Insight on Coaching
Mentoring Programs Part 2 Transcript
Prepared for: Prepared by:
Insight Educational Consulting Ubiqus Reporting
(IEC)

Time Speaker Transcript
00:00 Tom Floyd Hello, everyone, and welcome to Insight on Coaching.
Insight on Coaching explores the many facets, flavors, and sides of the emerging
professional coaching field.
I'm Tom Floyd. I'm the CEO of Insight Educational Consulting and your host for
today's show.
This week our show is a follow-up show dedicated to the topic of mentoring.
As many of you will remember, we did a show last month on the value of mentorship
and had an extremely engaging conversation about the topic of mentoring, a topic so
engaging in fact, that we wanted to do a follow-up show to continue the discussion.
Three of our guests from our previous show are back with us today to continue the
conversation, as well as a new face.
On our show today we'll talk about the differences between coaching and mentoring
in more detail, and we'll explore how to build mentoring programs in further detail as
well.
We'll also talk about best practices to keep in mind when providing mentoring in your
organization.
Let me give you a quick rundown of who we have with us today.
Our first guest, Donna Karlin, CEC, aka “The Shadow Coach” has pioneered the
specialized practice of Shadow Coaching™ with global political and senior
organizational leaders.
She is founder and principal of ‘A Better Perspective™, Executive and Political
Leadership Coaching, The School of Shadow Coaching™ for advanced coach
training at the Master level, and Mindsful™, a global Research and Development
Team.
Donna is also the author of The Power to Decide: An Executive’s Guide to
Conquering a Chaotic Day and Climbing Out of the Meeting Pit: Smart Meetings for
Smart Leaders.
Additionally she is also a columnist for Canadian Government Executive and
Vanguard Magazines and writes a weekly column for Fast Company called “Jumping
Into the Deep End of Leadership.”
Welcome to the show, Donna.
02:08 Donna Karlin Thank you so much.
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02:10 Tom Floyd Our second guest, Dr. Susan Weinberger, or Dr. Mentor, as she is affectionately
called in the field, is a leading authority on the design, implementation and evaluation
of quality mentoring programs.
She is the founder and president of the Mentor Consulting Group and is recognized
for her expertise in establishing, maintaining, and evaluating youth and adult
mentoring programs for schools, colleges, corporations and communities and school-
to-work initiatives.
Susan is the former Chair of the Public Policy Council of MENTOR/the National
Mentoring Partnership, and is the founding member of its Technical Assistance
Corporation.
Susan is the author of several articles and publications on mentoring including: The
My Mentor and Me Series, the Business Guide to Mentoring, Strengthening Native
Community Commitment through Mentoring, The Mentor Handbook, and Mentoring a
Movement: My Personal Journey.
Welcome back to the show, Susan.
02:57 Dr. Susan It's my pleasure.
Weinberger
02:59 Tom Floyd Our next guest, Dave Williams, is the Corporate Director of Employee Training and
Development at Hunter Douglas, North America’s leading manufacturer and marketer
of custom window fashions.
Headquartered in Upper Saddle River, New Jersey, Hunter Douglas has more than
50 divisions and 9,000 locations throughout the U.S. and Canada. Hunter Douglas
was recently named as one of the “Best Places to Work in New Jersey.”
At Hunter Douglas, Dave’s role is to develop, implement and facilitate training
initiatives that support Hunter Douglas’ corporate culture and offer employees
opportunities for professional growth and advancement.
Dave was a key player in the development of a master’s level corporate university
curriculum for the organization.
Welcome back to the show, Dave.
03:38 Dave Williams Thank you, Tom.
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03:40 Tom Floyd And last, but not least, our fourth guest, Dr. Lois Zachary, is the President of
Leadership Development Services and is an internationally recognized expert in
mentoring.
Lois coaches leaders and their organizations in designing, implementing and
evaluating learner-centered mentoring programs.
Her long list of clients includes IBM Corporation, IKEA, Motorola University, Nortel
Networks, and Watson Wyatt & Company.
Lois has been published extensively on the topics of mentoring, leadership and board
development, staff development, consulting and adult development and learning.
She is the author of The Mentor’s Guide, the best-selling book that is the primary
resource for organizations interested in promoting mentoring for leadership and
learning, and her latest book, Creating a Mentoring Culture: The Organization’s
Guide, provides a comprehensive resource for promoting organizational mentoring
sustainability.
Welcome back to the show, Lois.
04:30 Dr. Lois Thank you very much. It's good to be back.
Zachary
04:33 Tom Floyd It's good to have all of you back.
To kick off our show today, I'd like to start off by going back to what really got our
conversation going in our last show, and that's the difference between mentoring and
coaching.
We had just starting talking about it and only had about five or six minutes
unfortunately to discuss the topic because it was right before the end of our show.
To set the stage, let me share the information that we used to kick off that dialogue
the last time to refresh all of our memories.
