Mentorship is a personal developmental relationship in which a more experienced or more knowledgeable person helps to direct a less experienced or less knowledgeable person. The mentor may be older or younger, but have a certain area of know-how. It is a learning and development partnership between someone with great experience and someone who wants to learn. The person in receipt of mentorship may be referred to as a protégé (male), a protégée (female) and an apprentice or, in recent years, a mentee.
Mentoring techniques
The focus of mentoring is to develop the whole person and so the techniques are broad and require knowledge in order to be used suitably. A 1995 study of mentoring techniques most frequently used in business found that the five most commonly used techniques among mentors were:
- Accompanying: making a commitment in a caring way, which involves taking part in the learning process side-by-side with the learner.
- Sowing: mentors are often faced with the difficulty of preparing the learner before he or she is ready to change. Sowing is essential when you know that what you say may not be understood or even acceptable to learners at first but will make sense and have value to the mentee when the situation requires it.
- Catalyzing: when change reaches a critical level of pressure, learning can rise. Here the mentor chooses to plunge the learner right into change, provoking a different way of thinking, a change in identity or a re-ordering of values.
- Showing: this is making something comprehensible, or using your own example to show a skill or activity. You show what you are talking about, you show by your own behavior.
- Harvesting: here the mentor focuses on “picking the ripe fruit”: it is ideally used to create awareness of what was learned by experience and to draw conclusions. The key questions here are: “What have you learned?”, “How useful is it?”
Several techniques may be used by mentors in accordance to the situation and the mindset of the mentee, and the techniques used in modern organizations can be found in ancient education systems. Leadership authors Jim Kouzes and Barry Z. Posner advise mentors to look for “teachable moments” in order to “expand or realize the potentialities of the people in the organizations they lead” and underline that personal credibility is as important to quality mentoring as skill.
- Multiple Mentors: A new and upcoming trend is having multiple mentors. This can be advantageous because we can all learn from each other. Having more than one mentor will increase the knowledge of the person being mentored. There are different mentors who may have different strengths.
- Profession or Trade Mentor: This is someone who is already in the trade/profession you are entering. They know the trends, important changes and new practices that you should know to stay at the top of your game. A mentor like this would be someone you can talk about ideas regarding the field, and also be introduced to key and chief people that you should know.
- Industry Mentor: This is someone who doesn’t just concentrate on the profession. This mentor will be able to give knowledge on the industry as a whole. Whether it be research, development or key changes in the industry, you need to know.
- Organization Mentor: Politics in the organizations are always changing. It is important to be aware about the values, strategies and products that are within your company, but also when these things are changing. An organization mentor can clarify missions and strategies, and give clarity when needed.
- Work Process Mentor: This mentor can speed quickly over the bumps, and cut through the needless work. This mentor can explain the ‘ins and outs’ of projects, day to day tasks, and remove pointless things that may be currently going on in your work day. This mentor can help to get things done quickly and capably.
- Technology Mentor: This is an up-and-coming, incredibly important position. Technology has been increasingly improving, and becoming more a part of day to day transactions within companies. In order to perform your best, you must know how to get things done on the newest technology. A technology mentor will help with technical breakdowns, counsel on systems that may work better than what you’re currently using, and coach you through new technology and how to best use it and apply it into your daily life.
Benefits of Mentorship
The benefits of Mentorship is especially illustrated in the workplace, there are many benefits to developing a mentorship program for new, and current employees.
- Career Development: Mentoring employees gives the chance to align organizational goals to personal career goals. It gives employees the ability to progress professionally. This partnership gives employees a feeling of engagement, which leads to better retention rates.
- High Potential Mentoring: Top talent in the workplace tends to be problematic to retain. These employees have incredible prospective to make great things happen for the company, and for themselves. With a mentor program, top talent employees can be directed into leadership positions, and give them new engagement for new roles that will make them stay longer.
- Diversity Mentoring: One of the top ways to innovate is by bringing in new ideas. Mentors can allow diverse employees to share ideas, knowledge, and experience to expand and innovate into the company. This also brings cultural awareness and a value of other cultures into the workplace.
- Reverse Mentoring: This not so obvious benefit of mentoring is incredibly significant. The younger generations can assist the older generations to expand and grow towards current trends. Everyone has something to bring to the table, this creates a two way street within companies where younger employees can see the larger picture, and senior employees can see things from a different point of view.
- Knowledge Transfer Mentoring: Employees must have a certain set of skills in order to achieve the tasks at hand. Mentoring is a great method to help employees get organized, and give them access to an expert that can give feedback, and help answer questions that they may not know where to find answers to.
Corporate Mentorship Programs
Corporate mentoring programs are used by mid to large organizations to expand the development and retention of employees. Mentoring programs may be formal or informal and serve a variety of specific objectives including adaption of new employees, skills development, reduce attrition and diversity enhancement.
Formal mentoring programs: Formal mentoring programs offer employees the chance to participate in an organized mentoring program. Participants join as a mentor, protégé or both by completing a mentoring profile. Mentoring profiles are completed as written forms on paper or computer or filled out via an online form as part of an online mentoring system. Protégés are matched with a mentor by a program administrator or a mentoring committee, or may self-select a mentor depending on the program format. Informal mentoring takes places in organizations that develop a culture of mentoring but do not have formal mentoring in place. These companies may provide some tools and resources and motivate managers to accept mentoring applications from more junior members of the organization.
New-hire mentorship: New-hire mentoring programs are set up to help new employees adapt more quickly into the organization. In new-hire mentoring programs, newcomers to the organization (protégés) are paired with more experienced people (mentors) in order to attain information, good examples, and advice as they progress. It has been claimed that new employees who are paired with a mentor are twice as likely to remain in their job as those who do not receive mentorship. These mentoring relationships provide motivation for career growth, and benefit both the mentor and the protégé. For example, the mentor gets to show leadership by giving back and perhaps being motivated about their own work. The organization receives an employee that is being gradually introduced and molded by the organization’s culture and operation because they have been under the mentorship of an experienced member. The person being mentored networks, becomes integrated easier in an organization, gets experience and advice along the way. It has been said that “joining a mentor’s network and developing one’s own is central to advancement” and this is possibly why those mentored tend to perform well in their organizations.
High-potential mentorship: High-potential mentoring programs are used to train up-and-coming employees identified to have the potential to move up into leadership roles. Here the employee (protégé) is paired with a senior level leader (or leaders) for a series of career-coaching interactions. These programs tend to be smaller than more common mentoring programs and mentees must be selected to participate. A similar method of high-potential mentoring is to consign the employee in a series of jobs in disparate areas of an organization, all for small periods of time, in expectation of learning the organization’s structure, culture, and methods. A mentor does not have to be a manager or supervisor to help the process.