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as we share Insights into Mentoring and Coaching at GE Healthcare.

1. The Mentor’s Name and Contact Information

2. Your Name and Contact Information

3. A 200 to 500 word description – How they have helped you (or others) and why they deserve this award.

This January (2012) ill be the eleventh National Mentoring Month.  National Mentoring Month focuses national attention on the need for mentors, as well as how each of us—individuals, businesses, government agencies, schools, faith communities and nonprofits—can work together to increase the number of mentors.

Mentor Resources applauds the Harvard School of Public Health for its work with the national media to heighten awareness of mentoring and prompt individuals to volunteer to mentor school children. MENTOR and The Corporation for National and Community Service, are active in recruiting individuals to mentor, especially in programs that have waiting lists of young people. National Mentoring Month enjoys strong support of the U.S. President and Congress. Additional prominent individuals who have participated in the campaign include: Maya Angelou, former President Bill Clinton, Clint Eastwood, Senator John McCain, Quincy Jones, General Colin L. Powell, Cal Ripken, Jr., and Bill Russell.

At a recent meeting, every group of senior managers seemed to complain about the weak or under-developed personnel management, delegation, strategic thinking and personal accountability skills in their direct-report managers.

Interestingly, almost all of these senior managers are individuals who themselves had these same weak skills just a few short years ago. Huh. I wonder how they strengthened them…??

Obviously, they gained stronger skills by being coached and mentored, by reading, by acquiring exposure and experience, by leading difficult projects, by attending training programs and by focusing when at work. They gained many more skills by being mentored and held accountable by me, The Dragon Lady of Accountability, (or others like me) and by being “forced” to learn, to try and ultimately to “naturally” do the things effective managers and leaders do.

The key is: They were taught. Someone experienced shared insights and mentored them.

Now it is their turn to share what they’ve learned with their next generation of leaders.

One of the fundamental responsibilities in management is to develop the people for whom we are   responsible. We’re supposed to help them continuously develop enhanced or new skills to ensure they’re capable of performing at a level our company will need them to perform several years from now. We wouldn’t expect a computer to support upgraded software programs 1, 2 or 3 years from now without enhancing its capabilities and yet we hold that expectation of our employees. We naïvely assume they’ll just figure things out.

More often than not, the most often studied trainer in your company is the CEO. As the President or CEO, you are the one the staff pay attention to every day. You’re the one they model and take their cues from.  Your staff seeks to develop skills to emulate you. You’re it.

So it’s time to conscientiously analyze how you do what you do and segment it so others can learn in bite-sized pieces, just as you did. Your managers won’t need to learn everything you learned or in the same order – because your organization is different now than it was when you learned select skills. And you can speed up the process by mentoring them and having your best managers mentor the next group of high potential employees.

Your managers need to learn many of the same people skills you’ve struggled to master. Let’s face it – dealing with and managing people is the most difficult challenge any of us face in our lives.

Most importantly, remember, you’ve learned these skills.  These skills can be taught and shared. Mentoring and coaching is key to spreading those skills throughout your organization.

The next time you feel frustrated with one of your staff, take a step back mentally and ask, “Did I ever do something like this? If so, what lesson did I learn that helped me through it? How can I share that lesson now?”   Don’t get frustrated. Teach and Mentor. It’s the way you will develop your next generation of leaders. Your lessons learned need to be shared.

Copyright 2011 – Liz Weber, CMC –
Weber Business Services, LLC. www.WBSLLC.com

•  •  •

Sharing What Works is the motto of Mentor Resources, the premier provider of tools for the  administration of formal mentoring programs. WisdomShare^® is used by Fortune 500 companies, professional associations, universities and alumni organizations, government employees and non-profits.

Kim Wise, CEO

Successful organizations put significant effort into anticipating the future: the future of their marketplace, of their customer’s behavior, of technology which may change or supplant the needs they serve, etc.  But well-run organizations are also self-reflective.  Their future scenario planning includes working with Human Resources to clarify their future talent needs.

After assessing their future capability needs, the next step is a pipeline assessment.  What skills need to be enhanced, increased or brought in from the outside?  And what is the most cost effective way to increase the skill levels and retention of the employees with the “longest runway” and payback to organization.

Mentoring, in conjunction with coaching and training, can be a useful tool for talent development if used strategically.  The key is to be clear on the outcomes and the leadership capabilities you want to create. We recommend a multi-pronged approach, with mentoring to capture institutional knowledge, history and “how to get it done” combined with targeted learning programs and a few new hires with the right skill set to seed new ideas and approaches into the organization.

In addition, you want to expose your High Potentials and your Emerging Hi-Pos to stretch assignments designed to focus on the desired competencies.  But as you challenge them, care needs to be taken to maintain and increase their loyalty.

Consider overseas assignments – the average corporation spend over $1 million in preparation, moving the family overseas and wages and benefits while overseas, yet a significant number of employees will leave the firm with their first year back from the overseas assignment.  A mentor in the home country can significantly increase the employee’s retention and loyalty.  (I started to get long winded here … There will be a future blog on this topic.  Sign up to make sure you don’t miss it.)

Issues like this are why we want to participate in your talent development plans.  Mentoring programs are a robust part of the tool set that a well-run organization uses to deepen their bench strenth.  We have insights into how mentoring can be used strategically and cost effectively to meet your organizations longer term goals.