Now, one of our former Insight on Coaching guests, Keith Rosen, had highlighted the
differences between a coach and a mentor on his website, Allbusiness.com.
According to Keith, from his perspective, the coach is an expert on people and
personal development. He continues on his website as follows:
\"Typically a skilled specialist regarding a certain topic, competency, or industry, a
coach's role is to provide structure, foundation, and support to people to begin to self-
generate the results they want on their own.
Coaching is a process of inquiry, relying on the use of well-crafted questions rather
than continually sharing the answers to get people to sharpen their own problem-
solving skills.
Learning and growth are achieved by both parties involved.
In coaching, the relationship is objective and the focus is not only on what the person
needs to do to become more successful, but also who the person is and how he or
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she thinks.
A coach works on the whole person, and is multi-dimensional, rather than focusing
only on what the person is already doing. The coaching relationship is built on
choice rather than necessity.\"
Now, here's how Keith defined what a mentor is.
According to him, \"A mentor is an expert in a field, industry, or at a company, who
typically acts as an internal advisor.\" He elaborates on his website as follows:
\"Usually this is done on a professional level to advance the mentored person's
career.
Often mentors have their own approach already in mind, then use the system that
has worked for them in the past without taking into consideration the style, values,
integrity, or strengths of the people they mentor.
As such, the mentor offers more solutions and answers to the person rather than
questions that challenge people to challenge their thinking and behavior, making it
more of a one-way, training-driven versus collaborative or more coaching-like
relationship.
Mentors may also have something to gain professionally; and, if such, can
sometimes have their own personal agenda.
Often mentors are not trained, and their guidance is based more on their experience
rather than the skills or proficiencies needed to mentor. Often the mentoring
relationship is need-driven rather than driven by choice.\"
Now, on our last show, and unfortunately he couldn't be here with us today, Barton
Goldsmith had concerns about these definitions.
That's how we kicked off the conversation, and he felt the definitions didn't really
work for him.
When asked to differentiate between the two, he brought up some points around
people perhaps being more comfortable using the term \"coach\" rather than \"mentor,\"
but also that coaching, from his perspective, was a bit “lighter” than mentoring. He
elaborated by saying that coaching could even help set the stage for a more formal
mentoring program, almost building the business case for a mentoring program, if
you will.
Lois, I would like to start with you.
You had a different point of view on our last show, saying that you saw coaches and
mentors as kindred spirits, but also highlighting how the field of coaching had
evolved.
Let's pick up where we left off.
Can you talk to us more about what you see, personally, as the differences between
a coach and a mentor?
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08:12 Dr. Lois Well, as you started off the conversation, recalling the discussion about kindred
Zachary spirits, that's exactly where I would pick it up.
The idea that coaching, I see, as one of the ribs of the mentoring umbrella, if you
would, meaning that coaches have many processes that they use.
I think what's important in a mentoring relationship is that you focus on the future and
on development, whereas coaching is really about boosting performance, and you
often need to do that in order to get to the development.
But the bulk of the time, a mentoring relationship should be focused more on the
development and the whole person.
I guess one of the pieces I wanted to bring up was just to look at the definition of
mentoring, and I really see mentoring as a reciprocal learning relationship, where
both the mentor and the mentee agree to a partnership where they're going to work
collaboratively towards achievement of mutually defined goals.
In other words, these mutually defined goals are about development of a mentee's
skills, ability, knowledge, and thinking.
So, it's not enough that just the mentee has defined the goals, but they need to be
mutually understood.
Now, I would emphasize the reciprocity, the fact that it's a learning relationship, you
have to work on the relationship as well as the learning, and it's where there's
collaboration and there's mutual accountability.
09:54 Tom Floyd So, several things. I think that is an excellent summary.
I want to come back to some of the points that you made.
When you mentioned mentoring being more focused on the future and development,
and coaching being more performance focused, but also setting the stage for that
development, would you say that coaching can set the stage for mentoring in some
cases?
It sounds like that could be one way that they compliment each other.
10:23 Dr. Lois I would say this: When we go in and develop mentoring programs with
Zachary organizations, we like to put in place mentoring coaches; and mentoring coaches are
there to support the mentoring, and actually coaching to boost the performance of a
mentor or a mentee.
I could see mentoring as setting the stage for coaching, or coaching as a way of
setting the stage for mentoring, as in a coach saying \"Really, you might think about
getting a mentor to help you in this particular area.\"
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11:03 Tom Floyd I had never heard or thought of the concept of there being mentoring coaches, but
that makes perfect sense, to help prepare mentors for the relationship and vice-
versa.
11:11 Dr. Lois Right. You want to make sure they're as successful as possible, so building a stable
Zachary of mentoring coaches in an organization will help people in the process.
And these are people who are either super mentors or mentors to the mentoring
partners.
11:29 Tom Floyd Another interesting distinction that you made was that in the mentor/mentee
relationship, both parties can learn from each other.
