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February 29th, 2016

2/29/2016

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The Dip in the Mentoring Process - By Jennifer Britton

The first decade plus of my career was spent primarily working for Canadian and British humanitarian organizations and the United Nations. It was typical that mentoring was a key part of our team's development, as well as our own leadership development. Whether involved in passing on our skills to other staff happened formally or informally it was part of every day work, given that you might only be in a role for six months or three years.

Today I continue to see how mentoring is transforming organizations. In the last twelve years I've been able to support organizations in financial services, insurance, health care and safety create, and launch their own mentoring programs. It changes conversations, it changes leadership and it changes the culture!

What we often don't talk about in mentoring is the "DIP". Just as in any change process, such as cross-cultural integration when you move locations for work, or change through a coaching process, it's typcial to start off with great gusto in what's commonly known as the "honeymoon" phase. At this point, mentor and protege are raring to go - they can't wait to get started and into dialogue with each other. Goals are clear as is usually the way forward.

AS the meetings progress, some partnerships find an ever evolving spiral of conversation and goal touch points, whereas others drop down into the dip. The dip is a place which sometimes feels like you are spinning your wheels, or not getting traction. Proteges and mentors may feel like mentoring is a waste of time.

In fact, the dip is natural! It's part of the change process.  I've seen the dip throughout my own international assignments, and I've seen it mirrored not in the hundreds, but over more than two decades of work in the intercultural sector, mirrored in the thousands.

The dip can, and does, happen in the mentoring process. What to do if you see it? Here are a few things to consider:
Revisit the goals of the protege?
What have they accomplished?
What do they want to aim for next?
Where might they need recharging?
What will "shake" things up a bit?

You might have noticed there were several other places where we can see the dip - in coaching, global assignments, and any change process. Where have you experienced the dip? What did you do?

Best wishes,
Jennifer

Contact us to discuss your emerging mentor program needs. You can reach us by phone at (517) 231-7606  - Susan in Michigan  or (416)996-8326 - Jennifer in Toronto
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Five Benefits of Mentoring

2/8/2016

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The month of January was National Mentoring month. What did you do to celebrate? Mentoring is increasingly becoming a popular modality for capacity and leadership development within organizations.

As someone who has been involved in mentoring for almost 3 decades - either as a mentor, in  running mentoring processes or designing mentoring programs for clients, I have seen dozens of examples of the transformative power of mentoring.

Today's post takes a  look at why mentoring? Why is this a popular, and often overlooked, development modality. 

Here are a few of the reasons you may want to consider adding a mentoring component to your learning and development programs:
  • Building bench strength within your succession pool
  • Connecting people across the silos of an organization or industry
  • Building leadership strength and capacity
  • Providing both new and experienced leaders/team members with another sounding board, confidential place to explore options/perspectives/best practices
  • Little or minimal cost (mostly people's time)

Coaching and mentoring are often talked about in the same breath, with people using the term interchangeably. In fact, there are some important distinctions. Here's a great post from ATD's blog on the differences between mentoring and coaching.

Interested in learning more about how mentoring could support your organization's capacity development? Reach out to myself or Susan Combs for an initial discussion around mentoring and how we could support you through our mentor program development and training services.

Have a great start to your week!

Jennifer

Jennifer Britton
Mentor Roadmap(TM) - Business and Leaderhip Mentoring support using a Coach Approach
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    Jennifer and Susan will be periodically sharing our wisdom on the MentorRoadmap.

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