The
Strategic Mentoring Culture
By Barry Sweeny, © 2008
Formal mentoring programs that have
a high impact on the effectiveness of mentoring, the quality of
teaching, the success of students, and attainment of organizational
goals, all have a number of common elements.
Creating such results is why each organization needs
to become a learning community, or as this author asserts, a "Strategic
Mentoring Culture". This structure is "strategic"
because every component of it is designed and carried out as a "strategy"
to achieve the desired results. People don't just do the required
activities. They understand why the activities are needed relative
to the goals and they do what's needed because of their personal
commitment to achieve those goals.
In a Strategic Mentoring Culture there needs to
be:
- Expert - Novice mentoring at every level of practice
and within the program
- Peer - to - peer mentoring at every level of
practice and within the program
- ONE set of common mentoring strategies implemented
at all five of the levels of the program
The diagram to the right shows what the first two
elements of that culture are like. Every person should be involved
in both kinds of mentoring, both giving and receiving support for
growth and improvement.
Below on this page is an
illustration of what the complete Strategic Mentoring Culture looks
like. Each arrow represents the dialogue described above.
Examples of Each Kind of Strategy
- Program Strategies include how a mentoring
program:
- Recruits and selects mentors
- Matches mentors and proteges, and resolves
mismatches
- Trains mentors for their role
- Provides on-going support for mentors
- Evaluates and continually improves the mentoring
program.
- Leadership - Mentoring of Mentors Strategies
are:
- Who has a formal role in coordinating the
program
- Who supports mentors and holds them accountable
for continual improvement
- How these leaders model effective mentoring
in their own daily work
- Mentoring strategies include how mentors:
- Build safe, trusting, relationships with
their proteges
- Promote protege development
- Provide positive, but challenging feed back
- Help a protege become and remain open to
external feed back
- Assess what a protege needs at their developmental
level
- Design mentoring interventions that are developmentally
appropriate
- Working strategies are the ways expert
teachers or other specialists work to effectively accomplish what
is expected of that role. These might include how:
- Teachers teach students
- Administrators supervise subordinates
- To lead effective group meetings
- To lead a strategic planning process
- Client strategies are those done by the
persons with whom employees work, and could include:
- What students do to learn effectively
- What teachers do within effective relationships
with their supervisors
- What district superintendents do in their
supervisory relationship with their principals
In a Strategic Mentoring Culture, all these strategic
levels are intentionally designed to support learning and improved
performance.
BOTH Formal AND Informal Mentoring?
Yes. In powerful, effective, learning organizations
there are:
Formal "Mentors", to assure that:
- The team of colleagues and the supervisor of
a protégé are effectively supporting the protégé
- The needs of the protégé are assessed
and addressed, AND...
- Not even ONE employee is left alone to learn
by trial and error.
Every powerful, effective, learning organization
also uses...
Informal "mentoring" which is:
- What everyone does to ensure their own continued
growth, and...
- What everyone does to support the growth of others.
Add together formal and informal mentoring and
the two types of mentoring dialogue, and what you have is a "Strategic
Mentoring Culture" in which everyone is growing, improving, and
supporting each other. It is a true learning community which is continually
improving.
Where Do We Start?
Most programs begin their mentoring efforts at one
of the levels illustrated in the Strategic Mentoring Culture diagram.
Such an approach is both logical and practical. To become effective
quickly, we must KNOW the bigger picture of mentoring that we eventually
need to develop, but we need to START by taking small, calculated
steps to patiently build readiness for and the capacity needed to
move toward such a mentoring culture over time.
Where we start is not all that important,
as successful programs of all types have begun at many different
places.
- If development and retention of new, novice
employees are the greatest challenge for your organization,
start with an orientation and induction focused mentoring program
to ensure their early career success and, a short learning curve
with quick productivity. In that case, your mentoring will focus
initially at the "mentoring strategies" (#3) and "working
strategies" (#2) levels. Eventually, as the protégé
masters the basic tasks of effective employees, your focus should
shift to include the effective "client strategies" (customer)
level as well.
- Perhaps you want to ensure that middle managers
are retained and that they build the skills needed to ensure
a strong "pool" of high performing candidates for upper
management positions. In that case, you will start a management
level mentoring program in which executives at the leadership
level (#4) of the Strategic Mentoring Culture are trained to and
serve as mentors of the middle managers. Eventually, as middle
mangers are successful with their tasks as managers (the working
level #2), you should shift to include two other mentoring levels:
- Development of those skills in middle mangers
which will make them more effective in assessing and addressing
client or customer level needs.
- Development of the middle managers as mentors
(#3) so they can, in turn, develop their direct reports and
other subordinates whom they supervise.
- The ideal way to build a Strategic Mentoring
Culture is to start at the top of that diagram and work your
way down, creating and building success at each of the upper levels
before moving on. However, to succeed the first time with such
a terrific and logical approach requires considerable foreknowledge
of what is going to happen at the other levels before it happens.
Otherwise how could you prepare people at the higher levels to
be successful later at lower levels when those lower levels are
as yet uncreated and you have no experience working at those lower
levels yet?
- The answer is to employ an expert mentoring
consultant and trainer who has worked with these levels before,
who knows what to anticipate and how to solve the usual and unexpected
problems before they have even happened, and who can MENTOR your
leadership and program. In other words, if YOU don't have the
foreknowledge, because you haven't yet had the experience by which
you could have learned it, you should work under the guidance
of someone who HAS had these experiences and whose wisdom can
help you avoid the time-wasting, painful process of trial and
error learning.
ONE Core Mentoring Strategy
No matter where you start to build the Strategic
Mentoring Culture in your organization, as you have opportunities,
build mentoring at the other levels of the culture and in your program.
However, make very sure that the mentoring that happens at every
level is the SAME highly effective mentoring process. Doing so is
a recognition that all development at any level works the same core
way. Doing this also makes sure that the lessons learned at any
one level can be immediately and directly applied to the work at
all levels so everyone benefits from the learning of anyone person.
As complex as it is to make that simple statement
a reality, the best way to ensure it CAN happen is the use of one
core mentoring strategy -"The Essential
Mentoring Strategy", which everyone at every level needs
to use.
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