Higher Ups Get Coaching on New Trends, Technology & Social Media From Young Workers

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.

Leslie Truex, author of the Work At Home Bible, interviewed Susan Bender Phelps, CEO, of Odyssey Mentoring and Leadership for an audio podcast on her website www.Work-At-HomeSuccess.com this week. You’ll learn how she started Odyssey Mentoring and Leadership and hear why mentoring skills and mentoring are so critical for professional development, employee engagement and productivity: http://workathomesuccess.com/wahs-podcast-163-susan-phelps-of-odyssey-mentor (you’ll have to copy and paste the link into your browser to get there).

An actively engaged employee is a productive member of your organization. They care, they’re motivated and they are actively contributing. In fact, a large part of your company’s success is the direct result of their accomplishments, creativity, drive and talent.

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.

Mentoring employees is no longer just a case of coaching, life skills, techniques, capabilities and experiential sharing, but also driving transformational change, says writer Chloe Herrick, Computerworld – Australia.

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

Last month I had the great pleasure of speaking at the Hillsboro Chamber of Commerce Westside Business Women lunch and learn event. The topic was  Being The MESSENGER – the nine principles that make networking so powerful. To capitalize on the momentum, the Chamber is having me back on February 17th for “Where Oh Where Should I Network?” - Whether it’s lunches, meetings, dinners, building that on-line tribe – how do you determine the BEST networking opportunities for you and your business? This session will help you save hundreds of dollars and thousands of hours while increasing your ROI on what you do spend.

On March 17th – “How to Generate 50 Contacts a Week” - - You can maximize your networking and have enough contacts to keep your business growing no matter how busy you are. Learn effective tactics you can use the minute you hit the street.

Please join us at these information packed sessions. WBW will be on February 17th from 11:30 AM-1:00PM at Coyotes Bar and Grill located at 5301 W. Baseline, Hillsboro 97124. RSVP by February 15th to Darcey Edwards 503-726-2143 darceye@hillchamber.org

I am the Chief Navigator for Odyssey Mentoring. We provide training to companies and professional associations for their mentoring and leadership programs. We opened our doors a little more than one year ago and we are in the black!

When I speak and write, I  share my business-building principles, strategies and tactics. She has trained hundreds in the art and science of networking. Throughout my career, I have delivered success after success in marketing, advertising and public relations – increased sales, broadened customer bases, community action, media campaigns and charitable fund raising. She has more than 20 years of hands-on experience as an entrepreneur, manager, trainer, writer and speaker.

A lot of experts recommend that having one or more mentors is an important aspect of developing your career. Being a mentor can be just as valuable. The problem with finding or being an effective mentor is that many people who are very accomplished in a particular area, may not have the skills to lead someone through the thinking that takes you from the problem to an insight to action and accountability – the keystones of breakthrough performance.

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.

Has the door to the executive suite and the board room slammed shut for women? Is it still possible for other capable and talented women to join the ranks of leaders like Brenda C. Barnes, Chairman and CEO of Sara Lee, Andrea Jung, Chairman and CEO of Avon Products, Indra Nooyi, Chairman and CEO of Pepsico, and Patricia Woertz, Chairman, President and CEO of Archer Daniels Midland?

The evidence is disappointing. In a recent article, about the 2010 Catalyst Census: Fortune 500 Women Board Directors and the 2010 Catalyst Census: Fortune 500 Women Executive Officers and Top Earners, released Monday, December 13, Ilene H. Lang, Catalyst president and chief executive officer told FOX Business, “The first look at our census numbers over the last years shows little progress for women as top earners.”

• In 2010, women held 14.4% of executive officer positions, up from 13.5% in 2009 and only 7.6% of the top earning positions compared with 6.3% in 2009.
• Women held just 15.7% of board seats in 2010, a mere 0.5% gain over the 15.2% in 2009.

One bright aspect of the report, according to reporter, Barbara Mannino, showed that men and women with mentors were placed higher in their post-MBA first jobs, with men benefiting more than women over time. Men with mentors were 93% more likely than men without mentors to start out at middle management or above. Women with mentors increased their odds of being placed at mid-manager or above by only 56% over women who did not have mentors.

