The often-requested program, lesser understood skill and worry of certain HR professionals – mentoring is as much an art as it is a science.
Professionals know that mentorship is nearly, if not equally, as important as networking. This is why HR departments are frequently requested to sponsor mentorship programs, which can entail considerable match making, skill education and administrative work depending upon program design.
Mentor program offerings have diversified considerably thanks to the organizational focus placed on them, and if one is lucky, the relationship “sticks” and extends beyond the designated program window. How can professionals be proactive and own their mentoring destiny?
Grab your magnifying glass. Look a little deeper.
Forms of Mentoring
The famed and most frequently thought of form of mentoring is traditional or formal mentoring, where a senior mentor coaches and guides a junior professional in accordance with an agreed upon structure or goal. The mentor is seen as an authority figure who steers the relationship.
The evolution of work has spurred the transformation of mentoring. Passing on tribal knowledge and seeking real-time advice has led to informal mentoring, which is less often tracked and project planned, yet immeasurably valuable. This form of mentoring lends itself to real-time upskilling and broadens the relationship configuration to include reverse (junior to senior) and peer mentoring.
Informal mentoring has not only transformed the top-down structure, it has also rewritten the traditional roles of mentors and mentees. Instead of being driven by the mentor, the keys have been thrown to the mentee as if he recently received his learner’s permit. The mentee sits squarely in the driver’s seat. The mentor sits encouragingly in the passenger seat and facilitates learning rather than turning the wheel. The mentee decides how hard to hit the gas and which direction to drive.
Establishing mentoring relationships with this tone reinforces the modern paradigm that individuals own and drive their careers. The pace of business and innovation necessitates this drive as rigid hierarchies and promotion schedules fade in favor of agile skill sets.
If you wish to “drive” further in this direction, please see this overview of mentoring practices and the need for increased informal mentoring, written for my undergraduate honors capstone.
Sponsor the Racecar
I have been fortunate to have many mentors who have been generous with their time, wisdom and curiosity. One such mentor introduced me to the related concepts of sponsorship and spentorship.
The role of a sponsor is to champion the work and potential of rising talent in rooms and conversations in which they are not. When one serves as both a mentor – the sculptor, the confidant, the sounding board, the passenger seat coach – and a sponsor – the public champion, the appropriate term is “spentor,” a sponsor + mentor. Many good mentors are spentors whether they know it or not.
Personal Board of Directors
For mentees that want more than an organized and time-bound mentor program can provide, a few options present themselves:
Find someone you admire and request that this person mentor you in a formal capacity…however, this runs the risk of feeling like a bended-knee proposal with pressure to say yes or destroy the professional relationship.
Embrace informal mentoring, which generally does not involve the pressure of a formal agreement. Instead, casual, natural and candid advice flows from a friendly and mutually beneficial partnership. Since informal mentoring is mentee-driven, the mentor’s time and energy are less taxed.
Double down on informal mentoring by seeking the mentorship of a few key individuals from different departments, industries or chapters of your career. Fortunately, this is easy to do since the skills needed to form and maintain one relationship are evergreen in their application.
When a series of mentors are utilized, mentees effectively form a personal board of directors. This board guides and advises, so mentees can strategically plot the course of “the business,” namely their life. In this case, mentees can seek answers on different questions from each individual, without overtaxing one mentor while also mitigating the risk of too narrowly following one perspective. Multiple mentors/spentors provide diversity of thought that enables mentees to form their own informed opinions.
To the Point
A personal board of directors magnifies the impact of mentoring. Be the CEO of your own career. Be sure to surround yourself with wise coaches that showcase your best to others and provide diverse feedback to you in private.
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