In a recent article in the Wall Street Journal, reporter Leslie Kwoh, notes an exciting new trend taking off in a wide range of companies. Instead of workplace mentors who are older and higher up in the ranks than their mentees – younger employees are being tapped to help senior executives learn new skills.

The idea is to give senior managers an opportunity to learn about life outside the corner office. If that isn’t enough of a reason, companies are seeing reduced turnover among younger employees because mentoring this way gives them a sense of purpose, along with an enlightening glimpse into the world of management and access to top tier leaders.

According to Kwoh, reverse mentoring was championed by Jack Welch when he was chief executive of General Electric Co. He had 500 top-level executives pair up with people below them to learn to use the Internet. Welch took his own advice to heart and was matched with an employee in her 20s who taught him how to surf the Web. Today young mentors are teaching their senior mentees about Facebook and Twitter.

Technology and global thinking are changing so rapidly, older executives don’t want to be left behind. Reverse mentoring also helps acculturate the younger employees more quickly. They begin to see a promising future for themselves in the organization. This boosts loyalty, employee engagement and overall productivity.

There can be pitfalls. Many older workers resist the idea of being mentored by someone younger, especially when they have so many more years of experience. This is where a solid launch event featuring the people skills that make for more effective mentoring partnerships can make all the difference in the success of the program.

Balcom Walton asserts that mentoring relationships will come from networks that are broader. In the old days, potential mentees turned to people they knew well. But increasingly, mentor-seekers will find themselves approaching people they either don’t know well or may have never met.

She believes we will see more distance mentoring: successful mentoring relationships that exist primarily — or even completely — in the virtual world, with most exchanges of information taking place via email or social media.

“Situational mentoring” is also becoming more common. Balcom Walton sees this as a trend where mentees connect with mentors for certain periods of time or certain situations, rather than turning to one mentor for everything. Even so, traditional, long-term mentoring relationships will continue to thrive.

To learn how to find a mentor in this new environment, how to “pop” the question and anticipate some of the pitfalls of this new kind of mentoring, see Balcom Walton’s article in the July 12 issue of the Public Relations Strategist.

A 2006 Gallup poll found that higher performing companies have a significant difference in the ratio of engaged versus disengaged employees than lower performing organizations. That’s 8:1 for the best, and just 2:1 at the average companies. If yours is one of those high-performing companies, that’s very good news.

But, according to a 2010 survey by global consulting firm BlessingWhite, only 31 percent of the global work force is actively engaged. Overall, they found that 52 percent of the work force is not engaged. That means they come to work and do what’s expected or less. If that isn’t an eye opener; it turns out 17 percent of the workforce is actively disengaged: they show up when they feel like it, and continually undermine and work against you.

This is important because employees who aren’t engaged lower overall productivity and add to turn over and that costs you. Before the recession, the cost of replacing an employee averaged $17,000 and those who made more than $60,000 per year cost more than $38,000 to replace. Now human resource managers tell us to look at an employee’s annual salary and figure 100 to 150 percent is what it will cost you to replace them. This includes lost productivity, recruitment and training. When you consider managerial and C-suite compensation packages, the total cost is sobering.

It turns out that the best predictor of high performance is that ratio of actively engaged employees at every level of the company. And employee engagement is most positively impacted when managers have excellent people skills. Managers who have great relationships with their direct reports out-perform those who rely solely on management actions.

This leads me to conclude that mentorship skills (people skills) and a mentoring environment (learning and support) are important tools for improving employee engagement at all levels of your organization. Once you have hired the best and brightest, mentoring is one of the most effective ways to ensure they stay engaged and committed to your organization. Mentoring enhances loyalty by placing high potential employees on the fast track with the extraordinary benefit of high quality senior level guidance.

Mentoring programs deliver three proven outcomes:

• While the best skills training can produce a bump in productivity of 33 percent, training combined with effective professional mentoring improves productivity up to 88 percent.
• Mentees form stronger bonds with you and your company because they can see a worthwhile future that includes them.
• Mentors experience a stronger sense of purpose and satisfaction when they use their knowledge and expertise to cultivate and develop another person.

Costly employee turnover will be reduced because employees in an effective mentoring relationship feel appreciated, have the opportunity to give and grow. Mentees get personal coaching, sponsorship and encouragement, enhance their skills, and increased levels of confidence. Both sides of the mentoring partnership experience a greater sense of satisfaction in their careers and often in their personal lives.

Here’s where you can see the complete study: http://www.blessingwhite.com/eee__report.asp

The people skills employees need in order to have effective mentoring partnerships can be learned and Odyssey Mentoring provides the training that empowers effective mentorship.

