Mentoring Systems For New Hires

Dr. Lois Zachary provides a well-organized, hands-on approach to research-based mentoring in The Mentor’s Guide: Facilitating Effective Learning Relationships (2012). This book serves as an excellent introduction for an individual new to the mentoring role; it is also a resource for current mentors. Zachary (2012) provides solid examples, concrete exercises, and a roadmap for building an effective mentoring relationship. Mentors in the business world, nonprofit organizations, and educational settings would benefit from reading this book.

To be a good mentor you have to have great qualities like being helpful and being really good at giving good constructive criticism. Whomever you're mentoring should receive information that is both positive and negative. You want to makes sure you give pros and cons so that your mentee can learn from them. (Patterson) Some social activities that you can do in mentoring programs include talking about life experiences, having lunch together, and visiting the mentor's home for a bonding experience. (Wexler) Although most mentoring programs usually have short durations and are claimed to be a “waste of money,” they are beneficial to girls because they prevent peer pressure, diseases, and pregnancies; encourage girls to be more mannerable, respectful, and ladylike; and results in kids being more likely to graduate high school and attend college.

Watt, L. (2004). Mentoring and coaching in the workplace: an insight into two leading leadership

It takes a lot of commitment to be a mentor, an appropriate meeting time needs to be discussed between mentor and mentee so that it doesn't conflict with family, school, and/or social life. Mentors are usually provided for: troubled teens, young children with busy parents that work, children or teens with special needs such as Autism or ADHD, or anyone under or over the age of 18 who needs to have one on one time with someone they trust and can talk to confidentially.

Mentoring is a process where a more experience person creates a supportive relationship with an inexperienced, mostly younger person with the aim of providing information and advice. The process of mentoring must benefit both parties.

Mentoring relationships has its roots beginning in ancient Greek mythology, when Odysseus (a.k.a. Ulysses) entrusted Mentor with his son, Telemachus, while he left to fight the Trojan War. Odysseus, king of Ithaca, left home for 20 years on the famous journey that Homer ccalled the Odyssey. Mentor was responsible for raising Telemachus, shaping his character and helping him make wise decisions as he grew up to be a man. Eventually, Telemachus begins searching for his father, and Mentor joined him. The myth says that the Greek goddess Athena assumed Mentor’s form for the purpose of giving advice to Odysseus (Shea, 1997). Mentor’s name, with a lower-case “m,” has passed into our language as a shorthand term for wise and trusted counselor, advisor, teacher and friend. Mentoring is where a person invests time and energy to help another person grow and learn (Shea, 1997). “Mentor served as a coach, teacher, guardian, protector, and kindly parent. Mentor shared wisdom, promoted Telemachus’s career, and actively engaged him in a deep personal relationship (BOOK – Johnson –Ridley, xxx, p. xv). Like today the mentoring model is pairing a mentor and a mentee where the mentor is a role model and provides direction and guidance.

Mentoring is relationship orientated – it provides a safe environment where the mentore shares any issues which can affect their mentors professional and personal success. Mentoring also focuses on work/life balance, self confidence and self perception.

Mentoring relationships require mutual respect in order to be successful. The mentor’s role is varied and includes amongst others being a guide, a role model, and a confidante. The relationship is a longer during a mentorship and requires a large amount of commitment from both parties, from the mentor as needs to be prepared to offer support when it is needed, therefore they need to remain flexible and accessible. Because it is likely to be longer there can be no clearly defined outcome as in comparison to coaching the journey can be far longer and cover a range of subjects.

Mentors serve as a confidant, counselor, guide and advisor to a participant. They share an understanding of the organization, its mission, and the formal and informal operating processes, and share experiences which contributed to their own success, setting an example for the participant to follow. They assist the participant in career development ideas or for pursuing career opportunities. Mentors encourage participants to become more efficient and productive in their career field through self-development and other activities, and suggest appropriate training and developmental opportunities to further the progress of the participant toward leadership positions. The Mentor will provide input to the participant 's supervisor in developing their Individual Development Plan (IDP), helping the participant to set clear, realistic career goals and periodically reviews progress, making constructive suggestions on career development. Vitally important, the Mentor must ensure the mentoring relationship remains visibly and consistently professional. Mentors must ensure that their meetings are for clear purposes related to mentoring, that there is visible progress by the participant toward legitimate mentoring goals, and that office relationships between the mentor and participant

Formal mentoring programs are ubiquitous on college campuses and yet there is a lack of high quality training for mentoring participants online. The Entering Mentoring training is a notable exception (more here). However, this training is in person. More here about lack of inclusive mentoring / cultural intelligence.

Mentoring takes many forms and has many purposes, however, no uniform definition of mentoring exists (Bochke, 2001). Caffarella (1993) defined mentoring as “intense caring relationships in which person(s) with more experience work with less experienced person(s) to promote both professional

They helped mentors and protégés develop relationships that centered around goal-setting. They met weekly for 60-90 minutes. Mentors kept journals about their protégés, and were able to write about their progress. Protégés also responded to open-ended surveys about their relationships. Program directors observed mentor/protégé interactions. Seven dominant themes and their importance were demonstrated through the mentoring relationships. These themes were discovered through the use of an open-coding system. Specific examples of how protégés were impacted, including quotes from the journal entries of the mentors, revealed the progress made through those relationships. The data analysis used a grounded theory approach in which the researchers generated a theoretical

Mentorship is very important in the workplace especially in the area of training and development. The mentor-protégé relationship is a much needed relationship that begins in the early career stage and this relationship involves the current or new employees and the supervisor or other colleagues that provide work-related guidance. The relationship itself is comprehensive and involves “educational, occupational, physical, social, and spiritual development” (Greenhaus,, Callanan, & Godshalk, 2010, p 211). One of the initial task of the early career the establishment of the career field which involves the gaining of the workplace competence, learn what is needed to excel in the organization, and to gain acceptance in the workplace to be recognized as the valued employee. There are many ways of achieving the above mentioned advantages in the workplace which one main method is through the use of the mentorship program.

With the development of the more organic and less formal organisational structures the role of mentors has shifted with these changes. Unlike previously where mentors where seen as formal trainers who taught newcomers the processes and got them acquainted with the cultures and the systems within the organisation. Which required good interpersonal skills and a good knowledge of the activity or tasks the mentee would have to undertake, and be able to effectively relay or demonstrate the tasks or activities to the mentee. As opposed to more recently where a mentor would have to be more of an emotional counselor and demonstrate more skills than were traditionally required from

Studies also have shown that mentors have a higher commitment to their organization, decreased intention to turnover and increased job performance. Mentoring provides benefits for its mentors as well, like, professional enhancement, organizational and peer recognition, interpersonal relationship, meaningfulness and fulfillment and productivity. Salami says that mentoring others is plays a alleviating role in the relationship between career plateauing and work attitudes. He states that the alleviating effects of mentoring in the plateauing-work attitude link is based on the career and life stage writings particularly Levinson 's life cycle theory. Levinson 's middle adulthood stage and mid-life transition is at the center of this study. Salami explored mentoring others as a coping response to plateauing; in the article it was suggested that mentoring younger employees may help plateaued employees to cognitively manipulate the meaning of being plateaued. Salami 's results indicated that mentoring others was associated with higher levels of satisfaction, commitment and performance among plateaued employees. Results from Salami 's study also indicated that mentoring others was significantly and positively related to job satisfaction and organization commitment but negatively