Would you say that necessarily when we talk about coaches and their clients, the
client can typically learn a lot, but do you feel coaches really aren’t in a position
where they're learning from the individual that they're coaching?
11:50 Dr. Lois I think if a coach is not learning, they're not coaching.
Zachary
You need to really be open to learning, but I would say the primary purpose of a
mentoring relationship evolves around the learning as the center piece of it for both
partners.
12:10 Tom Floyd Got it, okay. That makes sense to me.
I'd like to turn to the rest of you. I'll go one by one and ask you, from your
perspectives, to build upon anything that Lois said, and also talk about your
perspective on the difference between a coach and a mentor.
Susan, I'll turn to you next. What would you add and what do you see as the primary
difference between a coach and a mentor?
12:32 Dr. Susan First, I would ask the question, not necessarily to be answered on this show, but can
Weinberger a coach be a mentor and a mentor be a coach?
I think there are times when they are interchangeable.
I do believe there are some distinctions, although there are a lot of experts out there
that say there is no difference between mentoring and coaching.
I think, from my perspective, that coaching is the professional relationship that
focuses specifically on what the client needs to accomplish. And the word
\"professional\" is very important to me there.
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Whereas, the mentor is in a very different role because, perhaps, they are assisting
in the professional way, but there's the personal aspect, and Keith talked about the
mentor advancing career development professionally, and there are some mentors
that really do not get into the area of career development and, let's say, promotion,
the way a coach may.
But, really, they are there to be an advocate, a friend, and someone that you can
trust and really look to for assistance whenever you get into a professional or a
personal situation that's challenging.
That's where I see, perhaps, the difference between a mentor and a coach.
And, if you look at the real dictionary definition, there's very little distinction because
both a mentor and a coach are training and guiding, but there's the one slight
difference, even in that definition, that a mentor is a counselor and a guide, and I
haven't heard those two words yet, as they connect with coaching.
So, maybe that's the slight difference.
14:17 Tom Floyd So, it sounds like, from your perspective, just to summarize, it's really the nature of
the relationship, the type of relationship that each has with the person that they're
working with, that’s different.
That with coaching, it's more of a professional relationship, and probably more
focused on career development.
But, with the mentor/mentee relationship, hopefully it's focused on career
development, but really it's more of a personal relationship and the mentor has more
of an opportunity to be an advocate or friend, things like that?
14:48 Dr. Susan That's exactly how I look at it.
Weinberger
Again, if you talk to five or six experts, they'll all disagree a little bit, which is healthy,
but I do agree that that is a distinction.
And, yet, I go back to the question, can a mentor be a coach and a coach be a
mentor?
And my answer is yes.
15:05 Tom Floyd Well, Dave, I'd like to turn to you next.
Do you see a difference between the two, between a mentor and a coach, from your
perspective, or do you view it differently within the organization at Hunter Douglas?
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15:19 Dave Williams Well, actually, in our case here, I'm going to actually tie in a little bit both on what Lois
and Susan said.
We look at coaching here at Hunter Douglas primarily as a way of boosting
performance.
We look at coaches as, I guess, primarily motivators and teachers.
When we look at mentoring in our organization, right now I would tie in a little bit to
what Susan is saying.
To this point, we are viewing mentoring more or less as a counselor, being a guide,
helping with career development and, actually, orientation into our environment.
That's one of the main functions or main responsibilities we see a mentor as actually
assuming in our organization.
Now, that may change over time, but at this point I would tap into a few of those
things that Susan mentioned; a counselor, a guide, also helping with career
development, but I would also add that piece of orientation as being a key focus as to
what we expect mentors to do for us.
16:24 Tom Floyd To build upon the orientation piece, are there different points within an employee's
career at Hunter Douglas where you might use one over another?
So, if there's a new employee, for example, getting enrolled in the mentoring
program, it may be more appropriate because it’s a good time to get an orientation
into the company, the department, the team, things like that; versus coaching could
be, you've been with the company for a couple of years and looking to grow, again, a
specific skill or improve your performance in a certain area, and that's where a coach
could get introduced?
16:56 Dave Williams Exactly.
We actually see the mentoring program at this point in our organization ending after a
specific period of time, and then the coaching moves in forward from that point on.
The mentor can always serve as a friend and a counselor later on, but the formal
program or the formal piece actually ends after a specific period of time.
So, that's exactly the way we would view it in our organization.
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17:25 Tom Floyd Okay, got it. It makes total sense.
Donna, I want to loop you in next.
What are your thoughts so far on the conversation?
Anything that you would add between the difference between a coach and a mentor,
or the coaching and mentor/mentee relationship?
17:39 Donna Karlin One of the fundamental topics of the training that we do in coaching is to look at the
differences and the similarities between various interventions within the workplace.
I believe there's a fundamental difference between mentoring and coaching.
Mentoring is often goal-oriented and helps the mentee build their future, often
because they have the knowledge base, the expertise, and experience within the
organization.
Coaches deal more in the intangibles.