She reports that IT leaders are being advised to change their approach to mentoring programs to focus not just on the individual, but instead on maximising the individual’s potential in the context of the organisation.

IT consultant, Rob Livingstone, told attendees at a Not for Profits Forum in Sydney this week that mentoring employees is no longer just a case of coaching, life skills, techniques, capabilities and experiential sharing, but also driving transformational change by focussing on issues impacting employees negatively. Livingstone is also a mentor with the CIO Executive Council’s Pathways ICT leadership program, a 12-month program that helps senior IT staff develop their business acumen and management skills.

I think Livingstone is right on the mark, not just for IT companies, but for all forward-thinking organizations.  Leaders should also be willing to enhance their one-to-one communication skills when supporting a mentoring partner through organizational transformation. Weathering these changes often requires a personal transformation with regard to accepting and adapting to those changes. Once there, mentoring can foster breakthrough-thinking and innovation.

At Odyssey Mentoring, we provide training for mentoring partners so they can achieve optimum impact from their work together.

- Listening

- Being a Keen Observer

- Understanding Differences – Diversity & Personality Styles

- The Conversational Dance to Insight, Action & Accountability

- Debriefing Successes & Failures

-Sharing your Network and Sponsorship

These skills make for better mentors, mentees and overall – better leaders. Win-win-win.

Downloaded 4/13/2011. To read the full article click here: http://www.computerworld.com.au/article/380072/it_leaders_urged_transform_mentoring_styles/?c=503741

“The potential benefits of academic mentoring for women are important,” say researchers who conducted a pilot study at the Institute of Psychiatry, King’s College London.

Forty-six women academics were matched 1:1 or 2:1 with more senior academic mentors. At the end of a year, job-related well-being (anxiety-contentment), self-esteem and self-efficacy all improved significantly and work-family conflict diminished at one year. The mentees affirmed their professional development was enhanced by their mentorship.

The results show that mentoring can contribute to women’s personal and professional development. The study also begins to demonstrate the mechanisms that bring about those positive results.

The bottom line is professional mentoring will help institutions that want to retain and develop the careers of their academic staff, particularly their women academics.

My experience shows that when you prepares mentors and mentees to be effective in their mentoring partnership, you will boost results even more. Pre-program training sets the mentoring partners up to win.

Click here for the full study Mentoring Pilot Study.

One of the tools you use to maximize productivity and talent development is high-quality training. Great training can give you an initial bump in productivity of about 33 percent. Most executives I talk to say, “I’ll take it.”

But can you sustain that bump or exceed it over the long-term? The answer is YES! This is where a structured and effective mentoring program can really make the difference. Here’s how:

• · By reinforcing skills-based training every day: For training to stick and mastery to be achieved, employees need daily practice, coaching, accountability and encouragement beyond the training room.  A mentor, even a peer mentor, can provide that support and boost your productivity over the long-term by as much as 88 percent.
• By creating a challenging work environment: When your employees can be assigned work that offers enough challenges to make work exciting, interesting and a learning opportunity, job satisfaction increases.  With an experienced and effective mentor who has the time and the commitment to support them as they learn, employees can rise to the challenge with minimal risk of failure and missed deadlines.
• By building your existing talent pool: Employees who align their career goals with your organizational goals are able raise the barre for themselves, co-workers and the organization– with the support of an effective mentor, they gain a better understanding of what the organizational goals are and where their skills, talents and accountabilities fit. Your organization will be nourished by this continually improved talent pool and increase your competitive advantage.
• By linking mentoring to business strategy: When your mentoring program is aligned with the strategies designed to gain over competitors in the market, your employees will be able to meet or exceed the expectations of management, shareholders and customers.
• By retaining your existing talent pool: Organizations like IBM and Nike provide structured mentoring programs for their employees. This adds a richer means of tracking employee performance while boosting productivity and innovation.
• By beginning organization-wide succession planning before it is too late: Boomers are choosing to work later for a variety of reasons. However, at some point, they will have to go – a mentoring program now can give them the direct means for transferring their knowledge and experience to the next generation. If they are partners in the process, they will not feel like they are training their replacement. The younger generation will see that they have a future with your organization.
• By increasing overall job satisfaction: When employees feel valued, see a future worth working toward that benefits them as much as it benefits the organization, they enjoy their jobs. Mentoring historically provides these benefits to both sides of the mentoring partnership.

A solid and effective mentoring program doesn’t happen by accident. It takes planning, training and a top to bottom commitment to making it work. Most people do not have the skills to lead another person from one level of expertise to another in an efficient way.  Those skills can be learned. When mentors and mentees learn the skills together and use their mentorship meetings to practice their skills while they learn and grow in their job or profession, you can expect extraordinary growth and results.

