In This Issue:
What’s New: Mentoring programs
Upcoming Workshops
Effective Tips: The Art and Science of Mentoring
Ask Tom: Are Behavior Styles Stereotyping?
Feedback
What’s New
We’ll Work with You to Develop a Strong Mentoring Program
Do you have an established mentoring program at your place of work? If you want to nurture strong leaders, if you want to attract excellent team members, and if you want to jumpstart new employees into your culture and their job, a well done mentorship program should be an essential part of your business strategy.
When mentoring is done well it is both an art and a science. Partner and Consultant Linda Russell-Callecod describes this to us in her article, The Art and Science of Mentoring. And Linda knows – having been both a mentor and a mentee, Linda now uses her experience and professional expertise in assisting organizations to establish their own in-house mentoring programs. Linda supplies the science, and prepares you and the participants so you can bring your own art to the process.
Like a good mentor, a good manager is also a coach. As a dedicated professional, you know that managers should be spending their employee time coaching. Coaching means encouraging, training, inspiring and motivating (not directing, telling and fixing). It takes a little time and a little patience, but the payoff is increased productivity, higher morale and ultimately, saved time. If you are a manager, and the last time an employee asked you for a solution to a problem, you provided it, you may need a refresher on just what coaching is and the most effective ways to do it.
Consider signing up for our one-day coaching class on February 28 or Managing for Performance on March 20-21. And, if you want to know more about designing and implementing a mentorship program, give us a call at (800) 805-8654.
Upcoming Workshops
February 6 – Leadership Challenge Follow-up Webinar 4:00 pm PST
February 12-13 – People Skills
February 14-15 – People Skills Train the Trainer
February 28 – Coaching for High Performance
March 6-7 - People Skills Train the Trainer
March 13 - Selling to Styles Showcase
March 18-19 – People Skills
March 20-21 – Managing for Performance
April 11 - Selling to Styles
All workshops are held at the Effectiveness Institute Conference Center, 2249 152nd Ave NE, Redmond, Washington, unless otherwise specified.
Effective Tips: The Art and Science of Mentoring
By Linda Russell-Callecod, Partner, Effectiveness Institute
Mentoring is not a new concept. The story of Mentor comes from Homer’s Odyssey: When the king of Ithaca (Odysseus) went to fight in the Trojan War, he trusted and empowered Mentor to take care of his household and his son Telemachus. Mentor served as Telemachus’s teacher and faithful guardian. In time the word Mentor became synonymous with an experienced and trusted advisor, friend, teacher, and wise person.
Simply, mentoring is a basic form of human development where one person devotes time, energy, and personal experience to assist in the ability and growth of another person. Notwithstanding, too few organizations have truly harnessed the benefits of the mentor-mentee relationship as an enhancement to their retention and people-development strategies.
Researchers have already confirmed that employee loyalty has shifted away from the organization to the relationship between employee and manager/supervisor. Those without a positive working relationship with their managers/supervisors are more likely to turn (leave the organization for a position with another company) versus churn (changing positions, jobs, and/or responsibilities, but staying within the same organization).
The same holds true as it relates to work socialization. If people feel they “fit-in,” and have a positive social network at work, it directly affects the organization’s ability to retain them, and the intellectual capital invested in them. I believe this is one reason the Gallup employee satisfaction survey asks if employees feel that they have a best friend at work.
Just recently, I had dinner at a popular restaurant in Bellevue, Washington and happened to sit at a table next to a group of young women who were talking about their job searches. One mentioned that she had two offers, both of which held similar expectations and functions, but one paying a larger hourly wage. Interestingly enough, she seemed to be leaning toward the company that paid the lower wage and wanted the opinion of her girlfriends. I could not hear all of the conversation (primarily because I was involved in a conversation of my own), but I did hear “It’s not always about the money, you know…” several times. I also heard: “But I can grow at (‘x’ company), and I know people who work there.” For late Gen X'ers and the Millennium Generation, it’s not always about the money.
Retaining intellectual capital, preserving cultural values and institutional knowledge, growing future leaders, succession planning, enhancing the benefits of diversity, and attracting the most talented employees are all concerns of organizations who understand the value of their human resource. The one tool that assists in the success of each of these business initiatives is mentoring.
Mentoring is a science and an art, and to truly reap the benefits of this concept is to embrace and master both. The science of mentoring is in the formalization of a process that matches talent, sets appropriate expectations and goals, and tracks and evaluates success based on business competencies and values. The art of mentoring is in the development of relationships, the creativity and spontaneity in the transfer of knowledge, and the personal growth and self-awareness that happens in the heart of both the mentee and mentor.
While bosses may have acted as mentors a generation ago, supervisors today no longer necessarily see themselves as mentors, and do not “naturally” seek out those to mentor - especially if their company does not support a formal mentoring program. By the same token, nearly three-quarters of Fortune 500 organizations run a mentoring program.
United Utilities, a British-based company, began a mentoring program to support their succession planning efforts with its leaders and line managers. Under the program, senior managers and supervisors volunteered their time to teach managers, engineers, apprentices, and graduates about corporate culture, stakeholders, and other aspects of the business. With many of its workers becoming eligible for retirement, the company wanted to share those workers' knowledge with the up-and-coming to tap resources throughout the firm – the science.
Unlike coaching, mentoring emphasizes guidance not direction; good mentors do not solve problems for the mentee, but become a sounding board and guide that helps point them in the right direction – the art.
Mentoring taps into continuous learning that is not an event, or even a string of discrete events. It is the synthesis of ongoing events, experiences, conversations, observations, studies, and thoughtful analyses. Akin to any other business strategy, it takes time, energy, personal commitment, and supportive resources to succeed.
Is it worth it? Having been on both sides of the mentor-mentee relationship, I say yes. In an article written by Lydell Bridgeford and published by ASTD (American Society for Training and Development) a 2006 study by Gartner, Inc., confirms the many benefits of mentoring. Gartner spent five years studying 1,000 workers at Sun Microsystems and found employees involved in the firm's mentoring program received significantly more salary-grade changes and promotions and exhibited higher retention rates than non-participating employees. For them I believe they would also say “It’s worth it!”
Ask Tom
How are Behavior Styles not stereotyping?
This is a great question and one that we should all be concerned about. None of us need another label for ourselves to box ourselves into a certain way of thinking or acting.
A Behavior Style is simply a description of a pattern of behaviors that can be observed in self and in others. It is how we “behave” and it can be observed easily by others. Do I talk fast or slow? Is my emphasis to get it done or is my emphasis on how things get done? Do I tend to ask questions or do I tend to make statements?
A label says I am only one pattern and I cannot change it. Behavior Style information states emphatically that any of us can make the choice to change our pattern (Behavior Style) whenever we choose to in order to be appropriate in a given environment. Behavior Style is a pattern but I am not locked into it. This is behavior – and we can always make the choice to change our behavior. Behaviors occur in patterns. We name those four patterns Controller, Stabilizer, Analyzer and Persuader. We are not locked into these patterns; we make the choice to use them wisely to be appropriate (hopefully).
Feedback
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Do you have any suggestions for us regarding workshops or other offerings? Please send any suggestions, questions, comments, or questions for Tom, to sally@effectivenessinstitute.com.
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Issue 4, 2/01/08
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