Throughout their careers, men received more promotions than women and higher salary increases. Each promotion earned men an extra 21% in compensation; for women, each promotion amounted to an extra 2%.

High- potential men and women with senior-level mentors advance further and earn more than those with less senior mentors. Overall, though, women’s compensation still lags men whether or not their mentor is at the top.

With top tier leadership and board rooms having so few women among their ranks, it is less likely these executives will choose a woman to mentor. Historically, leaders choose the person most likely to be just like them as their own careers advanced.

Forward-looking companies can boldly address this issue by creating and supporting mentorship programs that are open to a wider pool of future leaders. To launch such a program, both mentors and mentees should receive training that prepares both partners for success – regardless of gender, culture and generational differences.

Mentoring at the senior level is not about showing another how to do something, rather it is about cultivating the kind of thinking that experience provides. It includes being able to have a conversation that leads to insight, action, accountability, and learning. It provides a support system for the learning process. Finally, as the mentee proves herself it includes career sponsorship and network sharing to help her advance in her career.

Whenever I make a presentation, someone in the audience asks if there is a difference between mentoring, coaching, and counseling. Though the skills used for each are similar – asking reflective questions, active listening, summarizing, observing patterns, challenging assumptions, and providing support – they are fundamentally very different.

Here are some distinctions we use:

Mentoring– a developmental relationship between a more experienced “mentor” and a less experienced partner that typically involves the sharing of advice, resources and support for reaching specific goals. The mentor is experienced in a particular domain and shares that experience while bringing the protégé up the ranks.  It is a partnership between the two. Ideally, the protégé leads the relationship by asking for guidance and support. The relationship can occur in a formalized program or between two people who agree between them to work together for a period of time. In our work, the mentors and protégés work for the same company or belong to the same professional organization.

Coaching – a method of professional development that can be provided by a supervisor or a paid professional to attain a certain work behavior that will improve leadership, accountability, teamwork, sales, communication, goal setting, strategic planning and more. It can be provided in a number of ways, including one-on-one, group sessions and large scale organizational work. Business coaches often specialize in a specific practice area such as executive coaching, corporate coaching, small business and leadership coaching. A good business coach does not need to have specific business expertise and experience in the same field as the person being coached.

Counseling – counselors are professionals who are trained to diagnose and help a client with emotional problems, resolving issues from the past or a dysfunction. From time to time, a mentor or coach may find it useful to recommend counseling to a client or protégé.

If you’ve identified a need for strengthened leadership development programs for your employees or members, you could be considering a formal mentoring program. You know you have people who want mentors and you  have a group of more experienced people interested in being mentors. But, you also know being a mentor is not for everyone. Though your mentor candidates are willing – are they ready? Just because a person knows how to do something well and has years of experience doing it, doesn’t mean they have the skills to teach what they know.

For many people a mentoring session can become a game of Monkey See/Monkey Do: “This is the way I do this , it has always worked for me,  and this is how you should do it from now on.”

For others it becomes a trip down memory lane:  “Why, when I started in this industry, the computers still had green diode screens…”

Still others take on a Dear Abbey quality: “Now that I understand your problem, here is what you ought to do…”

These approaches do work in some instances, but they don’t  foster a culture of learning and open communication.  They don’t lead to the majority of people becoming proficient in breakthrough thinking and, ultimately causing increased productivity.  Rather, they can alienate the protégé/mentee, take too long to get to the point, and fail to produce lasting results.

What we have found to be useful in our programs, is to teach prospective mentors how to become keen observers, enhance their listening and emotional intelligence skills and for them to practice asking reflective questions that allow their protégés to dance with them toward insight and breakthrough.  These conversations can be so effective, that complex issues can be dealt with in just five to 15 minutes. Once learned in the context of the mentoring program, these skills will be useful for managers to use with all of their direct reports. Now that’s productive mentoring that leads a high return on investment.