- Explain why mentoring isn't a waste of time.
When Selzer was assigned her first mentor, she thought it would be a waste of time. Fortunately, she needed to participate in order to obtain her graduate degree, and she soon learned to see the relationship as invaluable. "I started noticing, wow, before I had a mentor, I talked about not being a procrastinator or I talked about changing certain things, but I never really did it," she says. "The accountability was key."
Even people like Liz, who ended up devoting her career to mentoring, can find it hard to see the initial value in adding another appointment to their schedules for mentoring sessions. "I think one of the main first steps is just normalizing your fear or your frustration or anticipation of [awkwardness]," she says. Although she was forced to start her first mentoring relationship, she doesn't suggest making your program mandatory. Instead, explain to people why they should choose to participate."You have to help them see the vision of why it matters."
Have leaders in your company make it clear that they think the program is important, and make sure that they participate in the program themselves as well as encourage other people to participate. Find people in your company who are willing to share the mentoring experiences that have made a positive impact on their careers.
"At a minimum, you really need to manage expectations with these programs," Allen says. "Because the word 'mentoring' has a lot of connotations associated with it. People might think, 'this is the person who is going to get me promoted, get me this, get me that,' so it's really important to identify to participants what the objectives are and what to expect, as well as not to expect, from it."
Mentoring pairs might choose to structure their time differently depending on their goals and preferences. But it's helpful to at least make a suggestion for how the mentoring pairs can get the most out of their relationship.
Zachary suggests mentoring relationships follow this cycle: preparation, establishing agreements, enabling, and closure. In the preparation phase, the mentor and mentee have a conversation about their expectations, confidentiality, and the boundaries of the relationship. In the establishing agreements phase, the mentor helps the mentee work out a plan, with clear tasks, for achieving his or her goal. The enabling phase is when the work happens. The mentor supports the mentee in following his or her plan as well as provides feedback and accountability. "They provide a mirror so that the person can see where they are and what the possibilities are," Zachary says.
Closure is a planned ending to the relationship. It's more than lunch. "You use it as an opportunity to reflect on your learning, what is it you've learned about yourself as a mentor or a mentee, what have you learned about yourself through this process, and how do you take what you've learned and use it to raise the bar and take it to the next level," Zachary says. You can also use it as an opportunity to celebrate success.
Some specific tasks you can suggest mentoring pairs put in a plan to achieve a goal are journaling, role-playing, or having mentors watch mentees at whatever skill they are trying to improve, such as leading a meeting, and giving their feedback.
Dig Deeper: The Truth About Mentoring
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Make sure everyone in your organization knows that mentoring is going on. Preferably, the leaders of the organization should play a large role in this. "You need to make sure that senior executives within the organization are on-board and are part of the communications that go out, that they are endorsing the program, and hopefully are participating in the program as well: they're serving as mentors, making sure everybody knows, hey this is something that's important to the company," Allen says.
- Embed mentoring in your culture.
If your program ends with a day of training and doesn't have clear support from important people in your company, the reaction you might get, according to Zachary is, "well here comes another HR initiative." Start your program gradually. "It's not just a spray and pray kind of thing where you go in and you teach mentoring once," she says.
When you find a goal, find a way to measure whether or not your program is making progress toward it. Ask mentors and mentees how their experiences went. Look at productivity and measurable improvement in the areas that your program was targeting.
Dig Deeper: Mentees on Mentors
Resources
A guide to preparing for a mentoring relationship: http://www.abanet.org/lpm/lpt/articles/mgt08042.html
The Mentoring Group's guide to effective mentoring: http://www.mentoringgroup.com/html/articles/mentee_41.htm
Want to look beyond your own company for a mentoring experience? SCORE, a resource partner with the U.S. Small Business Administration, will help you get set up with a mentor for free: http://www.score.org/index.html
