Mentoring - As simple as passing on advice?

Mentoring has become an extremely useful tool for developing high potential people and should be a vital component in any organisation’s Talent Management strategy. Interestingly there are new trends developing in this area. Previously mentoring was largely focused on helping mentees through a particular stage in their career development. This hasn’t changed but nowadays it seems that when mentoring relationships are particularly effective, usually where the rapport between mentor and mentee is particularly strong, the mentee often seeks even more time solving issues around their current job and their personal life. Whilst not everyone would set out to cover all the topics raised, the fact is that with all the pressures on talented individuals these days, such discussions are taking place more and more frequently.

Traditionally mentoring has been viewed as a medium for passing on advice to mentees. However, the mentoring masterclasses run by Rock the Boat highlight the need for mentors to bite their tongue when thinking of giving advice! Whilst the experience of mentors can help them to ask the right questions, it’s essential for mentees to think and work through their problems. By doing this mentees are far more likely to develop long-term problem solving capabilities and will be more committed and motivated to following through on their action plans because they own them.

Skills involved when mentoring
The skills most frequently used by mentors largely focus around coaching capability i.e. using listening, questioning and coaching skills not to provide advice but rather to help and enable the mentee to work out the appropriate decision for themselves. The mentor needs to be able to establish a relaxed, yet business-like atmosphere and where there is a high degree of rapport mentoring is more successful. This rapport allows the mentor to ask questions to stimulate analysis, raise awareness and challenge assumptions made by the mentee.

Organisation benefits
Contributing to someone else’s development can be hugely satisfying and most mentors feel a tremendous sense of achievement when the mentee achieves their goals. More importantly, organisations that embrace a Mentoring culture can expect it to:

• Help feed their leadership pipeline
• Deepen the alignment of values and behaviours across the organisation
• Help sustain the momentum of change
• Support the employee engagement strategy
• Provide bridges across the organisation through enhanced Networking

Recent mentoring research, involving 300 mentors and 300 mentees, has provided some interesting insights into the mentoring relationship:

Level Mentor/Mentee
Typically the mentor should be 1 -3 levels higher in experience than the mentees. Experience has shown that if the gap in experience is greater than three levels, this can significantly reduce the commitment given and also the value gained from the relationship. Research has shown that neither age nor gender is a barrier to successful mentoring relationships. However there are occasions where female mentees in particular appreciate the support of another female to mentor them through a particular stage of their career.

Duration of the relationship
Experience has shown that the typical length of an effective mentoring relationship is 1-2 years and in contrast relationships that have fizzled out within 3 – 9 months are generally as a result of rapport levels not being sufficiently high to begin with.

Matching Mentor/Mentee
Research and experience has shown that the more influence the mentee has over their choice of mentor the higher the degree of effectiveness perceived by participants. Critically this research demonstrates the importance if high levels of rapport from the outset to ensure the success of the mentoring relationship.

Being an effective Mentor – Top Tips

• Build exceptional rapport during the first 1- 2 meetings
• Listen attentively and suspend judgement
• Ask questions using intuition and experience
• Do not recommend or prescribe any particular solution
• Provide critical – constructive feedback

If you are interested in how Rock the Boat can help your organisation establish a culture where learning is shared and all your high potential individuals have the opportunity to experience the benefits of mentoring, contact us and we’d be happy to discuss in more detail.