We work with the individual's social, relational, and environmental aspects of the
client's world, so it's their entire being as an individual and how they fit within their
organization.
But we deal with everything from their motivators, their energizers, and often we give
clarity rather than solutions. M
entors are more guides, in a way, to the mentee.
The coach is the person that helps the client deal with what they don't know, not what
they do know, and to pay attention to the behaviors that may be standing in their way
of success.
So, I find that there is a fundamental difference between the two, but they both have
a very powerful place in growing people into their level of excellence.
19:02 Tom Floyd So both have a role, and both can definitely compliment each other, from your
perspective?
19:07 Donna Karlin Oh, definitely.
19:09 Tom Floyd Dave gave a great example of when a mentor may be more appropriate than a
coach, doing an orientation for example-I thought that was a really good example-
and a question that I'll pose to everybody as a group is, are there other situations that
you can think of where it may be more appropriate to use a mentor or mentoring
program than turn to a coach or a coaching program?
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19:33 Dr. Lois Tom, I'd like to just jump in on one notion that's related to this.
Zachary
We've used the word \"counselor\" a couple of times as part of the role, and I just want
to caution that in mentoring, when we begin to fall into the role of counseling, there
are areas that you just don't go because it's more appropriate as a mentor to refer
someone to a counselor because it's really more centered, I believe, around
intervention techniques, and sometimes counseling involves more emotional support.
So, to be able to say as a mentor what the boundaries are, I think, is really important.
20:23 Dr. Susan And I'll jump in also here and caution, as Lois did, that there are some folks that
Weinberger when they talk about coaching, particularly in counseling, or even mentoring in
counseling, that get concerned, and this is not therapy at all.
The coach is helping the client to examine their values and their goals and their
aspirations, but if they reach a point, either the mentor or the coach here, where this
particular mentee needs a different kind of intervention, they need to understand that
they're not the professionals there, and there are other people, thank goodness,
outside of the business, the organization, that can come in and help.
21:08 Tom Floyd Thank you.
21:08 Dave Williams I'd just like to echo that as well. We have with our own framework that same type of
boundary, knowing the limitations and knowing, really, where you can provide
guidance and where you're going to have to stop and look around.
We actually have certain things in place which will help in that regard, but just
understanding how far individuals should go in these roles.
21:31 Tom Floyd So, it sounds like, Dave, that you provide some guidelines?
21:35 Dave Williams Yes, exactly.
21:35 Tom Floyd If any of these things come up, here's the action you should take.
You should not try to address this on your own.
21:40 Dave Williams Exactly.
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21:41 Dr. Susan And you had also asked for other examples in terms of the role of the mentor, and we
Weinberger have used the mentor not only for orientation purposes, but for what we call reverse
mentoring.
And I think I even mentioned that on the show the last time.
That's the junior executive that has the wonderful technology, those terrific skills in
terms of technology, that the senior individual in the company may not have.
So, it's really the junior mentor who now can play a role in bringing some senior - and
notice I didn't say older - employees in the company up to date.
And it is a rule that we have used in a quasi-mentoring capacity quite effectively.
22:27 Donna Karlin I'd like to jump in, if I may.
What I find is very valuable is the mentor does guide, and a key role in mentoring is
sharing knowledge and sharing expertise to insure continuity and sustainability in the
next wave of leadership in an organization. It's very powerful.
An external coach coming in could support the individual's behavioral patterns, etc,
and help them evolve from a non-reporting structure and a non-internal paradigm, in
a way, so the coaching client feels very safe in sharing absolutely everything with an
external individual who does not have a stake in the organization, only in helping
grow that individual.
So, there's a great compliment right there.
23:15 Tom Floyd Donna, I love that you brought that point up.
It's like you were reading my mind through the airwaves here.
A question that I wanted to ask was about confidentiality, the issue of coaching
versus therapy has come up on several of our shows, and when it's appropriate.
In other words, the things that it is appropriate for a coach to talk about, and the
things that aren't appropriate for a coach to engage with their client on.
It sounds like the same thing's going to come up within the mentor/mentee
relationship.
With confidentiality, it comes up so much on this show in terms of a) they're
sometimes more comfortable confiding in an external resource than an internal one,
but also it's where do you draw the line?
If a coach, for example, hears that something that a client is doing internally is
unethical, or illegal-
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24:01 Dr. Lois I really believe that confidentiality has a shelf life for some people, and for some
Zachary people it doesn't.
In a mentoring relationship, one of the most important conversations mentoring
partners can have is about confidentially, because confidentially really has to do with
the assumptions that we make.
So, you need to come to an agreement about that.
Having said that, within an organizational context, there are also some ground rules
around confidentiality that are part of the organization's culture and policies and
practices.
So, you have to be able to combine the two, but the most important thing is to be
able to talk about what will constitute confidentiality for us; what's in bounds and
what's out of bounds?
24:55 Tom Floyd And, Dave, is that something that you provide guidelines on as well when you're
working with your mentors?
