Mentoring today is making a huge impact in most organisations, helping to build engagement, alignment and improves retention. It is an affordable way to harness the experience of your senior leaders and give them an active role in developing the next generation of leaders.
Here are some of the facts:-
- 67% of businesses reported an increase in productivity due to mentoring (Source)
- 55% of businesses felt that mentoring had a positive impact on their profits (Source)
- More than 4 in 10 workers, who don’t have a mentor say they’ve considered quitting their job in the past three months (Source)
- 71% of people with a mentor say their company provides them with good opportunities to advance in their career, compared with 47% of those without a mentor (Source)
- 94% of employees said they would stay at a company longer if they were offered opportunities to learn and grow (Source)
- Mentoring programs boosted minority representation at the management level from 9% to 24% (Source)
- Increased Promotion and retention rates for minorities and women from 15% to 38% as compared to non-mentored employees (Source)
So, you can see potentially mentoring could be a magic bullet for organisations!
And everyone needs mentors. Oprah Winfrey who has been a mentor and a role model to many women relied on Maya Angelou as her mentor. Steve Jobs was known to be a mentor to Mark Zuckerberg and Larry Page. In fact, it has been noted that most people need numerous mentors at different stages and times in their lives.
So, what’s the drawback? Well, we are all human and these programs rely heavily on the skills, experience and motivation of the mentors or senior leaders. A great question to ask, “Is every leader a natural mentor?” The answer is a resounding, ” No”.
This is a challenge in many organisations. Mentoring requires active listening and problem-solving skills which is not true of all senior leaders. In fact, the very nature of the work pressure for senior leaders means that they are time poor with a tendency to jump to solutions. This can result in frustration, misunderstanding and wasted time for the mentee. Sometimes the senior managers are blissfully unaware of their shortcomings and then mentoring becomes a drawback.
The fact is that most senior leaders that are mentors have no training, relying on their own experiences of mentoring good, bad or indifferent to guide their behaviour. A stark contrast to the usual method of hiring or promotion where credentials are mandatory.
Don’t allow the skill level of your mentors to limit the success of your mentoring program.
To overcome this we recommend you give your mentors a framework to understand what Mentoring excellence looks like and the tools to enable them to adapt to each unique situation.
Then the likely outcome is a win-win for all. mentors benefit from their enhanced skills, the feeling of satisfaction with the job well done and they learn exposed to new things by their mentees. In fact, statistically, mentors are six times more likely to be promoted. (Source)
And 87% of mentors and mentees feel empowered by their mentoring relationships and have developed greater confidence (Source)
If you would like to gain your mentoring accreditation please check out our Mentoring Masterclass. https://bit.ly/3vZxX8f
