Overview of Mentoring

Overview of Mentoring

The GAINMORE™ Mentoring Advantage

The GAINMORE™ Mentoring Advantage


Foreword

What is mentoring?

In spite of it’s origins in Greek culture some 3,000 years ago, mentoring is a buzzword today where life and work is high-tech but not high-touch.

When we use the word “mentoring”, a dozen or more different images race across our minds. It seems that we might not all be on the same page. It will serve us well then, to offer a working definition that brings us all together in our understanding. Here, I have tweaked a definition original from Paul Stanley and Robert Clifton and later by Dr. Tim Elmore:

Mentoring is a working relational experience through which one person empowers and enables another by sharing their wisdom and resources.

Why we need to be mentoring and be mentored

We all recognize the need for leaders to have accountability. The rash of failures of leadership between 1995 and 2005 could have been prevented with acceptance of accountability. Mentoring, certainly the kind of mentoring we advocate and teach, would have prevented the failures in leadership and given that needed accountability.

As leaders, we all want to finish well. And all leaders would embrace mentoring if they saw it as an enhancement for their growth. Mentoring can reduce the likelihood of leadership failure, provide accountability and empower the responsive, potential leader.


What makes a mentor?

Often, when people are introduced to mentoring, they consider the “ideal mentor” – a perfect role model who can do almost anything. Few exist. The myth about mentoring is that it requires a “super-gifted” guru, oozing wisdom. A sage. A Moses or Socrates figure. There may be a handful alive today. Instead, we put mentoring in the practical sphere. Anyone can mentor.

Yes, that’s right. Anyone. Including you. Provided you have learned something from your past and are willing to share with others what you have learned.

Why we need mentoring now?

Mentoring is as old as civilization itself. Consider Socrates and Plato, Plato and Aristotle. Moses and Joshua. Confucius and Yan Hui. But today, the learning process has shifted from a relational model of personal development to computers, classrooms, books and videos. The relational connection between the person with knowledge and experience giving to the receiver has weakened or is non-existent.

This leaves people relationally deficient and narrow-minded. The resurgence of mentoring in virtually every walk of life is a response to this discovery. “Please mentor me” is the often unspoken cry expressed by many today.

The only surprising thing about mentoring is that so few organizations and institutions insist on it as a vital, efficient and powerful part of its people development. In 1978, Harvard Business Review ran a cover article entitled “Everyone Who Makes It Has a Mentor” (Harvard Business Review, 56, July/August 1978, 89-101.) In this article, based on a study of the Top Fortune 500 executives in America, every single one of these CEO’s said they had a mentor. More than 30 years later… do you have a mentor? Are you one?

We all need mentors

When we’re young, we need mentors because we lack experience and, when we’re older, because we fall into ruts.

Do you want to impress or impact people?

1.       Impressing followers can be done with little or no relationship. All we need is the will to be involved and to leave a memorable impression on followers. It can be done at a distance – a concert, a convention, a conference, heck you can impress on YouTube or Facebook, even a tweet.

2.       Influencing followers can be done with some relationship. Influence requires the will of the follower to be involved. The follower must want to be influenced by the leader and this usually involves a connection between leader and follower.

3.       Impacting followers can only be done through an intimate relationship. Both the wills of the leader and follower need to be involved. They agree to accountability and growth usually “up-close and personal”.

It is time to shift paradigms. Especially for our younger future leaders. They don’t want a “sage on the stage”, they want a “guide on the side”.

As leaders who desire to impact others we need to follow Dawson Trotman’s axiom, “More time with less people equals greater impact for everyone.”

To truly impact people, mentoring cannot be done in large groups. In fact, even small groups often don’t create good mentoring. Of course, you can inadvertently mentor someone in the course of an ordinary day when you share something with a group and “speaks into the life” of one particular person.

My challenge to you is to become a true mentor to the people you serve.

So the questions “is mentoring really necessary?” can only be answered when we decide how much we really want to impact others.


Is Mentoring the same as coaching?

The purists would argue that they are very different. Most suggest that Coaching is performance based and the coach needs to be experienced in the function or technical skills. Whilst mentoring is, in theory, a less structured approach to whole life development.

I consider coaching to be about the coach prompting (often through questions) the coachee to find their own solutions. Mentoring is prompting (through my stories and sharing my experience) the mentee to learn from this and adapt it to their situation.

Personally, I find the distinctions and separations unhelpful. If I have the pleasure to work with someone in their development, sometimes I coach, sometimes I mentor, sometimes I teach, sometimes I counsel, heck, sometimes I just listen. After all, coaching can, and often does include ‘life’ coaching, and mentoring is often about a specific task and improving performance. That’s why I gave up the argument and called myself a ‘leadership caddy’. The skillsets a mentor needs in the developmental relationship are the same. If it would help to share a personal experience for one particular person, whilst another needs you to show them exactly what you mean, whilst another just needs to be asked the right question to get them to think it through for themselves… use whatever works and don’t get bogged down by defining how it works.

Mentoring versus managing

Although many managers display ‘mentoring behaviours’, there are marked differences between being a mentor in a formal programme and a manager / line manager. A manager focuses his / her attention on the objectives of the organization and assigns tasks, conducts reviews and recommends salary increases and promotions. In the presence of a manager, employees tend to show only their strengths and hide their weaknesses.

A mentor on the other hand focuses on developing the mentee both at a personal and at a professional level. A mentor does not carry performance reviews, nor does he / she discusses salary increases, promotions or conduct performance reviews. This creates a safe environment for the mentee who feels free to discuss his / her issues openly without worrying about any negative consequences on their employment.

Don’t the interventions cross each other’s boundaries?

They certainly can do so. There are some instances where a mentor’s role in particular, can cross into areas often considered to be part of the line manager’s role. Indeed, in a mature organization, an individual’s line manager would also be one of their mentors.

A distinction that often helps is:

·         A coach is focused on developing the individual’s capability in their job

·         A mentor is focused on the individual’s personal development and their future career and life.

·         The line manager, on the other hand is focussed on their performance of given tasks within a job role or team and their career path in the team.

Can a line manager be a mentor or coach to one of their staff?

A line manager can (and should be encouraged to) mentor and coach their staff. The difficulty is creating a ‘safe environment’ that reassures the staff about any possible negative consequences on their employment. Some organizations prefer to separate the roles to make this easier, and it is good to gain perspective from others.

What if the mentor and line manager have different opinions or give conflicting advice?

Yes it does happen. It’s then up to the staff/mentee to decide what is in their best interests.

Isn’t that hard to do?

Yes. Who said this was easy?