Saying “here are things you should keep in confidence; if you hear anything like this,
those are things that you should share?”
25:09 Dave Williams Yes. Those are the types of things that we would discuss with regard to the mentor
program itself, setting the ground rules, establishing that as part of the process.
So, there is some guidance that we provide on actually both sides - both the mentees
and the mentors - regarding that whole process.
25:27 Tom Floyd I'm hearing the music for our first commercial break so let's go ahead and go on
pause.
Stay tuned everyone, more from Insight on Coaching and more about mentoring
when we return.
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28:13 Tom Floyd Welcome back to Insight on Coaching, I’m Tom Floyd.
Today the topic is mentoring programs.
With me are Donna Karlin, President of A Better Perspective and author of the The
Power to Decide: An Executive’s Guide to Conquering a Chaotic Day, Dr. Susan
Weinberger internationally recognized expert on mentoring, President of the Mentor
Consulting Group and author of several books on mentoring including Mentoring a
Movement: My Personal Journey, Dave Williams, Corporate Director of Employee
Training and Development at Hunter Douglas, and Dr. Lois Zachary, President of
Leadership Development Services LLC and author of Creating a Mentoring Culture:
The Organization’s Guide.
In this segment of the show, I'd like to revisit the topic of how to design a mentoring
program, and I'd also like to add how to design a coaching program, if we have time,
to the conversation as well.
Let me quickly share some of the data we used on our last show to introduce the
topic of designing mentoring programs overall.
According to a 2003 Office Solutions article titled “Creating A Company Mentoring
Program” by one of our previous guests Barton Goldsmith, Barton is quoted as
saying “If you've experienced the professional and personal growth that comes from
a great mentoring relationship, then you'll understand the value that comes from
creating your own company mentoring program (CMP). Barton elaborates as
follows:
If your company team believes they can be successful, and are supported to
create more and better business, wouldn't you be more successful? A
company mentoring program will help you achieve that goal.
The basic premise is elegantly simple: Everyone in the company has some
type of a mentor. The person who's been there one day can be mentored by
the person who's been there two days. The CFO can be mentored by a
board member and the CEO by the chairman.
The objective is to have everyone in the company supported by someone
who shares the goal of helping the protégé maximize his or her potential.
This will bring value to your team, your clients, and will help your employees
grow.”
Now in terms of some common pitfalls or challenges that can occur in a mentoring
relationship, here’s some additional interesting data as well. According to a study to
be published later this year in the journal Group and Organization Management
which is a peer-reviewed journal, the study looked at a group of 242 mentees or
protégés at the University of South Florida.
More than half (55%) reported that mentors had neglected them at least
occasionally
Almost two-thirds (65%) said mentors had taken credit for the protégé's work.
Indeed, 16% said this had occurred frequently.
Almost a third reported at least some degree of sabotage by a mentor.
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Now, on our last show, we didn't really get to spend any time talking about some of
the challenges that the Group and Organizational Management study highlighted
about mentors neglecting mentees in some instances, mentors taking credit for
mentees' work, and mentor sabotage.
It was definitely alarming to hear about some of these things.
I'm going to pose a question to all of you as a group. Are these challenges that any
of you have seen or heard about?
31:24 Dr. Susan I certainly have, although I'm horrified with the results that you've just reported.
Weinberger
I obviously haven't seen this study yet, because it hasn't come out.
But, yes, I do believe that, especially in the area of neglect.
I believe the problem here is that, even in the description that you started out this
segment of the program with, it sounded like everyone could be a mentor and there
could be a lot of informal mentors in an organization, and I believe that mentoring has
to be formal, it has to be deliberate, it has to be with intent, and there has to be
specific training.
Some people think that mentoring is easy, and it is not easy.
It's an honor and very important to choose the right people to be mentors.
So, recruiting mentors that are not only caring and committed, but have an
outstanding record of employment and are confidential and are not neglectful is
something that really needs to be considered in order not to come up with these
statistics, which I find more than mind-boggling and overwhelming.
There also has to be provided in the structure of a mentoring program a kind of
ongoing support to insure that the program is working successfully for both the
mentors and mentees.
And I'll stop right there because I'm sure others want to jump in.
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32:44 Dr. Lois Susan, I'll jump right in, because I would echo everything that you've said.
Zachary
I think the idea of neglect really comes from a number of sources.
One, when an organization doesn't create a list of roles and responsibilities and
mutual understanding about what the expectations are.
So that in some programs there's an expectation that you're going to meet 30 hours a
week, that there'll be certain touch points, and so there are ways that an organization
can help foster responsibility.
Patrick Lindsay once said that “you cannot have accountability without articulation of
responsibility.” So, I think that that's a very important piece.
But, then there's the conversation that the mentor and the mentee have themselves,
and that is where they create a mutual understanding about what the ground rules
are, and what is that contact going to look like, and who is responsible for what.
