MPO

Mentorship

 

Mentorship is a relationship in which a more experienced or more knowledgeable person helps to guide a less experienced or less knowledgeable person. The mentor may be older or younger than the person being mentored, but she or he must have a certain area of expertise.

Mentorship experience and relationship structure affect the amount of psychosocial support, career guidance, role modeling, and communication that occurs in the mentoring relationships in which the protégés and mentors engaged.

"Mentoring" is a process that always involves communication and is relationship-based, but its precise definition is elusive, with more than 50 definitions currently in use. One definition of the many that have been proposed, is

Mentoring is a process for the informal transmission of knowledge, social capital, and the psychosocial support perceived by the recipient as relevant to work, career, or professional development; mentoring entails informal communication, usually face-to-face and during a sustained period of time, between a person who is perceived to have greater relevant knowledge, wisdom, or experience (the mentor) and a person who is perceived to have less (the protégé).

Historical

The roots of the practice are lost in antiquity. The word itself was inspired by the character of Mentor in Homer's Odyssey. Though the actual Mentor in the story is a somewhat ineffective old man, the goddess Athena takes on his appearance in order to guide young Telemachus in his time of difficulty.

Historically significant systems of mentorship include the guru–disciple tradition practiced in Hinduism and Buddhism, Elders, the discipleship system practiced by Rabbinical Judaism and the Christian church, and apprenticing under the medieval guild system.

In the United States, advocates for workplace equity in the second half of the twentieth century popularized the term “mentor” and concept of career mentorship as part of a larger social capital lexicon—which also includes terms such as glass ceiling, bamboo ceiling, networking, role model, and gatekeeper—serving to identify and address the problems barring non-dominant groups from professional success. Mainstream business literature subsequently adopted the terms and concepts, promoting them as pathways to success for all career climbers. In 1970 these terms were not in the general American vocabulary; by the mid-1990s they had become part of everyday speech.

Techniques

1. Accompanying: making a commitment in a caring way, which involves taking part in the learning process side-by-side with the learner.

2. Sowing: mentors are often confronted with the difficulty of preparing the learner before he or she is ready to change. Sowing is necessary when you know that what you say may not be understood or even acceptable to learners at first but will make sense and have value to the mentee when the situation requires it.

3. Catalyzing: when change reaches a critical level of pressure, learning can escalate. Here the mentor chooses to plunge the learner right into change, provoking a different way of thinking, a change in identity or a re-ordering of values.

4. Showing: this is making something understandable, or using your own example to demonstrate a skill or activity. You show what you are talking about, you show by your own behavior.

5. Harvesting: here the mentor focuses on "picking the ripe fruit": it is usually used to create awareness of what was learned by experience and to draw conclusions. The key questions here are: "What have you learned?", "How useful is it?"

There are two broad types of mentoring relationships: formal and informal. Formal mentoring relationships are set up by an administrative unit or office in a company or organization, which solicits and recruits qualified individuals who are willing to mentor, provides training to the mentors, and then helps to match the mentors up with a person in need of mentoring. While formal mentoring systems contain numerous structural and guidance elements, they still typically allow the mentor and mentee to have an active role in choosing who they want to work with. Formal mentoring programs which simply assign mentors to mentees without giving these individuals a say have not performed well. Even though a mentor and a mentee may seem perfectly matched "on paper", in practice, they may have different working or learning styles. As such, giving the mentor and the mentee the opportunity to help select who they want to work with is a widely used approach. Informal mentoring occurs without the use of structured recruitment, mentor training and matching services. Informal mentoring arrangements can develop naturally from business networking situations in which a more experienced individual meets a new employee, and the two strike up a rapport.

In addition to these broad types, there are also peer, situational and supervisory mentoring relationships. These tend to fall under the categories of formal and informal mentoring relationships. Informal relationships develop on their own between partners. Formal mentoring, on the other hand, refers to a structured process supported by the organization and addressed to target populations. Youth mentoring programs assist at-risk children or youth who lack role models and sponsors. In business, formal mentoring is part of talent management strategies which are used to groom key employees, newly hired graduates, high potential-employees and future leaders. The matching of mentor and mentee is often done by a mentoring coordinator, often with the help of a computerized database registry. The use of the database helps to match up mentees with mentors who have the type of experience and qualifications they are seeking.

