Workplace mentoring – Can we really make formal the informal?

Informal mentoring relationships have successfully nurtured and developed top talent and shaped corporate leadership for years. Today, as the ‘war on talent’ gains pace, a resurgence of interest in harnessing in-house talent through mentoring has given rise to an increase in formal workplace mentoring programmes, once again giving modern organisations a leading edge.

Formal mentoring programmes now make a significant contribution to organisational talent management through diverse areas of practice such as leadership development; identification of high potential employees; retention of diverse, skilled and talented individuals; as a support mechanism for new and diverse employees; the provision of access to company leaders; succession planning; and employee skill development.

How can organisations in Sri Lanka gain the benefits from mentoring in their own ‘war on talent’?

In an interview with Sunil Dissanayake, the award-wining Sri Lankan HR specialist, he explained: “Most organisations (in Sri Lanka) do talk about mentoring, but when they implement it, do so in bits and pieces.”

According to Dissanayake, a better understanding of the mentoring process and greater appreciation for the expertise required for its correct implementation would bring significant benefits to Sri Lanka when used as a part of the organisational talent development programme.

There are however others who think that mentoring might not even work in our nation, as there is a general perception that senior colleagues often view their subordinates or juniors as threats to their own positions. According to one senior director in a leading insurance company, mentoring in Sri Lanka, though greatly needed, is sadly “less encouraged, less practiced and above all, less acknowledged” as a form of talent development in the workplace.

There is even confusion regarding what actually constitutes mentoring. A young Sri Lankan recently explained to me that “a lot of mentors working without proper guidelines and tend to bore their mentees with what they like”.

Clearly speaking from experience, he went on to describe how such a stance results in the eventual pushing of people into situations of resistance or total rejection of the original proposition, however inherently valuable.

Thus, when it comes to mentoring as a formal talent development strategy, many discrepancies in perception and in practice have to be ironed out before real benefits can be gained it seems.

What is mentoring?

The Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development (CIPD) offers some clarity by defining mentoring as a “technique” for allowing the “transmission of knowledge, skills and experience, in a supportive, safe and challenging environment”.

CIPD points out that mentoring relationships, within which such ‘techniques’ can be implemented, work best when the partners move beyond the directive approach, as described above, of the senior colleague telling how it is to the junior partner. According to CIPD, the most effective mentoring relationships are those which are seen as learning opportunities for both parties.

The formal mentoring programme template

Dissanayake, Head of Group HR at Hayleys, based on extensive local and international experience, described to me the general template for establishing a formal mentoring system in the workplace:

1) The identification of mentors from a pool of high senior performers: Via the performance management system, with approximately three or more years of service in the company and who are perceived to be on the fast track and respected. They should be effective communicators with ability to provide feedback, counsel (not so much coaching) and listen as key attributes.

2) Mentor training: Share with them the concept of ‘mentoring’ to include the ‘do’s and the don’ts’ at mentoring sessions. This is usually a two-hour talk and interactive discussion at least two weeks prior to the commencement of the sessions.

3) Structured mentoring format: Develop a uniform structure to be followed by all the mentors at the mentoring sessions whilst adopting their own styles for discussion and content of discussion. Document the key points of discussion at the end of each session and also the action points to be completed (if any) by both the mentor and the mentee. The next session begins with the review of this document.

4) Mentee selection and allocation: The mentees are selected and attached to each mentor. When attaching, it is usually a max of five mentees per mentor (for group mentoring sessions) or one or two mentees per mentor for individual mentoring sessions.

Can we really make formal an informal arrangement?

Whilst there is evidence of how informal mentoring can be hugely successful in developing individuals, is it reasonable to assume that we can actually standardise and formalise a system where senior and more experienced members of an organisation are led in to prescribed interactions with junior staff, to facilitate effective learning?

To grasp this concept, we must separate the ‘mentoring relationship’ into its two obvious components: ‘mentoring,’ which as CIPD stresses is a formal ‘technique,’ and the ‘relationship,’ which is the human connection, rapport or bond between the individuals.

