Randy is more than a little anxious. He’s been moving ahead rapidly with his company, and he knows that his C-level managers see him as an emerging leader. Now, however, his boss has just presented him with a new challenge: mentor two impressive employees who have just joined the firm. Randy has had a few good mentors in the past, but there’s a big difference between having one and being one. He needs to be ready in two weeks. What to do first?
Randy begins to brainstorm and research. Within a few hours, he has the outline of a game plan and knows exactly what he needs to do to become a great mentor:
- Develop a servant mentality
- Ask the right questions
- Cultivate their strengths
- Model executive presence
- Put them in the spotlight
Let’s take a more in-depth look at each of these traits now.
5 Ways to Be a Great Mentor
1 – Develop a servant mentality.
The mentee is the star of the show, and you are there to cheer her on. Be positive and empowering, remembering that your mentee will undoubtedly feel nervous as she steps outside of her comfort zone. Your job is to encourage, reassure, and uplift—and stay in the background.
2 – Ask the right questions.
In his book Critical Thinking for Everyday Life, Robert Ridel says that “to question is to understand.” Probing, open-ended questions often lead other people to discover answers and ideas that they didn’t know they had. Always approach questioning with a positive stance:
- Why do you think that worked so well?
- What would you do differently next time?
- If you were the client, what questions would you ask?
3 – Cultivate their strengths.
Being in a new position, or with a new company, is challenging in itself. Fear of failure may lie close to the surface. Now is the time to remind your mentee of what he has already accomplished. He landed this job, didn’t he? And that was based on a track record of prior successes. Get him to talk about those successes and how to translate them into the current environment. This doesn’t mean you should ignore areas for growth.
4 – Model executive presence.
You already have the right skills and attitude. That’s why you were chosen to become a mentor. You are not only talented; you have at least an above-average ability to influence others, model executive presence, and consistently add value to every project you manage. Strive to demonstrate these traits when working with your mentees, and to help your mentee learn to develop them in turn. Come from a place of teaching, not from ego.
Hiring an executive presence coach to share tools for developing executive presence so they can further enhance their growth.
5 – Put them in the spotlight.
When your mentee scores a win, make sure to give her the credit. Let her know when she hits a home run. Don’t hesitate to brag to your peers and higher-level leaders about what a great job she’s doing. Tell employees how you’re promoting them, too—that will inspire them to strive even harder. Then use that win as a foundation for continuing to grow.
Six months after Randy took on his first two mentees, he was asked to develop a mentoring model to be implemented company-wide. Today, mentoring is a way of life, based on the initial plan he put together.
Setting Up a Corporate Mentoring Program at Your Company
If your company doesn’t yet have a formal mentoring program, why not be the leader who proposes the idea and outlines how to do it?
Begin by explaining the significant benefits to everyone involved, which will help get C-suite leadership on board.
Mentees themselves obviously benefit substantially from quality mentoring. But the mentor also reaps benefits, along with the broader company.
Benefits to the mentee:
- Opportunity to take control of their own learning and career advancement.
- A chance to develop valuable contacts in other parts of the company.
- Significant improvement in their productivity and enthusiasm.
- Widespread recognition for their work—when the mentor acts as an advocate who promotes them to others.
Benefits to the mentor:
- Enhanced coaching and listening skills.
- Respect of higher-level leaders in the organization.
- Satisfaction of passing on experience to others.
Benefits to the company:
- Heightened productivity across the entire team.
- Ability to tap into the full potential of underutilized employees who may have been “stuck” at their current level.
- Greater employee loyalty and retention due to increased job satisfaction.
Dana’s staff is constantly asking her what they need to do to get promoted. Her four direct reports are especially anxious to move ahead in the company. Neither the company nor Dana herself has a definitive mentoring program. She realizes that she needs to make some drastic changes in mentoring her staff in order to help them grow and be offered the opportunities they deserve.
In the absence of a formal corporate mentoring program, a client named Dana took steps to develop a mentoring program on her own. She met with each of her direct reports and expressed that she wanted to offer opportunities for them to take part in higher-level projects. She also wanted to coach them on self-promotion techniques so they could make their value known. She would also raise awareness of their accomplishments by proactively messaging not only her own boss and peers but C-level leaders above them for especially pivotal achievements.
Her mentees left the meeting with their own personal action steps, and they also knew exactly what Dana planned to do to help them. She regularly shared self-promotion techniques, such as copying the boss’s boss on project-related emails and planning appropriate times to speak up in meetings about projects they were working on.
Dana scheduled regular one-on-ones with each of her direct reports. She also put together a schedule of informal communications with her boss and other C-level managers to keep them informed about what her staff was doing.
At the three-month milestone, Dana noticed that a high level of enthusiasm had developed among her entire staff. Not only was the day-to-day work being accomplished more efficiently; they were excited about the opportunity to work on new initiatives, and some had even volunteered for cross-training in other departments.
After six months, Dana made a list of the tangible benefits that had resulted from the mentoring program, not only for her staff, but also for herself and the company as a whole. This allowed leaders to better understand what she and her team had accomplished through the program, rather than letting it fly under the radar. They began inviting her to C-level talent development meetings, knowing her insights would bring great benefits for the company. Soon she actually received a promotion that allowed her to join their ranks, and now they have a flourishing mentoring program throughout the entire company.
Many companies have formal mentoring programs that play a key role in their talent development. In the absence of such a program, a single individual like yourself can develop your own, providing significant benefits to the employees involved, the manager, and the company. Your leadership will thank you for it, and you’ll greatly bolster retention in your organization by making employees feel supported, nurtured, and valued.
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