The Growing Power of Mentoring.
THE GROWING POWER OF MENTORING
Suddenly, the word mentoring is on everyone's lips. In the United States, organisations in all sectors are breathing new life into a concept that had been seen as a management fad of the 80s. In the UK, the Government has called a working party to co-ordinate mentoring in a wide variety of community schemes, including a new venture to provide thousands of schoolchildren with personal mentors.
In Eire, thousands of difficult to employ young people are being coaxed into the working environment through an ambitious mentoring scheme. In Scandinavia and Western Europe, companies are experimenting with mentoring for the benefit of a wide variety of employees, from new recruits to people approaching retirement.
At the World Bank in Washington, mentoring is addressing the intercultural tensions inherent in an organisation of highly talented, culturally diverse people. Wherever you look around the world, mentoring is becoming part of the solution to issues of community or business development.
In Australia, employers in both the public and private sectors have launched innovative programmes. Among them, the Education Board of the State of Victoria, which has achieved great results in opening up senior positions in education to women.
Executives across the country have suddenly found they can't do without a mentor to guide and challenge them on how they do their jobs.
What's the reason for this sudden upsurge of interest and activity in a concept that has been around for a good 20 years? Several drivers have come together.
Among them:
Increasing emphasis on self development
For a variety of mostly good reasons, organisations are attempting to place the responsibility for managing career and personal development squarely on the shoulders of the individual employee.
In theory, at least, this benefits both parties. The employee is empowered to take more control of what happens to them in a career that is less and less likely to be with just one or two employers, and the organisation is able to concentrate its HR resources on creating opportunities for learning rather than sending people on courses.
This broad consensus is an integral part of the new psychological contract between employees and employer.
The return of people management responsibilities to line managers
The history of industrial relations in the-mid 20th century is one of increasing transfer of power from the line manager to Human Resources. That trend is well and truly in reverse as managers are encouraged to take on greater and greater responsibility for developing the talent in their teams.
A major problem for many companies is that the managers have operated so long under the previous rules that they have neither the skills nor the commitment for this time-consuming activity.
Flatter hierarchies rely more on relationships
As organisations become simpler on paper, they become more complex in reality. Today's large organisation typically has half the number of layers of its counterpart 15 years ago. New structures - less stable, less visible and often much more powerful - emerge between and across the layers.
The most common forms are networks (low in shared purpose, but typically wide and diffuse in membership) and virtual teams (high in shared purpose, but relatively narrow and well-defined in membership)
TAKE IN DIAGRAM
To navigate through the complexities of the informal organisation, people need help. In a recent study of high performing companies, we identified that one of the reasons CEOs appointed from outside so often failed was that - unless the company was in crisis - they entered with very little understanding of the informal structures.
Unable to make things happen through subtle tweaks of the informal organisation, they resorted to extensive changes through the formal systems. In effect, this is akin to hiring a TV repairman equipped only with a hammer and nails.
The same principles apply at all levels. To fit into the organisation, to feel valued and to contribute rapidly, people need to understand the collective thinking and develop their own networks of influence and information. Mentoring has proven its ability to do this over and over again. For example, one recent study from the United States shows that new insurance agents with mentors outperform those without by 20% in their first year.
The need to retain scarce talent
The CEO of ABB was recently reported as saying that the critical issue for businesses in the developed world over the next few years will not be knowledge creation, but knowledge retention.
Controlling the leakage of talent is becoming increasingly difficult as career opportunities become more important to employees than loyalty to a current employer. Again, the track record of mentoring in helping with these issues is good.
At Smithkline Beecham, the finance department had a turnover of staff last year of over 25% not out of the ordinary ...
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The need to retain scarce talent
The CEO of ABB was recently reported as saying that the critical issue for businesses in the developed world over the next few years will not be knowledge creation, but knowledge retention.
Controlling the leakage of talent is becoming increasingly difficult as career opportunities become more important to employees than loyalty to a current employer. Again, the track record of mentoring in helping with these issues is good.
At Smithkline Beecham, the finance department had a turnover of staff last year of over 25% not out of the ordinary for the sector and the function. Yet only 2% of its mentored staff left.
Another US study recently examined people's intention to quit their current job over the course of the coming year. Of the population in general, 35% had itchy feet, but only 16% of mentees.
Emphasis on creating learning cultures
The notion of the learning culture has galvanised organisations into re-examining the balance between task activities and learning activities. One of the simplest and most effective ways of knowledge sharing is via developmental alliances - of which mentoring is the most powerful genre.
The development of more organisationally effective processes of formal mentoring
The debate over the virtues of informal verus formal (organised) mentoring has been going on for some years.
Several US studies have suggested that formal mentoring (where the organisation seeks to manage the process of selection and matching to a greater or lesser degree) is less effective than informal. However, these results have not been replicated in Europe, where a very different model of mentoring has evolved.
Indeed, the evidence suggests that informal mentoring tends to lead to less effective relationships, from a developmental point of view, and reinforces problems of gender and racial disadvantage.(Middle manager mentors tend to choose as mentees people who remind them of themselves.)
