Is mentoring working... or playing?
In March, we asked a question about mentoring in your organisations. The article No one to trust, nowhere to learn, how the lean and mean culture threatens corporate morality, it started like this:
"How many more financial disasters are waiting to happen? How many more sociopathic and amoral business leaders are paving the way for their companies, and ultimately their national economies, to travel down the path to Armageddon? If you think I am being alarmist - good! The social cost of "getting it wrong" is at an all-time high, and it gets higher by the day."
We expect about 100 responses to our ad-hoc surveys; for the
article on mentoring, we got almost three times that figure. So,
what prompted this and what can we learn from what you have been
saying? In other words: is mentoring working... or playing?
We had almost 300 respondents, all senior executives in their
firms, We really were not sure if Europeans find the whole idea
"touchy-feely" or Machiavellian. For many people, especially
reserved Brits, the whole idea of being mentored may seem rather
foreign.
In surveying a pan-European population, we were interested in
comments about people's past and present experience, both as
mentors and mentees. Some 65% of respondents acted as mentors to
people in their organisations, and overall, the response was
overwhelmingly positive about the benefits.
However, doubts crept in when respondents were asked whether
mentoring "was embedded in the culture of your organisation?" 60%
said no, and when they were asked to comment further (anonymously),
the cracks began to appear. Said one: "Because of increasing cost
pressure, I see that today, mentoring is disappearing in large
corporations. The human touch is fading. Young and talented people
are lost. Motivation goes down, and companies lose out."
One of those subsequently interviewed is a director with Newell
Rubbermaid, a global consumer goods business. He had a mentor at
the beginning of his career, he says, but nowadays, "mentoring is
on the decline because people are too self-centred - they have less
time, they endure more pressure and are eaten up in management
processes, especially in economic times like the present."
Another respondent was even more pessimistic: "There is a dark
side to mentoring all too often. The worst of attitudes and
behaviour are passed on to others. In the leaner, meaner
organisations, this is likely to become more acute as survival of
the nastiest is encouraged for their motivation to get results at
any cost."
Maybe my supposition in March was correct. But, encouragingly, the
majority of respondents were enthusiastic about the principle of
mentoring - which varies widely, but can be summed up as using the
experience of senior managers to train, guide and advise their
proteges to increase their contribution both to the organisation
and to their own career. It's a combination of knowledge management
and personal development.
As a coach specialising in leadership and change, Marie-Louise
Zollinger comes to the same conclusion from a different
perspective. She is a partner in Genesis Consulting in
Geneva, and finds that in many of her clients, "the pressure is on
time and getting results, so managers can't allow others to see
their weaknesses. You can tell they're at their limit." More formal
coaching, sometimes of whole management teams faced with major
change, is growing briskly in consequence, but more time given to
mentoring would help.
As one respondent put it, "companies that mentor individuals have
a much better chance of gaining committed and motivated employees
who can quickly adapt to ever-changing market conditions." Another
pointed out that "it has been shown that mentors or coaches
assigned to projects improve the probability of successful
completion by 25% to 50%."
So how can companies counter the deterioration in mentoring, if
that is what it is? Some respondents were adamant that mentoring
had to be an informal process, because its effectiveness depended
on the rapport between the two parties. If people are forced into
it, or if the mentor is the mentee's boss, it can become
self-defeating.
On the other hand, respondents agreed that bad mentors were worse
than none at all, and could destroy talent undetected. So some kind
of selection process is needed, as well as a means of stimulating
its growth. The right cultural environment is vital - as evidenced
by an organisation's willingness to invest time and money in staff
development, and to recognise mentoring as a legitimate part of a
manager's workload (and therefore reward it accordingly).
Dow Chemical is attempting to solve the problem by setting up a
website listing some 200 middle-to-senior managers volunteering to
act as mentors and listing their experience and other details.
Staff looking for a mentor are free to choose, or put their own
details up as looking for a mentor. The process appears to be
working: "mentoring is on the increase now, although the website's
complicated to use," says Ian Telford, a business director, who
himself mentors more than 10 people.
His colleague, Marco Levi, finds that a lot of people, mainly in
Europe and Latin America, still prefer making informal contact to
using the official system, but the important thing, he emphasises,
is whatever is found to work. His 15-strong department is scattered
in the main markets round the world, so their need for local
mentoring support is real.
The strong underlying message of the survey was that companies
looking for a competitive edge neglect mentoring at their peril,
given that 94% of respondents said it played a key role in
developing future leaders.
But the ultimate indicator of whether a company fosters a climate
where the senior members of the firm support their subordinates, or
whether they "eat them for lunch," is increasingly visible in the
share price. If a climate of fear pervades a firm, the most able
and intelligent of the workforce simply vote with their feet. This
leaves a mediocre management level that is regressive, and
frequently aggressive.
If there is one thing that we can draw from the survey it is that
we should not be "playing" at mentoring, we should see it as having
healthy, progressive and ultimately positive effect on the firm,
it's employees, management and shareholders. It is time to stop
playing and start working at ensuring that all elements are in
place to benefit. It is one of the least difficult and most
effective actions management can take.
Go to it.