There are formal mentoring programs that are values-oriented, while social mentoring and other types focus specifically on career development. Some mentorship programs provide both social and vocational support. In well-designed formal mentoring programs, there are program goals, schedules, training (for both mentors and protégés), and evaluation. In 2004 Metizo created the first mentoring certification for companies and business schools in order to guarantee the integrity and effectiveness of formal mentoring. Certification is attributed jointly by the organization and an external expert.

There are many kinds of mentoring relationships from school or community-based relationships to e-mentoring relationships. These mentoring relationships vary and can be influenced by the type of mentoring relationship that is in effect. That is whether it has come about as a formal or informal relationship. Also there are several models have been used to describe and examine the sub-relationships that can emerge. For example, Buell describes how mentoring relationships can develop under a cloning model, nurturing model, friendship model and apprenticeship model. The cloning model is about the mentor trying to "produce a duplicate copy of him or her self." The nurturing model takes more of a "parent figure, creating a safe, open environment in which mentee can both learn and try things for him-or herself." The friendship model are more peers "rather than being involved in a hierarchical relationship." Lastly, the apprenticeship is about less "personal or social aspects... and the professional relationship is the sole focus".

 In the sub-groups of formal and informal mentoring relationships: peer mentoring relationships are relationships where individuals are at the same skill training, similar positions and stages of career. However, one person may be more knowledgeable in a certain aspect or another, but they can help each other to progress in their work. A lot of time, peer relationships provide a lot of support, empathy and advice because the situations are quite similar.

 

Situational mentoring: Short-term relationships in which a person mentors for a specific purpose. This could be a company bringing an expert in regarding social media, or internet safety. This expert can mentor employees to make them more knowledgeable about a specific topic or skill.

Supervisory mentoring: This kind of mentoring has 'go to' people who are supervisors. These are people who have answers to many questions, and can advise to take the best plan of action. This can be a conflict of interest relationship because many supervisors do not feel comfortable also being a mentor.

Mentoring circles: Participants from all levels of the organization propose and own a topic. They then meet in groups to discuss the topic, which motivates them to grow and become more knowledgeable. Flash mentoring is ideal for job shadowing, reverse mentoring, and more.

Flash mentoring: Creates a low-pressure environment for mentoring that focuses on single meetings rather than a traditional, long-term mentoring relationship.

 

Benefits

Meta-analysis of 112 individual research studies found mentoring has significant behavioral, attitudinal, health-related, relational, motivational, and career benefits. Especially in the workplace, there are many benefits to developing a mentorship program for new and current employees.

Career development: Setting up a career development mentoring program for employees enables an organization to help junior employees to learn the skills and behaviours from senior employees that the junior employees need to advance to higher-responsibility positions. This type of mentoring program can help to align organizational goals with employees' personal career goals (of progressing within the organization). It gives employees the ability to advance professionally and learn more about their work. This collaboration also gives employees a feeling of engagement with the organization, which can lead to better retention rates and increased employee satisfaction.

High potential mentoring: The most talented employees in organizations tend to be difficult to retain, as they are usually seeking greater challenges and responsibilities, and they are likely to leave for a different organization if they do not feel that they are being given the opportunity to develop. Top talent, whether in an innovation or management role, have incredible potential to make great things happen for an organization. Creating a mentoring program for high-potential employees that gives them one-on-one guidance from senior leaders can help to build the engagement of these talented employees, give them the opportunity to develop, and increase their retention in the organization.

Reverse mentoring: While mentoring typically involves a more experienced, typically older employee or leader providing guidance to a younger employee, the opposite approach can also be used. In the 2000s, with the rise of digital innovations, Internet applications and social media, in some cases, new, young employees are more familiar with these technologies than senior employees in the organizations. The younger generations can help the older generations to expand and grow towards current trends. Everyone has something to bring to the table, this creates a "two way street" within companies where younger employees can see the larger picture, and senior employees can learn from young employees.