The consensus within European organisations is that effective mentoring schemes provide a formal framework, within which mentors and mentees can develop a relationship that is at the same time both informal and purposeful.
The traditional US model of mentoring is heavily based on the power of the mentor, and is a hands-on relationship, in which the mentor acts on behalf of the protégé - for example, by putting their name forward for challenging assignments. In effect, the role is a combination of guru and advocate.
Among the many problems with this approach is that it is more career-focused than developmentally focussed (so may have fewer benefits for the organisation), that it promotes only one-way learning, and that it encourages cloning
The European model, which is also emerging in North America, places the emphasis on development and avoids any form of sponsorship or advocacy. It aims to increase the mentee's self-reliance and encourages learning by both parties.
Almost all of the current innovative and impactful mentoring schemes are built around this model, which fits more easily into organisation's desires to make people more responsible for their own learning and career management.
The dynamics of mentoring
Of course, mentoring has been around a long time. Every primer on the subject refers back to good old Mentor, the wise counsellor with whom Odysseus left his young son Telemachus. (What they don't usually say is that Mentor himself was actually pretty poor at the job - it was left to the goddess Diana to fulfil the role, sometimes by impersonating Mentor.
Diana exhibited a mixture of nurturing and challenging behaviours that typify both masculine and feminine management styles.)
This balance of stretching and nurturing is increasingly observed to be essential to performance management, as, for example, studies by Microsoft of its most and least effective line managers have shown.
It is also one of the two dimensions that define the one-to-one helping relationship in general. Effective mentors move between stretching (challenging) and nurturing (supporting) in tune with the needs of the mentee.
The other key defining dimension is directiveness - who is driving the relationship and the discussions within it? Within traditional US sponsorship style mentoring, the mentor is clearly in charge, most of the time. But within developmental mentoring, while management of the process passes back and forth between mentor and mentee, ownership of the learning rests firmly with the mentee.
One way of defining mentoring, therefore, is by its boundaries. The behaviours a mentor adopts draw upon a variety of other roles. Coaching, for example, is a relatively directive means of stretching someone (the coach is in charge). But mentors share with coaches key behaviours such as being a critical friend, showing the mentee how to do something, and challenging their beliefs and assumptions.
Similarly, mentors share with workplace counsellors a concern to help people plan their development and career paths, to listen, empathise and be a sounding board. They do not, however, adopt some of the other activities of a counsellor, such as behavioural therapy - even if they have the competence to do so - because that is out of role.
A wild garden of applications
The following are some of the most innovative schemes from the files of The European Mentoring Centre, which maintains an extensive library and annual research conference on mentoring.
A programme for young ex-offenders in a deprived area of Birmingham with very high levels of recidivism used local community volunteers as mentors. The mentors, many of whom were long-term unemployed, were tasked with helping the young people rebuild their lives. After two years, none of the 38 young people on the scheme had re-offended. Moreover, the mentors had gained so much personal confidence, that most of them had also found permanent work.
Nestle in Norway uses retired employees as mentors to help people nearing retirement make the transition.
ASDA, a large UK-based supermarket chain, provides mentors for new superstore managers six months before their new job and six months after.
Proctor and Gamble in the US had a major retention problem with women in junior and middle management in its marketing department. At first, the company planned a standard "glass ceiling" programme, where senior executives would "adopt" more junior women to show them how to behave. Then someone pointed out that the problem was more with the organisation than with the women and that the culture of the organisation was defined and sustained by these same executives. So the roles were reversed - the women became the mentors. The results have been dramatic. Not only has the retention problem been resolved, but the executives have become switched on to a wide variety of diversity issues.
British American Tobacco's graduate recruits around the world receive a coach (usually their immediate line manager) and a mentor. The two sources of support are very useful in helping the graduates settle in and stay.
Shell in Brunei has used mentoring to speed up indigenisation - the gradual replacement of expatriates by local staff.
Masons, a large solicitors' firm in the City of London, uses mentoring to manage one of the great mysteries of the legal world - how to make the transition to partner.
AN-Post, the Irish Post Office, is experimenting with a scheme for high potential women, in which the mentors are drawn from the supply chain - major customers and suppliers of the organisation.
Amidst all the diversity, there are many common features of these schemes. They all have passionate champions at an operational level and usually less passionate but fully committed senior management sponsors. They all have a preoccupation with the quality of the relationships, so they are keen to ensure that all parties receive sufficient training - mentors, mentees and line managers. They all have dedicated co-ordinators, who manage the background formalities, troubleshoot as required and ensure the scheme is sustained by providing continuing support for the mentors.
Coaching v mentoring
There is a lot of confusion between mentoring and other roles, not least because it overlaps with them. In re-launching a large-scale mentoring scheme for small businesses in Eire, for example, it has been necessary to define very clearly the differences between mentoring, coaching, consulting and being a non-executive director. However, most confusion seems to occur within organisations between mentoring and coaching.
