You’ve spent good money attracting, hiring and training great employees. But what happens when your skilled workers retire or move on to other pursuits? Does all your investment go down the drain?
Maybe not. You can capture the skills and knowledge critical to your bottom line by having your top performers pass along their expertise to other members of your staff. It’s done through mentoring.
On the Move
Securing your training investment is especially critical today, given the mobility of the nation’s workforce. Because people are more likely than ever to work for multiple employers over the course of their careers, your own staff is always subject to unexpected change.
“You could lose one of your top people tomorrow,” warned Randy Goruk, president of The Randall
Wade Group, Scottsdale, Arizona (leadersedge360.com). “You need to have someone ready to step up to the plate.”
In addition to keeping valuable expertise from going out the door, mentoring can help your business in other ways. First, it is likely to increase your overall retention rate. People will be more loyal to your organization when they see you take an interest in their professional development. Second, as employees become more skilled, you will more likely promote from within. That’s one more contributor to loyalty.
Third, mentoring can help when new faces come aboard. “Mentoring by seasoned employees can help new hires avoid making costly mistakes and more quickly acquire technical and non-technical skills needed to become valuable players,” said Lois P. Frankel, president of Corporate Coaching International, Pasadena, California (corporatecoachingintl.com).
Finally, mentoring can result in a more productive work environment. “Businesses with a mentoring program often end up with more solid succession plans, as well as better procedures for workplace problem solving and conflict resolution,” confirmed, Lauran Star, a business consultant based in Bedford, New Hampshire. (lauranstar.com).
Develop Skills
Two workplace trends are making mentoring programs more critical. The first is the retirement of the baby boomers. When older people leave your workforce, they will take along their considerable expertise unless you have taken steps to capture it.
Second, more job applicants are becoming aware of their need to improve their skills to maintain a competitive edge. As a result, they are looking to join organizations that will help them learn and grow in their business skills.
“Today’s applicants are telling prospective employers they want personal development in their work life,” commented Richard Avdoian, an employee development consultant in metropolitan St. Louis (richardavdoian.com). “It’s all part of a changing business environment: As people move more rapidly between employers, they are looking ahead to their next stop.”
This trend is visible as early as the job interview. “Gone are the days when interviewers would ask more questions than candidates,” admitted Avdoian. “Now applicants are leading the way by asking for key information such as: ‘What does your business do to enhance and develop employees’ skills? Does it offer additional education? Training?’”
Think Business
Does mentoring sound a lot like coaching? It’s true that both initiatives attempt to improve employee performance. But they differ in their details. Confusing the two can be costly.
“Coaching is much more proactive than mentoring,” explained Alan Weiss, president of Summit Consulting Group, East Greenwich, Rhode Island. (alanweiss.com). “Very often a coach will reach out to an individual exhibiting a specific workplace development need. Maybe the person’s sales or evaluation skills need improvement.” Once that skill is improved, the coaching initiative is over.
Mentoring, in contrast, is a longer-term effort intended to help individuals engage more successfully with their workplace environment. It often serves to assist a mentee’s climb of the career ladder. As such, it tends to promote a spirit of loyalty in the business organization.
Coaching and mentoring make different demands on the person being trained. “A coach will ask questions such as ‘What do you think your next step is?’” commented Star. “The idea is to empower the coached individuals to come up with their own solutions. A mentor, on the other hand, might make a more direct statement, such as ‘This is what you need to do.’”
Select the right candidates for each initiative. “If you try to mentor someone who needs coaching, they will not learn,” suggested Star. And the opposite holds true. “If you try to coach someone who needs mentoring, their needs will not be met and they will feel frustrated. Their job satisfaction will deteriorate, and they won’t stick around.”
Teach Success
So, what specific skills should your mentoring program teach? Start with the ways that company cultures can differ. “Businesses are like playing fields,” admitted Frankel. “There are rules, boundaries and strategies that have to be employed if players — in this case employees — want to be successful. Most often these are not things that are written down, but rather things that people learn from observing and working closely with colleagues.”
Not knowing the rules of the game can be dangerous. New employees — and even some seasoned ones — might not realize they are going out of bounds until their careers or reputations have been damaged.
Examples? Weiss offers one: “A mentee might ask ‘Is it appropriate for me to bring up a certain topic at the next employee meeting?’” Getting the right guidance on such a matter is important, said Weiss. “If you fail to speak up about a critical matter at the meeting you might be regarded as unobservant. But if you make the wrong statement, or the right statement at the wrong time, people may feel you lack sensitivity to the work environment.”
Here are some other common mentoring topics:
• How should a newly promoted individual deal with old friends who have suddenly become subordinates? “While new supervisors cannot hang out with their former peers, sometimes it is not clear what interactions they should have,” recognized Weiss. “A mentor can help the newly promoted individual sidestep the old familiarities without being rude.”
• Who are the influential players in each department? What is the best way to approach each, given their personal management styles?
• How are decisions made in the organization? Is there a common process by which new ideas are vetted? What is the best way to introduce a new idea without ruffling feathers?
• How, and with whom, should a mentee network to get ahead? What players have the ears of the top people?
• What steps should a person take to improve his or her professional stance? Earn a higher degree? Teach workshops? Solve a workplace problem? Maybe mentor others?
Share Expertise
So, what makes a great mentor? Before anything else, the individual must have expertise worth sharing. “Great mentors have something to offer because they have achieved success in their careers,” recommended Goruk. “They are willing to share their bad as well as their good work life experiences, pointing out the mistakes that they and others have made.”
Such openness requires self-confidence. “A mentor must be able to trust people,” warned Star. “Not everyone has that capability. Some people feel threatened by the act of sharing their talent, because they feel they might be replaced. And a mentor may also be afraid of losing their edge if the mentee should communicate the shared information with others.”
Great mentors avoid grinding a personal philosophical axe that might warp the learning process. “A good mentor is completely objective about the company and is not trying to push a personal agenda,” explained Weiss. “He or she looks out for the best interests of the mentee, in a way that is consistent with the company’s strategy.”
Finally, great mentors not only are willing to perform the required work but also have the time to do so. And they must have a genuine interest in a mentee’s success.
Are mentors born or made? “Both,” said Weiss. “While you may be able to easily find some people with native mentoring skills, there’s nothing wrong with providing some training —even just a half day’s discussion covering the ground rules.”
A good mentor need not be in the mentee’s chain of command. “Although a boss can be a mentor, it’s often more effective when someone who is not in a position to judge performance or make decisions about continued employment provides feedback and guidance,” advised Frankel.
