Mentoring: Do You Have What It Takes?

Mentoring: Do You Have What It Takes?
By ExecutiveBrief Staff

Mentoring has become a strategic learning activity, both for the mentor and the mentee. Do you have what it takes be a good mentor?

Guiding a baby in her first walk, or demonstrating to a child how to ride a bike, or telling a son or daughter the challenges of teenage crush are just a few of the everyday mentoring parents or older people do.

Although largely associated with academic teaching, mentoring is actually in all aspects of learning—having been recognized as a valuable factor in the way a person acquires knowledge and skills. In business, mentoring has become a strategic learning activity as it is proven to enhance individual as well as organizational competency.
In management, mentoring is referred to as “a method of employee development where the mentor uses his skills and experience to impart knowledge and skills, guide, encourage, advise, and support another employee - the “mentee.” It aims to facilitate the mentee’s development and learning so that he or she can contribute more to the attainment of the company’s objectives.

What do you get from mentoring? As a mentor, one is given the opportunity to cultivate in his mentee responsibility, leadership, and interpersonal skills. A mentor does this by posing work challenges to the mentee and by providing constructive feedback.
A great number of mentors claim that by being a mentor, one earns the respect and recognition of peers. Mentoring enhances authority, thus firming up one’s position within the organizational structure. The mentor likewise is given the opportunity or the chance to learn from the mentee.
On the other hand, the mentee is given a role model and feedback board. The mentor can become a role model for the mentee whom he can emulate. The mentee gains a “confidante” for expressing new ideas or for airing frustrations. For the new employee who is fresh from the school, mentoring allows for a smoother entry into the workplace by neutralizing unrealistic expectations and naive perceptions of the corporate world. During changes and transitions, mentoring aids in making the mentee more comfortable and allows faster adjustments to changes in work and processes. A neophyte, under a mentor’s guidance, may be allowed to try varying and more sophisticated tasks. Studies have shown that employees who take up mentoring relationship move ahead faster than those without mentors. This generally results in mentees having greater career satisfaction than their peers who have no mentors.

Characteristics of a Good Mentor The concept of mentoring while having a universal or common objective of upgrading employee’s knowledge and skills is no longer limited to teaching the what, how, why, who and when. It now includes the re-orientation of both professional and personal values, influencing attitudes, and changing behaviors of the mentee. It is also about developing a mentor-mentee relationship based on personal interaction. In the process, the mentor similarly adjusts. Imparting hard skills is no longer the only aspect of mentoring, as it is now commonly accepted that human behavior is equally or if not more important for an organization to achieve competitiveness and excellence. In this light, the question is: can anybody become a mentor?
What Makes a Good Mentor? Not all successful managers make effective mentors. There are individuals who are more effective in developing others. Mentoring competency depends on one’s own professional stage of development and experience—and not all managers possess these. The qualifications can be lumped into five major aspects: 1) The desire and sincerity to help 2) The skills, knowledge and experience 3) The mentor’s availability and time 4) Mentor’s personal rapport and building relationships and confidence capabilities 5) Job security confidence
Desire and Sincerity to Help Desire and sincerity to help others are the basic personal values of a mentor that serve as foundations in any mentoring activity. These are the motivational forces that create enthusiasm and passion to impart skills and knowledge to another person. These are the “invisibles” that develop an honest mentor-mentee relationship.

Skills, Knowledge and Experience The quantity and quality of “contents” imparted to the mentee depend substantially on the mentor’s acquired skills, knowledge, and experience. These give the mentor the right, confidence, and authority to mentor. Possession of more superior skills, knowledge, and experience assures the mentee of the quality of mentoring services from the mentor. These reinforce mentor’s credibility.

Availability and Time The third essential qualification is for the mentor to make himself always available—to do mentoring sessions at the most mutually convenient time. The mentor must be able to systematically schedule his sessions with the mentee and that ample time should be allocated to achieve the best results. In planned or formal mentoring, time management is vitally essential. Interruptions must be anticipated and appropriately addressed in order to control the pace of the mentoring processes. Mentoring is not a one-day affair. It would take weeks, months, or even years. Thus, the mentor should be ready for longer engagements. No matter how skillful and knowledgeable the mentor is, or how intense is his desire to help, without time and availability, mentoring is expected to fail.

Building Confidence, Personal Rapport and Relationships An excellent mentor knows how to build personal rapport and trust with the mentee. It requires respect mutual, understanding each other’s strengths, weaknesses and limitations, personal idiosyncrasies as well as the mentee’s potentials. The mentor should be able to build upon the mentee’s capacities and weaknesses in the partnering relationship. This will encourage openness that is vital in the design and execution of the mentoring services. Openness provides a more accurate determination of mentoring needs and wants, feedback on periodic results of the mentoring, and ease of the delivery of the mentoring services. Job Security Confidence A mentor must be secured in his position. He must be confident in his or her career and should take pride in his or her mentee’s accomplishments. A mentor should be proud in developing the mentee’s strengths and competencies without being threatened, especially so when the mentee is a subordinate. A secure mentor should be appreciative of the mentee’s achievements and truthfully enjoy having played a part in the mentee’s professional growth.

Mentor-Mentee Relationship The mentor-mentee relationship can take any form that fits the individuals involved. The relationship however must be essentially grounded on two solid foundations— trust and confidence.

Ethics dictate that confidentiality should always be observed. The relationship must be based on trust and openness. Openness develops trust that eases the flow of communication, a basic requirement in the mentoring process.