoring |
• Problems finding substitutes
to release mentors from work & cover for them when they
are gone to help the protégé
• Mentor or protégé release is disruptive
of work schedules and work flow
• Few opportunities to coach for performance and results
improvement
• Limited time for all mentor tasks means that some
needed activities are not done
• Minimal protégé and mentor professional
growth occurs |
• Reduced work load for
mentor (and protégé?)
• Minimizes cost & disruption to mentor's own work
• Increased opportunity to coach on the job & improve
performance & results
• Mentors can give time needed to accelerate protégé
growth and appreciate that the organization recognizes this
need.
• A good balance between cost & results is achieved |
• Most expensive option
• Mentors develop high impact mentoring skills so mentoring
effectiveness soars
• Greatest improvement in employee performance and results
• Eliminates disruptions to mentor's own work &
the problems of "covering" that work
• Grows positive leaders who are adept at helping others
improve their results |
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