For effective learning or knowledge transfer, both components are clearly needed, and this is encapsulated in an observation made by the young Sri Lankan MD, who described an effective mentoring programme as one that is exciting, meaningful and delivered with genuine care and compassion.

What is the mentoring relationship?

Workplace psychologists who have studied effective mentoring programmes describe the mentoring relationship as being distinctively different in character from other workplace relationships.

•    First, mentoring is a two-person relationship between a more experienced person (mentor) and a less experienced person (mentee or protégé).

•    Second, the relationship is one of mutuality, though also asymmetrical. In other words, both parties may benefit from the relationship, although the focus is on the development of the mentee.

•    Third, the mentoring relationship is dynamic. The relational process and outcomes associated with mentoring changes over time.

It’s important to know that the mentoring relationship differs from the typical supervisor-subordinate relationship in a number of ways:

•    the mentor and mentee do not have to necessarily work together;

•    the mentor usually does not have any formal or reward power over the mentee;

•    the mentor may be several levels higher in the organisation and in a different line of responsibility than the mentee.



Contd. on p12

(Dr. C. Dissanayake is a chartered occupational psychologist, working in Europe and Asia, on optimising human performance at work. Daily FT readers are invited to send in work and performance related questions to address in future columns to [email protected].)



Workplace mentoring – Can we really make formal the informal?

What are the ideal mentee and mentor characteristics?

Clearly, as with all relationships, the individuals that make up the relationship will have an impact on outcome. In mentoring relationships, psychologists have found that mentors find the following characteristics appealing in their mentees:

• Openness and willingness to learn

• Trustworthy

• Strong work ethic

• Achievement oriented

• High ability and potential

• Willingness to accept and act upon constructive feed-back

• Interpersonally skilled    

Research into identifying the effective organisational mentor has shown the following mentor characteristics to be of significance:

• Empathy

• Technical knowledge

• Ability to role-model behaviours that the organisation finds valuable

• Professional credibility

• Confidence

• Commitment

• Listening and communication skills

• Enjoying helping others

• Patience

• Ability to read and understand others

• Credible and trustworthy

• Interpersonal skills/ability to work well with others

• Ability to teach, provide direction and guidance

• Willing to share knowledge

How can we best match mentors with mentees?

Traditional (informal) mentoring relied on mentors and mentees selecting each other. This still happens to quite an extent, where mentees are proactive in their own career progression and simply asks the mentor of their choice for professional help and support.

However, in a more formal mentoring programme, where mentors and mentees are matched by a third party, the success of the programme does depend quite heavily on the matching process. Whilst there is not much research looking in to this matching process, there is some evidence of certain matching factors being influential in the outcome of the overall success of the mentoring programme.



Some suggestions for mentor-mentee matching:



•    Base the matching process on the programme’s objectives. For example, if the objective is to broaden business perspective, then pair with a mentor from another department.

•    Base the matching process on the company’s culture. For example, if the company culture values diversity, then pairing across cultures, gender, etc. would make sense.

•    Pair mentors and mentees in close physical proximity.

•    Pair mentors and mentees not in direct line of supervisory relationship.

•    Base matching decision on multiple factors. For example, pairing based on goals, interests, skills, abilities, personality, etc., rather than only the very obvious.

•    Ensure rationality and consistency of matching decisions; i.e. fairness and free from bias and potential conflicts.

•    Include some level of ‘similarity’ for even ‘dissimilar’ mentor-mentee relationships.

Conclusion

It is clear that for mentoring to work, the relationship must be right. When mentoring fails, it is usually because the relationship has faltered along the way, or never took off to begin with. Thus, if a workplace mentoring programme is to work, effective mentor recruitment is vital to its success. Research reveals that there are three primary reasons why mentors mentor:

1. The desire to benefit the organisation and its members;

2. Intrinsic satisfaction;

3. The desire to enhance one’s own standing within the organisation.

When recruiting for good mentors within an organisation, it would be useful to communicate the potential benefits of the programme in these terms, as the mentoring program within an organisation will only be good as the people making it happen.

I leave the last words to one young, enthusiastic and enterprising Sri Lankan senior manager who explained to me that “mentoring is an exciting area of talent management, which can be a roaring success when done effectively and with passion!”