So, yes, I have seen the neglect, but I think in some cases it's a benign neglect
because people don't know what's expected of them in the role.
34:03 Dave Williams I would like to also comment on that and echo that as well.
We have a very formalized structure with regard to the first 45 days.
How often the mentor and the mentee should be meeting, on what occasions, and
where, and so forth; so, that portion of it about being neglected is not something that
we've encountered.
If we were to encounter it, it's something we would be able to halt pretty quickly,
because as we go through the first 45 days, and even 45 days on to 90 days, we ask
for evaluations from everybody fairly frequently, program administrator, supervisors,
mentors, and mentees, and we want to find out is everybody living up to the bargains
that were made early on?
So, that's not something, actually, that we've encountered.
Maybe people going in, knowing that there is this type of control, might minimize that,
but we're also very upfront, I think, on the selection process.
I know I mentioned this during our last program, but we try make sure we have the
right people, particularly as mentors, performing those roles.
As far as taking on, for what somebody's done, saying that they have done it or
something, we have not really run into that too much really at all.
So, I think we have a pretty solid program in place.
Maybe that's helped with eliminating some of those issues and problems.
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35:45 Donna Karlin I was going to say that I'd like to just look at the word neglect for a moment, and I
agree with everything that Susan said.
A lot of the problems with neglect are because the mentor is dealing with such work
overload and overwhelm that they lack the time to do it properly.
I think their intentions are wonderful when they go into the program to become
mentors, but they just don't have the physical time to do it.
One of the ways we counteract that from a coaching perspective is to encourage our
clients to ask for more than one mentor, depending on their area of expertise.
So, if one is overwhelmed, they still have another one or two mentors to go to for
other areas in the mean time, so they have more of a chance to have that mentoring
that they need.
36:36 Tom Floyd That's a really great point.
So, you're saying with neglect, it's not necessarily that the mentors in these cases
are bad people, or that they're doing this deliberately.
It could come up when it does from people just being overwhelmed, lack of time,
running out of time during the day, etc, and that in some situations, potentially having
a network of mentors, maybe one or two to go to, to help in these situations - you're
saying that could also help.
36:59 Donna Karlin Yes. Definitely.
37:01 Dr. Susan There's no question that every once in a while in choosing mentors for a program
Weinberger mistakes can be made, but we have to be very careful from the beginning in terms of
interviewing the potential mentors and asking what their level of commitment is, their
experience being a mentor before, why they want to get involved in the program.
It's all about expectations, as we said earlier, and this can help to eliminate that
terrible word, neglect.
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37:30 Dr. Lois I want to pick up on the point about time that Donna brought up.
Zachary
I think time is one of the most salient reasons why people say their mentoring does
not succeed. And I'd like to put another view on that.
I believe that it may be lack of time, perceived or real, but it has a lot to do with how
you manage the time that you do have.
So, if you have 15 minutes, how are you going to manage that time and make it
work?
And we believe it's important to have an agenda setting, an agenda agreement, to be
able to be focused, to be able to manage that time, to also know when it's not useful
to spend the time because sometimes you need to take time-out, in order to digest
what's going on, where there may not be a readiness to learn because there are
other things going on in the company or one's personal life.
This idea of lack of time is really important, and also from the organization's
perspective.
Is the organization supporting the time to do mentoring, or are people begrudging
that time?
Time is a very important factor in determining the success or lack of success in
working with mentoring in an organization.
38:53 Tom Floyd That is a great, great point.
I want to come back to the formalizing of the programs piece.
I was literally - if you could feel my head nodding up and down on the other side of
the line here - something that I've seen when my own company has worked with
clients, when they're looking at ways to grow talent, thinks like that, and mentoring
comes up, one of the biggest push backs or challenges I get the most with mentoring
programs or coaching programs, comes from people not wanting to formalize them.
We've recommended formalizing these programs, and clients will come back and
say, \"No, no. I really want to keep it more informal.\"
Particularly with mentoring, it's just painful because I saw a situation where they
weren't even letting people pick who their mentors were, they were just pushing them
down their throats.
It was very “you'll be mentored by this person, and this, and this”, and it was very
informal, and they felt it was working.
I suspect that it didn't, but I've also seen this come up on multiple occasions.
What's the best way -and Dave, I'm going to turn to you first on this one - what's the
best way to overcome those arguments?
You're somebody who has seen them on the corporate side, that having a
professional formalized program works, but how?
What are some of the ways to tell your colleagues out there, \"Hey, actually, there's
some risks to doing it that way, and here's why it should be a little more formalized.\"
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40:22 Dave Williams Well, I think one of the factors there is when you first started going.
To have some type of framework to go by, and to know really where you're heading
with this, helps a lot of people understand just what's expected of them, but it's also
what's expected of the process.
I know I had mentioned in the previous program, we introduced mentoring primarily
as a way of eliminating or reducing turn-over during the first 90 days of employment.
We found, based on research and so forth, that this had been very popular in doing
that.
