Last month, Allison Duke discussed the unique aspects of the Millennial workforce and the benefits of having a traditional mentoring program for these workers. Since Millenials aren’t traditional workers, this month, she explores other ways of structuring your mentoring program, starting with . . .
Reverse Mentoring
With reverse mentoring, Millennials are matched with executives who can benefit from the younger employees’ skills. For example, Millennials have more experience with social media than any other generation, and they can be a tremendous asset to executives who need insight into new ways to reach their customers.
To effectively advise senior-level managers, Millennials will need behind-the-scenes access so they can better understand higher levels of the business. This insight is invaluable in developing stronger business acumen and understanding organizational strategies. Most important, this mutual exchange of information builds a relationship that can ultimately benefit the Millennial employee through heightened exposure to other senior executives within the organization.
Group Mentoring
Group mentoring is one way to offer mentees constant feedback from a variety of mentoring sources. In many group mentoring scenarios, employees design their own programs to meet specific needs. One example described by Meister and Willyerd is the leadership circles implemented by AT&T. The program uses an online platform so that a single mentor can work with several mentees, sometimes in several different locations. The mentors typically focus on specific issues such as generating sales leads or leading teams, although either mentors or mentees can define coaching topics.
Over time, some of the coaching becomes more peer-to-peer, giving employees multiple points of mentoring support. The online format at AT&T also features “community forums, document-sharing spaces, group polling, and calendars that announce events and mentor availability.” One of the best features for HR professionals, who typically design and maintain mentoring programs, is that this program is self-operating and self- sustaining, with little assistance needed from HR.
Anonymous Mentoring
Think about anonymous mentoring as e-Harmony for mentor-mentee relationships. Those interested in participating go through a series of psychological tests that matches mentees to mentors outside the organization. These mentors could be experienced senior leaders or professional coaches, but their identities (as well as the mentees’ identities) remain anonymous.
A technology platform is used in which mentees send electronic messages to mentors seeking advice on specific situations. For example, a mentee might ask his or her mentor how to deliver bad news in a presentation to the board of directors. The mentor might suggest using quantitative data to reduce the subjectivity of the message and allow involved parties to make informed decisions on how to remedy the situation.
The anonymity of the mentoring relationship has proven to be advantageous. Mentees and mentors alike indicate that they can share things that wouldn’t be possible if identities or companies were known. An added benefit to this format is that time zones are irrelevant. Mentoring can be provided from different areas of the world, which can add a global aspect. These programs are typically paid for by the mentee’s organization.
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Remember This
No matter what type of mentoring program you implement, there are some basic recommendations to ensure success.
- Clarify and Communicate the Intent of the Program. Employees may expect certain types of mentoring and become disappointed if different types are delivered. Therefore, if a group mentoring program is adopted, be sure participants understand that mentors will be shared among several mentees. In this scenario, mentees may not have the same type of access to organizational strategy and knowledge that might be gained through a more traditional or reverse mentoring platform.
- Match Mentors and Mentees Based on Program Goals. If the goal of the program is to build relationships between senior leaders and less experienced employees, pairs might be matched based on job demands, values, and interests. Conversely, if the program is designed to give quick feedback to employees, pairs might be created based more on personalities and other psychological similarities. If your primary goal is to build more traditional mentoring relationships, you may consider allowing mentees to create a list of approximately 10 mentors they would like to work with. This method is used by Sun Laboratories’ SEED Mentoring program. The process helps mentees identify why they want to work with specific mentors and helps the program staff more efficiently match mentors and mentees.
- Encourage Mentees to Develop Learning Goals. The SEED program also recommends that mentees define learning goals to help mentors understand the types of information they are interested in exploring. That also helps the mentors determine if they can help the mentees.
- Ensure Mentors Are Ready to Mentor. Individuals volunteer to mentor for a number of reasons. Some want to give back. Some want to learn new skills. Some feel obligated to participate. Whatever the reason, be sure your mentors understand the goals of the program as well as the expected time commitment. That will allow mentors to evaluate their availability to mentees during the program and determine whether they can reasonably participate.
Although Millennials will certainly benefit from mentoring, the feedback provided through these programs can benefit the company as a whole. Meister and Willyerd asked 2,200 professionals to rate the importance of eight managerial skills and found that all generations gave high ratings to “having a manager who ‘will give straight feedback.'” However, when 300 HR leaders were asked to evaluate their managers’ competence in the eight skills, providing feedback ranked last. Obviously this is a deficiency across organizations, one that new approaches to mentoring can help remedy.
Not only can mentoring relationships help employees develop the knowledge and skills needed to effectively perform a job, but they can also help them feel more valued, empowered, and engaged. In this economy, I think most of us could benefit from that.
Dr. Allison Burgess Duke is an Assistant Professor of Management and the Director of the Master of Human Resources program at Lipscomb University. Prior to joining Lipscomb, Allison was a HR Manager at Aspect Communications and Progeny Marketing Innovations. Her research has been published in Leadership Quarterly, the Journal of Business Ethics, the Journal of Applied Psychology, the Journal of Leadership and Organizational Studies, Management Decision, Social Influence, and the Journal of Applied Social Psychology.