Building & Harnessing a Mentoring Culture

Everyone Needs Mentoring
What does it take to develop your people? It takes more than sending someone to a training class. It takes more than hard work on the part of your employees. What development takes are people – from the CEO’s office to the mailroom – people who are willing to listen and to help their colleagues. Development takes coaches; it takes guide; it takes advocates. We need to recognize that there are people in every organization — whether they’re men or women, minorities, or people who grew up without any business role-models in their lives — who don’t know how to react in various work situations. And it’s our responsibility to teach them. Organizations are only as successful as the men and women who make them work. So, if we care about our organizations and our people, we have to share our knowledge of the organizational culture; we have to share our wisdom; we have to mentor. Development depends on mentors. It is hard to make it without a mentor and it takes too much time without a mentor. Good mentoring is unbiased, objective support that identifies the qualities and abilities in other people and develops them; it identifies which hurdles are hard to get over and finds ways to get over or circumvent them when appropriate. Whether you are the mentor or the 'mentee', using the mentoring forum can be hugely rewarding. At last! Lots more companies are waking up to this fact that people can't always 'do it' alone. They need support, guidance and nurturing. To help with this, organizations are institutionalizing a mentoring culture.

Mentoring Is a Strategic Business Imperative
Today, in our love affair with what’s new, what’s cutting edge, and what’s technologically cool, it’s easy to forget that knowledge also comes with experience. It may require a few hours of e-training or a semester-long course to learn how an energy pump operates, but it takes years and years of experience to recognize the sounds of a pump that is not operating properly. The only way to shorten that learning cycle is to have someone with more experience help to accelerate learning. Companies need to recruit and retain mature employees because of respect for their knowledge. The best companies today will help their organizations transform the way they think about all of their employees. Each person brings different knowledge to the organization. Each generation brings something different and valuable to your organizational operations. Younger employees routinely tell us of their disenchantment with their companies as they describe the onerous demands (and opportunities) placed on them by managers who may have confidence in their abilities, but lack the time or skills to help them succeed. Faced with frustration and afraid that they will fail, many of these younger employees move on and look for a more supportive business environment. In fact, the average 30 - 44 year old has changed up to 5-6 times! Most businesses could use their more experienced staff, who have deep knowledge, impressive networks, and broad-based business experience, to buffer younger employees against frustration, focus on their career paths, and find places to acquire the skills-based knowledge necessary to succeed through a strategic mentoring plan.
-Anshumali Saxena www.soilindia.net