So, what we ended up doing was creating a program, giving training to people who
would be mentors, making sure that the mentors and the mentees understood what
was expected of them, and putting these things in place.
So, having that in place, that framework in place, and testing it out, I think that's what
happened.
By testing that out and seeing that it was successful in reducing turn-over, the
feedback from everybody involved-the administrators, supervisors, mentors, and
mentees-was so positive that we said, \"Well, if it worked in this division, let's move it
forward.\"
So, it's kind of built on itself moving forward.
I would say formalizing the process upfront is extremely important to make sure the
people understand just what it's all about and what can be gained from it.
Different divisions have taken, if you want to call it, the structure of the program and
dealt with it a little bit differently, but at least they know the framework going in.
It works, and we would be able to work through that.
42:05 Dr. Susan And if I may add to that, while it's still being formalized, it can be a pilot.
Weinberger
It doesn't have to be a full-blown program as you're working through it.
One of the things that I've found in my experience is that top management, and even
human resources, are the two areas that were, in some companies, the toughest to
convince that a program like this is going to be beneficial.
So, I always give advice that you had better be up to snuff, as they say, in terms of
what the research points out about the incredible two-directional benefits of
mentoring, no only for the mentor and the mentee, but if you add a third dimension of
the company.
And, clearly, the research now points to work satisfaction to that whole area of long-
term retention and quality of work that improves as a result of mentoring.
As soon as you start going down that list of advantages, you have a better chance to
make that program formalized and, may I say, long-term and sustainable.
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43:03 Dave Williams The proof in the pudding has been that, again, the word of mouth, it's been a very
easy sell for my group to go to other divisions and propose this to them because
they've seen the numbers and they've also heard the good news.
So, it's been a fairly easy program to rollout to the rest of the organization.
43:29 Dr. Lois I want to talk a little bit about the word formal, because I think that people have the
Zachary view that formal means that the relationship between the parties is formal, and when
we really talk about formal mentoring, we talk about when mentoring is managed,
structured, and arranged by an organization.
But, the nature of that formality and structure of the individual relationship between
the mentoring department and other partners, is really determined by those partners
in collaboration with one another, even though there are some things that are
dictated by the organization, such as frequency, duration of the relationship, meeting
content, etc,
But how the dance of mentoring goes forward really is a result of that conversation.
S
o, formal doesn't necessarily have to be formalized in a mentoring relationship.
44:31 Tom Floyd One of the assumptions that people have about the word “formal” could play into
some of the their resistance.
44:36 Dr. Lois Right.
Zachary
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44:38 Donna Karlin I'd like to jump in and add to some of what was already stated.
What we've been doing from our school is we've been going into an organization and
first training, or giving an info session, to the human resource department to get
engagement.
What we've been doing is bring in on special assignment people who have recently
retired from the organization, who will come back and be mentors because they are
not concerned about a time factor.
I would like to add, Lois, that a lot of my clients don't have control over their time. It's
a reactive environment.
So, they need to be able to do this in a reactive chaotic environment.
And, then, adding the Shadow Coaching methodology by being there in the
workplace during the work day and to mentor and coach them through their day in
real time, so it doesn't take them away from their work, is a very powerful
intervention, and brings the mentoring and the coaching together.
So that counteracts a lot of the problems that people are facing with mentoring
programs.
45:43 Dr. Susan And Donna mentioned retirees; earlier in the program, Tom, I think you mentioned
Weinberger something about the baby boomers, and this a wonderful way to help my people, or
at least myself, that there's some new reports out about baby boomers that aren't as
positive as I'd hoped they would be.
We know they're going to retire earlier and live a long time, and apparently have
more time on their hands and more money, but my understanding of late, in at least
one article, is they're not as willing to be involved in social responsibility and
volunteering as I had hoped they would be.
So, I think it behooves or something, or at least I hope organizations will encourage
baby boomers who area about to retire to stay involved with the company serving as
very valuable mentors and coaches.
I like that idea so much.
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46:32 Tom Floyd I'll tell you, from a volunteer perspective, in my personal life, I volunteer a good chunk
of time each week on a Board of Governors for a large political lobbying organization.
And what's interesting from a volunteering perspective is it's easier to get millennial
volunteers involved, but the baby boomer volunteers take it the most seriously and
put the most effort into it.
Not to say that millennials don't take it as seriously, but it's kind of more “I want to be
involved a couple hours a week,” and then the interest kind of tapers off as they jump
on to another idea or something else that they want to do.
Baby boomers, the ones that we have been able to get, are the ones that really do
treat it almost like a job. They take it very seriously.
It's been interesting to see that from a volunteering perspective.
I love that you brought up that point.
So, jumping to the generational conversation for a minute, then, do you think that if
we put a generational lens, or angle, on mentoring, do you think that some
generations in the work place a) may be more interested in being mentors than
others, and b) may value mentoring more than some of their generational
counterparts?
47:40 Dr. Lois I definitely think so.
