Mentoring for Success – Think Piece

Author: Carolyn Claridge

I wrote this article for the VETIG Newsletter Summer edition, 2013. Please visit www.vetig.com.au for more information on the Vocational Education and Training Industry Group and how to become a member of this not-for-profit organisation representing vocational training in Australia.

Recognise your greatest asset (and commercial lifeblood) – your people’s potential contribution; investment in their ‘informal’ development is essential to providing the kind of service and support that differentiates you from other training organisations.

There is good evidence that supporting the involvement of your employees in responsible mentoring programs will support your ongoing quality offerings, but what is mentoring?

Mentoring is a personal developmental relationship in which a more experienced or more knowledgeable person helps to guide a less experienced or less knowledgeable person. Mentoring is about long-term development (compatible, but not to be confused with, coaching; which is linked more with short-term performance gain, delivered by a manager or external coach). Regardless of how informal the mentoring arrangement is, both people must make a solid commitment in which the mentor takes part in the learning process side-by-side with the mentoree (also referred to as the mentored, protégé or understudy).

Mentoring and leadership are congruent and as we all know, leadership can come from anyone within an organisation at any level. The mentor does not have to be a manager, supervisor or director within a business; frankly it is preferable if this is not the case. The mentor could be a trainer, compliance officer, finance clerk or a colleague of any role whether internal or external to the organisation; whoever has the skills, knowledge and experience to address the gaps of the mentoree.

We generally think of mentoring as being top-down as people typically with more experience (and quite often, age) pass on their learning to newer (and most probably younger) staff. Modern organisational and management principles have challenged this orthodox structure. Breaking down the cultural barriers of historically hierarchical organisational behaviour can open the doors for leadership, experience and learnings to be transferred horizontally and from bottom-up; challenging the traditionally vertical model of our enterprises (and workplace belief systems).

For example, young administration officers with boundless confidence and knowledge around computers, software and the internet are in perfect positions to educate our older workforce to embrace the concepts of elearning, ecommunication and modern technology which can ultimately enhance our students’ educational experience and streamline our administration and compliance activities supporting our training programs. The organisational benefits can be reaped in parallel to the individual growth experienced by both mentor and mentoree, culminating in overall training quality and client satisfaction.

Formal mentoring relationships can be easily identified – common practice in universities between faculty members and doctoral candidates and/or officially sponsored programs within multi-layered, large (often global) corporations. Whilst these arrangements are to be encouraged as part of a formal professional development program; we must be careful not to assume it’s all there is, or we may miss the informal mentoring already occurring.  It’s there, it’s valuable and it needs encouragement – acknowledged, measured and captured – for compliance evidence and continuous improvement’s sake. To catchphrase this undertaking …formalising the informal!

Trainers are more than ‘instructors and assessors’, administration staff are more than ‘implementers of processes and systems’ and managers are more than ‘commanders and controllers’. Embracing the leadership potential of all staff, fostering informal mentoring across all people and unleashing the potential of your individual and organisational growth will undoubtedly help to concrete your business success.