Dynamic Mentoring
It was my privilege recently to provide program development and mentor/coaching training assistance to the premier federal law enforcement and security agency. This organization is on-boarding new, largely younger employees into its workforce and is committed to achieving the highest productivity possible within the shortest possible time. For that reason, it required a blend of employee-centered mentoring with organization-centered coaching. The coaching component of the program consisted of an extensive checklist of reading, assignments, and visitations intended to build job-specific competencies. The mentoring component of the program is oriented towards building effectiveness in serving as an expert witness in federal court, public speaking ability, teamwork skills and serving a wide spectrum of other developmental needs presented by the recently hired employee.
As I concluded this important assignment, it occurred to me that this agency is engaged in “dynamic mentoring.” What’s dynamic about it? At least a half-dozen dimensions, but here are three:
First of all, it is dynamic in the sense that crime today is always changing, particularly crimes involving the abuse of technology and/or financial institutions and instruments. Some crimes are variations on old themes, but others are unprecedented. For that reason, the technical competencies developed through coaching efforts are always in motion just to keep up with the criminals who are becoming increasingly skilled in their R&D (research and development) exploits.
Second, the older, more established employees have insights and skills to contribute to the more recently hired. However, the younger employees bring “tricks of the trade” learned through their recent formal education and/or prior jobs. There’s something for everyone in this mentoring equation.
The third dynamism is that employee-centered mentoring and organization-centered coaching feed on one another in an interactive, synergistic manner. As the employee grows in understanding and competency, areas for mentoring attention that were once invisible become relevant and find their way onto the mentoring agenda.
The program involves structured visits to headquarters and to other agency locations. Pair-ups of mentors with mentees are decided by senior management based on a variety of considerations. Rotational assignments to provide first-hand experience in, e.g., executing search warrants, etc. build both competence and confidence.
In a world where employee development is given short shrift too often, it is exciting and encouraging to see things being done right!
Do-It-Yourself Mentoring Briefing: Ready for You to Deliver!
One of the joys of delivering our mentoring training programs to both mentors and mentees in both public and private organizations is to see the enthusiasm that mentees have for achieving professional growth. Similarly, the satisfaction that mentors enjoy from helping someone develop and become more competitive in this difficult labor market is yet another pleasure.
There are important benefits for the employing organization as well as benefits for both mentees and mentors. These benefits do not come for free, however. There are costs associated with standing up a mentoring program, sustaining it, and expanding it over time.
Today’s organizations run lean, hard-pressed by constraints of time and money. In some cases, on-the-ground supervisors will view mentoring as a frill, a distraction from getting today’s “real work” accomplished, as if preparing tomorrow’s workforce isn’t a legitimate part of today’s real work. That said, there are costs associated with mounting a mentoring program. The costs are not huge, but they are real and they must be factored as part of the business case.
We have received calls from people in numerous organizations who are in the early stages of considering a mentoring program. These folks are often in the midst of making a business case for mentoring that top leadership will consider.
Typically speaking, part of the process is to provide leadership with a briefing on mentoring. We believe that it is essential that everyone’s consideration of mentoring proceed on the basis of a solid foundation. That’s why we developed The Effective Mentoring Briefing. We have even put this briefing together in a way that permits the user to customize it for the number of minutes the briefing has been allocated for a leadership meeting.
The briefing provides a solid foundation that defines mentoring and distinguishes it from coaching. It spells out typical benefits for the organization, mentor and mentee and also provides example costs that may be incurred. The briefing describes how mentoring works and what an effective mentor does as part of an organized mentoring program.
We’ve done the work of developing this briefing for you based on our experience in working with numerous organizations and in training thousands of mentors and mentees over the past decade. The briefing provides a factual, unbiased presentation concerning mentoring. It doesn’t try to “sell” mentoring. On the other hand, we hope that it persuades contemporary leaders to use mentoring as a tool to cultivate tomorrow’s leadership today.
For more information, please see detailed product information.
Toyota Breakdown Linked to Decline of Mentoring
The Washington Post reported on February 13, 2010, that the “Toyota Way” was derailed in part because the company had thinned its ranks of expert mentors. The article quoted Susan Helper, a professor of economics at Case Western University in Cleveland, as follows: “So much of what made the company work well was that each manager was personally trained by a mentor who himself had long experience with the company. When the fast expansion came, Toyota was very short of senior managers who were ready to become mentors.”
Whether you are dealing with explosive growth, constricted staffing, or simply the changing of the guard as a new generation replenishes the ranks, the Toyota story is instructive: Mentoring is not an HR frill to be dismissed lightly. Indeed, as the Toyota example demonstrates, sufficient high-quality mentoring is the make-or-break difference in ensuring continuity of quality and productivity as well as pivotal values and norms. Those who have brought success to an enterprise can and should pass the torch to those who will bring future success after the mentors have moved on. Effective mentoring is the passing of this torch of success–a torch that is not passed by accident or raw luck.
It takes several years to ramp up a quality mentoring program with an adequate stable of capable mentors. This cannot be done overnight. No mentoring “miracle-grow” exists. Fancy electronics won’t get it done either.
Mentoring is a long-term investment intended to yield long-term benefits and as such, it conflicts with day-to-day operating imperatives. Long-range initiatives are trumped regularly by the emergencies of the day. Those of us in the training business often hear “there is no good time for training.” This logic suggests that there is no good time for mentoring either. That said, ask Toyota if there is a good time for failing.
Once your mentoring program has developed momentum, it is essential that it be maintained adequately. This means ensuring that new mentors are cultivated and that legacy mentors are refreshed periodically. In addition, once target mentor-mentee ratios have been established for the workforce, an enterprise must ensure that these ratios are maintained properly.
We don’t know if quantitative and qualitative indicators of mentoring were Balanced Scorecard dashboard items at Toyota, but we surmise that Toyota now wishes that it had paid more attention to the maintenance of a mentoring program that was once the envy of its industry. “Short-Term Bottom-Line Fast Buck Freddy” companies don’t and won’t make the long-term investment that quality mentoring requires, but “Built to Last” companies will.
To ignore mentoring is to ignore the long-term interests of your stakeholders. Today’s choices surrounding mentoring are your strategic future. The strategic future is now.
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