Zachary
I think that it's one of the reasons that millennials are attracted to a company.
They're looking for high engagement; they're looking to get feedback.
They thrive on short-term goals and deadlines and really look for that.
I think, also because the idea of relationships in some organizations is so difficult to
really form that, and here is someone who they can relate to, touch point, form a
relationship, and feel more comfortable more quickly in an organization.
48:27 Dr. Susan I like success I've seen with peer mentoring, which is really within the same
Weinberger generation.
Young people coming into an organization and finding great value in being mentored
by those who have only been in the organization a year or two, but are really in touch
with what's going on currently and can provide them with wonderful guidance and
advocacy along the way. S
o, I guess you've got it on both spectrums.
48:56 Tom Floyd Dave, is the difference the generations may see in terms of the value of mentoring
something that you've noticed at all within your organization?
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49:04 Dave Williams Not particularly. There is quite a bit of peer mentoring in our organization, and that
has been very successful, but we've also found success when it hasn't been the
case, and I think it kind of goes back a little bit on identifying the skills and what's
required to be an effective mentor and the selection, if you want to call process.
That has usually helped to get the right people.
But, we've been very pleased that a number of the younger workers in our
organization, when this whole concept has been floated around in a division, have
been very excited about getting involved in that.
So, we've seen success really on a number of different levels and areas.
49:52 Tom Floyd Great. Donna, anything that you would add?
49:56 Donna Karlin Yes, actually what we've been doing is working with both senior leadership and
recent retirees coming back into the organization, mentoring those levels below
them, and at the same time having those people identify peers in triads that they will
work with within that mentoring relationship.
So, they're getting mentored from above and by their peers at the same time.
It's a support structure, and it's extraordinarily powerful.
50:22 Tom Floyd Excellent.
One of the last points I want to come back to in the five minutes we have left in our
show today, is specific to measuring the success of mentoring programs.
Dave, you had mentioned that one of the things important internally for you in helping
to sell the value of the mentoring program that you built in your group is really helping
folks see the numbers.
I can imagine a lot of people out there have questions about how do you really
measure the success of a mentoring program and if it's really working.
Can you talk to us a little bit more about how to really measure the success of a
mentoring program, to help executives see what the return on investment is with a
mentoring program, for example, things like that?
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51:02 Dave Williams Sure. Again, up to this point in our organization, our focus has been on the first 90
days of employment and the turn-over in that period of time.
We're a heavy operational organization, and there are all sorts of investments out
there, but we've seen it can be 38 percent of a person's salary can be the cost of
actually losing someone within the first 90 days.
So, when we instituted mentoring, it was a measurement in divisions, initially several
divisions who were having a difficult time with turn-over, and we saw a major
reduction in those organizations in turn-over within those first 90 days.
And I believe I mentioned last time, anywhere from 25 percent up to 70 percent
reduction in turn-over within that first 90 day timeframe.
So, we piloted a couple of divisions that were experiencing those difficulties.
When some of the other divisions heard about that, they said “how can we get in on
this?” And, as I said, it was a fairly easy sell.
We have literally not run into a situation with a division that has instituted this
mentoring program where there has not been at least a 25 percent reduction in turn-
over within that 90 day period, and this is without changes in any other factors,
whether it be salary and other forms of working conditions or whatever.
So, we're pretty confident that the actual mentoring program itself is a primary
contributor in that reduction.
So, when we look at the return on investment, we really see the hard dollars that are
involved with saving and keeping more people.
So, yes, for our sake, that's the way we've been viewing it.
52:42 Tom Floyd So, two of the key metrics you kept track of that contributed to your mentoring
program’s success were turn-over and retention.
52:59 Dave Williams Yes, exactly. And, again, for our organization in a lot of the operational areas, the
first 90 days is when a lot of the turn-over was happening, and so the target had
been primarily on what can we do within those first 90 days to retain people, with the
idea that if they make it through the first 90 days, they tend to stay a lot longer past
that.
And we found that to be the case as well.
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53:24 Dr. Susan There are other areas that we use to gauge effectiveness, and one is pre and post
Weinberger evaluation of the mentoring experience that is helping us to understand to what
degree attitudes of our employees are changing because of their involvement as
mentors.
But there's another interesting area that we don't hear as much about, and right now
we're tracking how many potential employees of companies are asking in their
interview process “do you have a formalized”-and I'll be careful because of Lois'
distinction-“a formalized mentoring program in this company?”
And, of course, I also agree with her that the mentoring relationship itself is not what
we're talking about here with the formalized, but these are also key ingredients in
terms of measuring effectiveness.
54:13 Tom Floyd Well, I hate to cut you off, but believe it or not we're unfortunately at the end of our
show.
A huge thank you to everybody on the show today for revisiting this topic with us.
Don't forget you can download the podcast version of this show through Apple
iTunes.
You can also access it on our website as well, at www.ieconsulting.biz.
Thanks again, everyone, we'll see you next week.
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