Leverage a mentoring practice
Into an efficient, affordable and lasting process that increases performance and employee satisfaction
Mentoring impacts your business, your people, your culture
Research from successful programs indicates that mentoring:
- Improves the business with a contribution to increased quality in projects and work.
- Accelerates the mentees´ path: mentoring reduces fears, frictions and frustrations. Especially for employees taking on new roles with coordinating or staff management responsibilities, who often feel alone and insecure in the decisions they have to make. Consequently, it contributes to increased retention of workers.
- Transforms the mentor´s way to lead: mentoring helps the leaders to stay grounded and to interface naturally. Consequently, it contributes to a more supportive and shared (horizontal) leadership.
" The structured discussions accelerate on-the job learning and bring fresh perspective to strategic challenges we face as leaders."
Mentoring develops competences, mindset and attitudes
A mentoring relationship rests on psychological safety. It builds a space where it´s safe to show you don´t know, to share failures, doubts or fears, or to be callenged out of your comfort zone.
A mentoring program is built around specific business goals. The mentoring realtionship focuses on reaching these objectives by allowing participants to approach their challenges in a constructive and non hierarchical way.
Participants focus on what they want to impact and how they can influence, not on what does not work.
Being part of a mentoring relationship trains participants to ask for help, to give and receive suggestions, to cross examine options and to be coached to find their own solutions.
But operating a successful Mentoring Program is not as simple as it seems ….
I often heard that mentoring efforts and investments are not working, thus not worth it!
Unfortunately, I've seen that organisations who really want to install mentoring often fails at staying consistant.
They often work seriously to create a program and put a lot of efforts into the kickoff session. Then participants are sent back home and get back to business as usual. And, often, they don't manage to get started right away with their paired partner or rapidly fail to stay on track throughout the program!
And worse, the organisation does not even notice it. Because there is no systems and no measures in place to alert them, or because new emergencies/priorities have come up for the team in charge.
I´ve also seen mentoring programs sabotaged by false assumptions
Unfortunately, some program sponsors push for shrinking a well-conceived mentoring program with apparently relevant arguments like these: employees wouldn´t have time, couldn´t meet so regularly, their boss wouldn´t allow, they are grown up people and don´t need a structure, etc.
Untill, those same program sponsors do realise that the participants were not actually meeting and do question “why did they not actually meet?” Simple! Because a mentoring program does not live without a coordinator and best practices.
We can make sure you get mentoring right !
"When one gets this right, the ripple effect can be enormous, at a very low cost for the organisation compared to other leadership development initiatives"
We partner à la carte
Consultancy - Mentoring Development - Mentoring Supervision
We can
- Facilitate workshops for orientation, alignment and engagment
- Conceive or co-conceive programs
- Co-lead programs and teams
- Train in a experiential way
- Coach and mentor the pairs involved
Our mission is to get the Mentors and the Mentees work together and to help them build a relationship that is helpful, transformative, and in line with what the organisation wants to achieve.
We assist you alongside a 4 step proven process
1. DEFINE
To determine how mentoring can serve your objectives.
2. DESIGN
To integrate best practices and maximize the benefits of the mentoring program.
3. DELIVER
To add expertise to select, match, train, motivate and coach your participants.
4. DOCUMENT
To formulate recommendations that improve future runs.
1. DEFINE
Clarify priorities and relevant toolbox.
We´ll be assessing your needs: it can be career development, diversity, leadership culture, talent attraction, a leadership bench not ready to take on the next step or something else.
We´ll be defining which positions get priority and which toolbox to use.
I´ll take you through a situational analysis. Often within a workshop to align involved stakeholders on
- What priorities do you have? what you are trying to achieve and where you have come up till now, including which challenges have been holding your back.
- What resources, human and financial, are available and needed for mentoring in regard to your ambitions.
- What else is needed to support a mentoring initiative, at the start and over time.
"When used strategically mentoring offers communication channels that cross the structural and restrictive boundaries of complex organisations. There is so much evidence today that well-designed mentoring programs can address many of the challenges an organization may face."
2. DESIGN
Conceive a tailored program around Success Factors.
Engagement and success of your program is directly impacted by many details. Like the way you´ll select participants, how often they would meet, the library of relevant tools they´ll have access to, the trainings content and delivery mode, etc…
I can assist a program manager or take the lead to define how your mentoring program would look like in detail with
- A Smooth design process: progressing step by step from an intention to your mentoring kick off meeting.
- The right content and system: from experience, I know what´s essential. I come with processes, tools and templates that can be adapted to your specificities.
- The best practices: I make sure the Success Factors for running a successful mentoring programs are part of your design.
3. DELIVER
Create and keep engagement.
Match pairs (mentors/mentees) with a successful fit, develop mentoring competences and collaborative attitudes , and keep all motivated even in challenging times.
All in all, mentoring is quite cheap for developing people and creating change. As long as you make sure it runs well throughout the 6 keystones of a program:
- The SEELCTION AND MATCHING
- The KICKOFF
- The TRAINING
- The FOLLOW-UP
- The GRADUATION
- The EVALUATION.
I can add expertise or take the lead in the selection and matching process, in resolving issues like disengagement or even conflict between a pair, in holding open hours with all the mentors, in making qualitative assessments and much more. But I only take this supervisor´s role if a program has been designed according to best practices.
"Concretely, you´ll need a program manager to take care of internal communication and operationalities, even if this role might not take more than 10% of her/his time once the program is running. And you´ll also need a supervisor, internal or external, to keep focus and support participants facing a challenge. It's about being present and of service, so participants trust you, and will contact you if they have any difficulties. You want to avoid figuring out at the end of the program that some of the pairs never met or barely once, that some did not manage to overcome a problem and disengaged. That´s why I organize open hours with all the mentors where they can learn from each other and I alos regularly initiate check-ins with participants. And when it is relevant, I consider individually coaching/mentoring for the mentors."
4. DOCUMENT
Learn from experience and improve.
A program report should summarize each part of the program, isolating the best practices, describing the challenges and making recommendations for the next runs.
That´s why evaluation is an integral part of our program design. We integrate research at key steps or on the spot, with quantitative forms or qualitative exchanges to measure
- which skills have been developed
- the progress towards your goals
- which tools and processes did perform or not, and why
Wondering if Mentor Lab could be a good fit for your organisation?
We will explore your specific project, challenge or question and I´ll share relevant insights, best practices and options for launching or improving a mentoring program.
By intent adapts organisations and their leaders for the future of work.
Towards diversity, partnering and mentoring attitudes.
Email: gyda@byintent.no
By Intent
Majorstuveien 12b, 0350 Oslo, Norway
operating all around the world
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