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Mind the Gap: can mentoring power up your employees and your business?

Developing staff is an ongoing challenge for businesses that seek to recruit and retain talent.

Training is appropriate for learning new knowledge and skills from scratch, but most staff development is about supporting individuals and teams to grow and fulfil their potential. The aim is for employees to continue to add value to support staff retention over time.

Mentoring as a development tool

In seeking to fill the gap of real staff development (rather than ticking boxes) many organisations consider mentoring relationships between employees as a great untapped resource. This can be beneficial as the investment in staff has already been made, which is a key consideration in these cost-conscious times. However, unlocking this resource requires careful consideration about what kind of mentoring is required and why. If you get it right, then mentoring can be a powerful and cost-effective change agent.

It is often assumed that mentoring is about someone with experience supporting the development of a younger or less experienced person; someone in the earlier stages of their career.

However, different forms of mentoring have been developed for different uses.

1. Sponsorship mentoring – this initiative is closest to traditional mentoring. Sponsorship mentoring involves a senior person advocating for a junior colleague, opening doors and supporting career progression. Investigating PwC’s Breakthrough programme for women leaders, Swati Singh and Sita Vanka remind us that sponsorship mentoring can reinforce traditional barriers to success, unless it has a well-structured strategy with explicit goals, role clarity for sponsors and sponsees, alongside transparent monitoring and evaluation. With these elements in place, Singh and Vanka found a triple win from sponsorship at PwC:

• women achieved higher career goals and leadership positions;
• the organisation benefited from more diverse and engaged talent at mid-to-senior levels; and
• sponsors were developed and engaged by the experience too.

2. Developmental mentoring – this approach has closer ties to coaching in that it is focused on the mentee’s learning and development. Mentors may take a coaching approach, perhaps asking more questions than giving advice, and acting as a critical friend as the mentee takes on new career challenges. If this is the case, then developmental mentors need good quality coaching skills, which generally involves selection, training, and evaluation.

3. Reverse mentoring – sometimes referred to as ‘mentoring up’ is an alternative form of developmental mentoring that develops intergenerational understanding or supports minoritised groups. In this case, it may be a junior member of staff who helps a senior colleague to appreciate different perspectives within the workplace.

Too often, mentoring schemes are put in place without a clear vision, any up-front investment, training or ongoing support. Unsurprisingly, when these factors aren’t considered, the scheme can fail to make an impact.

Considerations when creating a mentoring scheme

Think about your context when establishing a mentoring scheme. Your organisation may instigate mentoring to support new employees entering the profession, such as teaching or clinical roles, in which case there is likely to be infrastructure relating to professional standards. Other organisations can learn from these professions in recognising the goal focus of such initiatives.

Questions to ask yourself may include:

• what is this mentoring scheme for in our context?
• what outcomes do we want to create?
• what kind of mentoring does this suggest?

Mentoring may involve role modelling, planning, goal setting, personal support, and professional development, all of which have similarities with coaching. Notice there is often a power differential in mentoring relationships compared with the relationship of equals in coaching. So mentoring training needs to take this into account and discuss how mentors and mentees deal with power differences in an open and respectful way.

As Simon Western, a thought leader on the relationship between leadership, coaching and mentoring, notes in his book ‘Coaching and Mentoring: A Critical Text’, “Whilst coaching has become a real buzz word and has grown hugely, mentoring perhaps is an ‘unsung hero’ in the field of development”.

All strategic leaders should take a good look at the potential of mentoring within their organisations, as it can lead to deep change in some of the stickiest challenges we face, such as creating equity and diversity across staff groups.

Tools to support you

There are many tools that can support leaders to select and implement the best mentoring approach as part your organisational development strategy. For example, through our Executive Education programmes for senior leaders, we teach methods for understanding the impact of complexity on mentoring schemes in your context and how to set a mentoring strategy using a value chain framework.

If you are interested in developing your leadership practice, you can find out more about the programmes for senior leaders on the Newcastle Univeristy Business School website.

About the author

Dr Amy Stabler is Senior Lecturer in Leadership Development and Coaching and Mentoring at Newcastle University Business School. Amy teaches on the Strategic Leadership MSc programme. Prior to moving into academia in 2016, Amy worked as an internal and external consultant in organisational learning strategy, leadership and management development and creating coaching cultures for senior teams and organisations in both UK and international business contexts. This included clients such as IBM, Kraft Foods plc, and Working Links, as well as many organisational facets of the NHS.

This article is republished from the Newcastle University Business School website. Read the original article.

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by Newcastle University Business School .