Some of the most important distinctions are:
Coaching Mentoring
Generally by the line manager Off-line
or other members of the team Focused on capability
Focused on skills and performance Goals set by the learner
Sets goals for or with the learner
Core skills of a mentor
In general terms, mentors require only two basic skills - the ability to shut up and listen, restraining the urge to give of their experience until it is clear how they can best guide the mentee; and the ability to adjust how they respond appropriately according to the mentee's needs and circumstances. They are, at least, unlikely to do much damage if they can apply these two behaviours consistently. (A US author, Lu Ann Darling, talks eloquently of "toxic mentors", all of whom would fail these two basic requirements.)
To be really effective, however, mentors need to develop a wider portfolio of competencies. The in-company mentor can be expected to have some ability in most of these; career mentors (people who take up the role on a professional, external basis) typically need all of them at a fairly high level. Illustrated in the diagram below, these include:
* Self-awareness - sufficient understanding of their own strengths and weaknesses to draw effectively on their own experience.
* Behavioural awareness - understanding how and why people behave as they do; predicting the consequences of specific behaviours and actions.
* Business or professional savvy - difficult to measure, but essential in helping someone else understand the politics and informal systems of an organisation.
* Sense of proportion - sometimes seen as just a good sense of humour, but really an ability to place the organisation's goals and culture in the wider social context.
* Communication competence - being able to explain ideas clearly and to listen actively.
* Conceptual modelling - using models to help the learner understand the dynamics of situation.
* Interest in developing others - often demonstrated by how they work with their own direct reports.
* Relationship management - the ability to build and maintain rapport.
* Goal clarity - focusing on achievable goals; helping the learner sort out what they want to achieve and why.
Keys to designing an effective mentoring scheme
A high proportion - perhaps 40% in all - of mentoring schemes run into the ground after a few years. The reasons are various, but usually come down to a lack of continuing support and a failure to integrate mentoring into the mainstream of development activities. As long as mentoring is confined to benefiting only a small elite, it will be particularly vulnerable to changes of policy or interest.
Effective mentoring schemes all follow these basic rules:
They begin with considerable pragmatic planning, which looks at the needs and wishes of the target group(s) and the development climate, in which the relationship will be planted. An engineering multinational, keen to introduce a "glass ceiling" scheme for its women managers, learned when it consulted them that this would be seen as patronising. What they wanted was one open to all, but which women were particularly encouraged to join. The women perceived that creating a gender ghetto would only increase their problems.
Some initial research upfront to identify which aspects of the development climate will help or hinder the building and using of mentoring relationships almost always provides valuable data for scheme design. In some cases, the research has led to radical changes in operational systems or career ladders, when previously unrecognised barriers have been identified.
They set clear goals for the scheme and the measures, by which progress towards those goals will be assessed. The nature of these goals can range from hard data - such as employee retention or numbers of promotions - to soft data, such as whether participants in community mentoring have grown in personal confidence and have achieved attitude shifts. Some companies have linked goals to a competency framework, using the improvement in annual performance rating of each mentee as a measure of success.
Smithkline Beecham, for example, follows best practice guidelines very closely, using up to 10 measures spread between relationship processes and outcomes, and scheme processes and outcomes. This spread enables it to use measures in three key ways: to troubleshoot as the relationships progress, to build in continuous improvement and to demonstrate to senior management that the investment of time and resources is well justified.
They match carefully, against both generic criteria and the needs and wishes of the mentee. They avoid the many problems of a free-for-all approach, where people find their own mentors, but leave the selection in the hands of the mentee by guiding him or her towards a short-list of suitable mentors.
They take care in matching to manage the hierarchy gap between mentor and mentee. Too small and there is often insufficient difference in perspective and experience for much learning to occur; too big and it is difficult for mentor and mentee to relate to the issues each faces.
They train mentors and mentees thoroughly at the beginning of the relationship and provide developmental support at intervals thereafter. In environments, where it is not possible to get people away for two days at a time, they break the training into shorter modules. People who don't attend the training don't get assigned mentees (or mentors). They also educate line managers, to capture their active support for the mentoring relationship.
Some companies now run continuous personal development clinics for mentors, for a few hours every two to three months. These are facilitated by an outsider, who helps the mentors help each other.
They expand mentoring beyond the initial target group(s) as fast as the expanding pool of mentors will allow. In organisations undergoing rapid cultural change, managers representing the new values may be in short supply, so the process may initially be slow. But the mentees over a period become the new supply of mentors and it is not uncommon to see a sudden explosion of mentoring as volunteers become available.
The bottom line
Mentoring is rapidly maturing as a mainstream developmental activity. Already, companies in the UK are finding that they cannot recruit the quality of graduates (and particularly post-graduates) they want, if they do not have a mentoring scheme. While the success rate and impact of mentoring is very high initially, organisations need to work at it to ensure it maintains a head of steam. International experience is providing a great deal of good practice, on which organisations can draw in designing, implementing and sustaining their mentoring schemes.
Module DM48 Development Teams and Individuals Submitted by Mr.D McColl
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