What is Mentoring in an Organisation?

Mentoring can be used as a form of long-term cost-effective and tailored development for the individual which brings benefits to the mentee, mentor and the organisation.

“Off-line help by one person to another in making significant transitions in knowledge, work or thinking” Clutterbuck, D & Megginson, D, Mentoring Executives and Directors (1999)

“The purpose of mentoring is always to help the mentee to change something – to improve their performance, to develop their leadership qualities, to develop their partnership skills, to realise their vision, or whatever. This movement from where they are, (‘here’), to where they want to be (‘there’).” – Mike Turner

“Mentoring is a long term relationship that meets a development need, helps develop full potential, and benefits all partners, mentor, mentee and the organisation”. – Suzanne Faure

Traditionally, mentoring is the long-term passing on of support, guidance and advice. In the workplace it has tended to describe a relationship in which a more experienced colleague uses their greater knowledge and understanding of the work or workplace to support the development of a more junior or inexperienced member of staff.

The purpose of mentoring is to tap into the existing knowledge, skills, and experience of senior or high performing employees and transfer these skills to newer or less experienced employees in order to advance their careers.

Mentoring is primarily about developing capability and potential in the role rather than performance and skills. It is a specific learning and development intervention which can be used widely but in a specific context such as development, induction, or sponsorship. It should be delivered and evaluated through appropriately qualified mentors and overseen by a Programme Manager. It often works together with coaching but should be seen as a distinct activity.

Mentoring is used specifically and separately as a form of long-term tailored development for the individual which brings benefits to the organisation. The characteristics of mentoring are:

• It is essentially a supportive form of development.
• It focuses on helping an individual manage their career and improve skills.
• Personal issues can be discussed more productively unlike in coaching where the emphasis is on performance at work.
• Mentoring activities have both organisational and individual goals.

The difference between mentoring and coaching

The following table, adapted from Alred et al, highlights the differences between mentoring and coaching. It is separate and distinct from coaching but coaching and mentoring can often overlap.

Mentoring	Coaching
Ongoing relationship that can last for a long time	Relationship generally has a short duration
Can be more informal and meetings can take place as and when the mentored individual needs some guidance and or support	Generally, more structured in nature and meetings scheduled on a regular basis
More long term and takes a broader view of the person. Often known as the ‘mentee’ but the term client or mentored person can be used	Short-term (sometimes time bounded) and focused on specific development areas/issues
Mentor usually passes on experience and is normally more senior in organisation	Not generally performed on the basis that coach needs direct experience of client’s formal occupational role
The focus is on career and personal development	Focus generally on development/issues at work
Agenda is set by the mentored person with the mentor providing support and guidance to prepare them for future roles	Agenda focused on achieving specific, immediate goals
Revolves more around developing the mentee professionally	Revolves more around specific development areas/issues

Developing a mentoring approach

In Everyone Needs a Mentor Clutterbuck describes how mentoring works and the business benefits of the approach.

Benefits to the organisation are:

• scalable, affordable employee training.
• significant impact upon recruitment and retention (one study found that the loss of young graduates in the first expensive post training year was cut by two thirds).
• effective succession planning
• better culture, a mentoring program goes a long way in developing positive connections between co-workers, which will have a positive impact on the rest of the organisation.
• makes organisations adapt to change.
• increased productivity through better engagement and job satisfaction.
• reduce turnover by cultivating loyalty in those who are involved. As a result, this leads to lower turnover rates.

Benefits to the mentored person are:

• development outcomes which may include, knowledge, technical and behavioural improvements
• better management of career goals
• developing wider network of influence
• increased confidence and self awareness which helps build performance and contribution
• mentors also benefit from the satisfaction of developing their colleagues and of passing on their knowledge, skills and expertise
• line managers and HR also benefit from better employee focus and engagement.

When is mentoring the best development intervention?

Many experts advise that mentoring should be independent from any other training and learning activity. Again, it should not be confused with coaching. Mentoring can be the best intervention in areas where the development task relates to an employee requiring much specialist knowledge, and information. However, there are other contexts where it is the best intervention. Specific areas where it can be used are given in the table below.

Context	Purpose
Induction	Helps people get up to speed
Support for development	Ensures effective learning
Career progression	Assist in identifying and supporting potential talent
On the job learning	To enhance job related knowledge and skills for the present
Equal opportunity programmes	To ensure proper integration and fairness of treatment
Redundancy and outplacement	To assist individual in managing the difficult transition
New projects	Help rapid assimilation and delivery
New job transition	Helps employee adjust
Within change programmes	To help people adjust to change

How I can help..

If you would like to explore mentoring in your organisation and how it can work for you and your staff, then please get in touch. Together we can identify what you want to achieve from a mentoring programme and how to go about achieving it.

I have put together an e-guide on Introducing a Mentoring Programme in your organisation, if you would like a copy, you can download it HERE

More information is available at: www.fptrainingltd.co.uk or email me at: enquiries@fptrainingltd.co.uk or call me on: (+44) 01332 527144

Useful contacts:

European Mentoring and Coaching Council

References

1. ALRED, G., GARVEY, B. and SMITH, R (1998) Mentoring pocketbook. Alresford: Management Pocketbooks.
2. CLUTTERBUCK, D. (2014) Everyone needs a mentor: fostering talent in your organisation. 5th ed. London: Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development.
3. CIPD