…From my latest article for BizCatalyst360
In the beginning you had such high expectations for your corporate mentoring program. But the results may not be all that you had hoped for. Both the mentors and mentees may be struggling to find time to meet. Participation could be dwindling. And Management may be wondering why you started this program in the first place. Here are five things that will strengthen your program and empower your mentoring partners.
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Question
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Perform A Needs Assessment
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Teach Mentoring/Communication Skills
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Match Your Mentoring Partners Well
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Support Your People & Your Program
1. Question
Ask and answer questions that will help you think through what happened and what could be possible. Start at the beginning.
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Why did you believe you needed a mentoring program?
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What specific goals were you trying to achieve?
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What tangible, measurable results would mean success?
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If those results were achieved, what difference would they make to program participants and your organization?
As you begin to explore what you expected of your mentoring program, you might discover any number of things. For example, the program may have been introduced without a set of specific metrics that would allow you to distinguish and measure your success. Mentoring has become a popular buzzword – if everyone’s doing it, we should too.
Perhaps your mentoring program was launched as a way of addressing diversity issues, or a lack of succession planning – but with no path to advancement for either mentors or mentees. There may have been a staffing, employee engagement or training problem that you thought mentoring could fix; but there wasn’t sufficient analysis of the symptoms and causes of the problem before you began. These are common problems that many corporate mentoring programs face. They can be turned around. Once you have identified the nature of the problem. Read more at BizCatalyst360
Susan Bender Phelps is a nationally recognized expert on mentorship, leadership, and communication. She speaks at conferences throughout the U.S. See more of her wit and wisdom on Youtube.