Susan Bender Phelps is the Chief Navigator at Odyssey Mentoring, a consulting and training company that specializes in strengthening existing mentorship programs and helping clients build strong programs from the start.

• By: Danyelle Little, Young Black Professional Guide
• January 18, 2011

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You can never underestimate the power of a great mentor. Mentoring is not only a way to help achieve success, but also allows one to give back to their professional genre and community. People who serve as mentors help propel their mentees to new heights by taking them under their wings and helping them to develop their talent organically. We tend to think of mentor-ship in the professional capacity, but mentoring can also work as a much needed assistance to young children in the community.

According to the National Mentoring Month official website, “National Mentoring Month is a time each year when our national spotlights the importance of mentors and the need for every child to to have a caring adult. When you serve as a mentor, you enrich your own life as much as you do the life of a child.”

National Mentoring Month was created by Harvard School of Public Health in 2001 and is celebrating its 10th anniversary this month. “By focusing national attention on the need for mentors, as well as how each of us—individuals, businesses, government agencies, schools, faith communities and nonprofits—can work together to increase the number of mentors, we assure brighter futures for our young people.”

You can become a mentor in a number of niches including schools, community, and business. To learn about mentoring opportunities in your area, you can visit mentoring.org.

In addition, Martin Luther King. Jr., Day has been recognized as a National Day of Service and would be a great day to spread the message about mentoring. There are a variety of ways you can champion the mentor-ship effort by organizing a mentoring project and forming teams to volunteer—there is no better way than to serve on the King holiday and support mentoring.

Do your part this month by becoming a mentor for the youth in your neighborhood or community. Together, we can all make an important difference to the future.

Years ago, I asked the finance manager where I worked if he would be willing to be my mentor. It was scary for me at the time. He was very smart, younger than I was by a decade, but higher up in management, and he knew finance like nobody else I had ever worked with. He was very abrupt, but I thought if he was being my mentor, he might soften his approach and it could improve our working relationship.

Math had always been a weakness for me and budgets and financial reports – full of numbers – seemed so daunting. The first couple of times  I brought him an issue I was struggling with, he  immediately showed me where the answer to my question could be found, or where the error was.  It helped in the short-run, but I didn’t learn from the experience so I could do it myself the next time. If I asked clarifying questions, he would roll his eyes and tell me to just do it the way he said to do it. Eventually, I stopped asking for his guidance. It was a mentoring match that simply didn’t work.

Practical mentoring skills can be learned and ultimately, mastery will make mentors better managers and leaders, while preparing mentees and proteges for the future.

The key things a professional mentor needs to be able to do are:

1. Develop a rapport with the protege/mentee to build trust and make it safe for open and constructive communication. Start by asking for and receiving your mentoring partner’s permission to delve into the problem.

2. Observe patterns in behavior and your mentoring partner’s ability to produce results – this allows the mentor to see what the protege or mentee cannot see from their point of view.

3. Listen to the core of the problem as identified by the protege/mentee – there is valuable insight in their take on what is happening or not happening.

4. Ask reflective questions that lead the protege/mentee through a problem-solving process that has them do all of the heavy thinking. Examples of reflective questions are:

What was the result you were trying to produce?

What actions did you take to get there?

How close to your goal did you get?

What do you think worked about what you did?

If you had to do this sales call, presentation, etc. again, what would you do differently?

In thinking through and answering these kinds of questions, the mentee has the best opportunity of getting to an “aha” moment. When he/she discovers their own answers, they can truly own the solutions.

5. Create a Specific, Measurable, Achievable Result in Time – SMART and a feedback method that works for both of you. This is what allows the mentor the opportunity to be supportive and encourage the mentee as he or she practices new behaviors, techniques  and ways of being.

This method initially takes more time than showing someone how to do it, telling them what to do, or giving “constructive criticism.”  It allows a person to think through a problem and to learn from their experience, whether they succeed or fail. The more you do it, the more trust there is in the relationship between mentor and protege, the faster the questioning and thinking process becomes.

During college, I had a faculty adviser who became one of the most effective mentors to ever work with me. Sometimes, even now I ask myself the kind of question she would ask and it gets me going in the right direction. Like the time I had writer’s block and the deadline was nearing. I was writing a biographical account for an article and it just wasn’t coming together. I remember telling her how hard it was to write about this topic in the first person. She said, “What if you wrote as if it was about someone else?”

I had my “aha” moment right then and there. I said, “I can do that,” and went on to complete the article that evening. It was one of my best.

These kinds of conversations don’t come naturally to most people. In our training programs, we give mentoring partners the underpinnings for these conversations, opportunities to try them in a safe environment and to  see how they work. As effective as these conversations are in a mentoring partnership, they are also very useful in management, supervision and even parenting.