Mentoring: how to make it work

Meena Thuraisingham

Despite being rated as one of the top five most powerful development experiences by successful leaders, mentoring remains largely misunderstood.

Mentors have played profound roles and had significant impact on the careers and lives of those they mentored-this is as true of the corridors of political power, on the sports field and the entertainment industry as it is in the boardroom.

A mentor is anyone who provides non-judgmental support and encouragement in one’s career, or personal life, on either a one-off or continuing basis.

They are typically a person with greater experience, expertise, insight and wisdom counselling, teaching and guiding another person.

There are five common myths that stand in the way of impactful mentoring:

• Mentoring is best company-initiated and organised: It is increasingly common for companies to develop a formal mentoring program and designate mentors for their talented employees. While companies do play a role in facilitating critical relationships to form, in general mentoring relationships initiated by you are likely to be better targeted than those organised for you by your company.
• It is important that there is personal chemistry with a mentor: The best mentoring is from people you may not feel fully comfortable with, or who don’t think like you. Most people, nevertheless, gravitate to mentors that are similar to them. The problem with this, however, is that it does not necessarily result in your thinking being challenged.
• Mentoring is a one-on-one relationship: Contrary to the common view, mentoring need not be a one-on-one intervention; it can take place in a group setting. For example, an interesting variation on the idea of mentoring is to use an advisory or personal board of directors.
• Mentors help you open doors to advance your career: Most people think of mentors as people who can open doors for them. If this is what you need, then it is not a mentor you need. You need someone who is networked well and will introduce you to useful contacts. Mentors play a more profound role. A good mentor may do nothing more than put a mirror up to you and show you clearly what is holding you back.
• Here are some of the ways in which mentors have made a difference to those who have used them and may help you: providing knowledge of how systems and processes work, both internal and external to the organisation; helping to clarify your values and what matters most to you; adding technical competence; enabling growth in your character and development of your moral standards; supplying knowledge of how to behave in a social setting that is unfamiliar to you; assisting in understanding the world around you; helping to recognise what may be holding you back from living to your full potential; providing support in making some choices about work-life balance; helping to understand how to get things done in or through the organisation, or through others.
• Your advancement is your responsibility, not the responsibility of mentors.
• Mentors have more seniority than the people they mentor: Mentors can come from the most unlikely places. Early in your career as a plant engineer you may find an experienced maintenance operator a reliable source of ongoing information about where the major safety vulnerabilities are. As a sale manager you may find the fresh insights of a “rookie” sales rep a source of vital perspectives about the impact of the changing demographic of the customer. A store manager walking the floor and engaging an experienced checkout operator from time to time is a great way of tapping into insights about the market, customers and brands not available from sales reports.
• Vital learning may come from people who are not more senior to you. In a knowledge economy, expertise, insight and wisdom are everywhere and it is incumbent on us to find innovative ways of connecting to sources of real insight.
• Organisations such as BP, Proctor and Gamble, Marriott and Woolworths have “reverse mentoring” programs that help executives tap into new insights early and recognise changes before they happen.

Mentors are also found among trusted and capable peers. If you feel the need to develop strong strategic skills, a peer known for their strategic mind can become a valuable mentor

Meena Thuraisingham is director and principal, TalentInvest, and author of Careers Unplugged