Knowledge transfer mentoring: Employees must have a certain set of skills in order to accomplish the tasks at hand. Mentoring is a great approach to help employees get organized, and give them access to an expert that can give feedback, and help answer questions that they may not know where to find answers to.

Mentorship provides critical benefits to individuals as well as organizations. Although mentorship can be important for an individual’s career advancement, in the United States it historically has been most apparent in relation to the advancement of women and minorities in the workplace. Until recent decades, American men in dominant ethnic groups gained most of the benefits of mentorship without consciously identifying it as an advancement strategy. American women and minorities, in contrast, more pointedly identified and pursued mentorship in the second half of the twentieth century as they sought to achieve the professional success they had long been denied.

In a 1958 study, Margaret Cussler showed that, for each female executive she interviewed who did not own her own company, “something—or someone—gave her a push up the ladder while others halted on a lower rung.” Cussler concluded that the relationship between the “sponsor and protégé” (the vocabulary of “mentorship” was not yet in common use) was the “magic formula” for success. By the late 1970s, numerous publications had established the centrality of mentorship to business success for everyone and particularly for women trying to break into the male-dominated business world. These publications noted the many specific benefits provided by mentorship, which included insider information, education, guidance, moral support, inspiration, sponsorship, an example to follow, protection, promotion, the ability to “bypass the hierarchy,” the projection of the superior’s “reflected power,” access to otherwise invisible opportunities, and tutelage in corporate politics.

This literature also showed the value of these benefits. A Harvard Business Review survey of 1,250 top executives published in 1979, for example, showed that most had been mentored or sponsored and that those who received such assistance reported higher income, a better education, a quicker path to achievement, and more job satisfaction than those who did not. The literature particularly emphasized the necessity of mentoring for businesswomen’s success. For example, although women made up less than one percent of the executives in the Harvard Business Review survey, all of these women reported being mentored. In subsequent decades, as mentoring became a widely valued phenomenon in the United States, women and minorities in particular continued to develop mentoring relationships consciously as they sought professional advancement.

The Mentor

Mentoring is a relationship between two people with the goal of professional and personal development. The "mentor" is usually an experienced individual who shares knowledge, experience, and advice with a less experienced person, or "mentee."

 Tips for starting a Mentorship Program:

Find a way to coach each employee to become exceptional in one thing, and not the same thing for each employee. Then recognize them for how well they are exceptional at that one thing. Keep on recognizing them by asking them to mentor others in that particular area of expertise.

You do not have to be perfect to be an effective mentor.

As a Mentor, you will teach skills and character. Skills are taught intentionally, where character is taught unintentionally.

You should teach those that are willing and capable to grow.

The mentee should be on a personal growth plan that is specific to that person.

There are four steps

1.      I complete the task. You watch and learn.

2.      We do the task together.

3.      You do the task. I’ll watch and offer feedback.

4.      You do the task.      

“Tell me and I forget, teach me and I may remember, involve me and I learn.”

― Benjamin Franklin

“True Mentors, don't make their mentees a clone of themselves”

-The Pygmalion Complex

Starting an MPO Program-Lessons Learned

I have been working on getting the MPO program started at my department for 6 years and we are just now implementing the program. Here are some things that I learned along the way.

 

1. Timing is everything. Budgets go into effect with most government agencies on October 1st. So budget development starts around March.You have to prep your command staff and have support the year prior to attempting to implement the program.

 

2. You have to sell the program as a way to benefit the department first. Approaching it from the perspective of the officer will be met with resistance.

 

3. Know how much the program will cost to the penny. It will come down to dollars and cents in the end. Try to think of ways the program will save money or time before you pitch the program to your superiors.

 

4. Get a group of senior officers that have all the right qualities and meet with them. Have them display their leadership abilities throughout the year and use them as your example to the command staff of what a good MPO should be. Those senior officers should become your allies in pushing the program.