Talk to us! Our Motto is “Sharing What Works“

•   •   •

Mentor Resources is now accepting applications for Mentor of the Year for 2012, with a deadline of December 15, 2011.  If you know someone worthy of consideration, please send an email to Info “at” MentorResources “dot” com, with the following:

The Mentor’s Name and Contact Information

Your Name and Contact Information

A 200 to 500 word description – How they have helped you (or others) and why they deserve this award.

This January (2012) ill be the eleventh National Mentoring Month.  National Mentoring Month focuses national attention on the need for mentors, as well as how each of us—individuals, businesses, government agencies, schools, faith communities and nonprofits—can work together to increase the number of mentors.

Mentor Resources applauds the Harvard School of Public Health for its work with the national media to heighten awareness of mentoring and prompt individuals to volunteer to mentor school children. MENTOR and The Corporation for National and Community Service, are active in recruiting individuals to mentor, especially in programs that have waiting lists of young people. National Mentoring Month enjoys strong support of the U.S. President and Congress. Additional prominent individuals who have participated in the campaign include: Maya Angelou, former President Bill Clinton, Clint Eastwood, Senator John McCain, Quincy Jones, General Colin L. Powell, Cal Ripken, Jr., and Bill Russell.

1. The Mentor’s Name and Contact Information

2. Your Name and Contact Information

3. A 200 to 500 word description – How they have helped you (or others) and why they deserve this award.

This January (2012) will be the eleventh National Mentoring Month.  National Mentoring Month focuses national attention on the need for mentors, as well as how each of us—individuals, businesses, government agencies, schools, faith communities and nonprofits—can work together to increase the number of mentors.

Mentor Resources applauds the Harvard School of Public Health for its work with the national media to heighten awareness of mentoring and prompt individuals to volunteer to mentor school children. MENTOR and The Corporation for National and Community Service, are active in recruiting individuals to mentor, especially in programs that have waiting lists of young people. National Mentoring Month enjoys strong support of the U.S. President and Congress. Additional prominent individuals who have participated in the campaign include: Maya Angelou, former President Bill Clinton, Clint Eastwood, Senator John McCain, Quincy Jones, General Colin L. Powell, Cal Ripken, Jr., and Bill Russell.

We will be blogging about the first type shortly, and suggest that you sign up for updates (via email or RSS) to ensure that you don’t miss our ideas on finding a sponsor for your program and best practices for helping those executives promote the program internally.

This is the sixth in a series of six blogs on Age Diversity and the Four Generations in the Workplace (Traditionalists, Baby Boomers, Generation X and Millennials) and how to work with the different perspectives of members of these groups, in the context of a large, formal mentoring program.

A few weeks ago, LinkedIn published a study which related mentoring by and for women to their position within the four demographic generations.  Below is an excellent infographic: it got us thinking about the challenges to mentoring programs.  First, 66% of the Baby Boomer women said they had never had a mentor, so they are unlikely to know how to be effective in that role.

In addition, although 82% of the 1,000 women surveyed stated their belief that a mentor was critical to advancement, they didn’t touch on the tracking and monitoring needed to have the program reach its goals.  One aspect of the tracking which has been top of mind recently is sponsorship – so it seemed timely to wrap up this series of blogs on Mentoring, Age Diversity and Demographic challenges in the workplace with a discussion about tracking the program’s success.

Many firms have implemented mentoring programs in the past few years in response to the desires of the Millennials.  An on-boarding mentoring program is a great way to speed up the initial learning job skills and the corporate culture.

But mentoring for more complex or sophisticated talent development often connects a more experienced employee from a different “generation” from a younger employee two levels below.

To the staff at Mentor Resources, the LinkedIn study, and the infographic above, highlight the importance structure and training play in the positive outcome of a mentoring program.

How can organization expect good results of a mentoring program, if many of the participants have no direct experience with a mentor?

We encourage you to think strategically about your pipeline of talent, and how mentoring can help.  Our team is available to help you develop the plan – for setting goals, for soliciting participation and for finding sponsorship within your  organization.

That is, sponsorship of the mentoring program, within the senior ranks of your organization, and sponsorship method of moving people into more challenging roles and building the organization’s bench strength.

Mentors are expected to provide psychosocial and career support. Most mentors focus on personal and professional development.

Sponsorship, by contrast, involves advocating for advancement. Without sponsorship, a person is less likely to be promoted, even if they are high-potential. Research by Kathy Kram suggests that someone is likely to be overlooked for promotion regardless of his or her competence and performance. This is especially true for managers at mid-career and beyond.

Mentors and Sponsors: How They Differ

Mentors

• Can sit at any level in the hierarchy
• Provide emotional support, feedback on how to improve and other advice
• Focus on mentee’s personal and professional development
• Help mentees learn to navigate corporate politics
• Serve as role models

Sponsors

• Must be senior managers with influence
• Give protegés exposure to other executives who may help their careers
• Make sure their people are considered for promising opportunities and challenging assignments
• Protect their sponsorees from negative publicity or damaging contact with senior executives
• Fight to get their people promoted

Studies have shown that women in formal mentoring programs were more likely to win promotions than those who had found their own mentors.

So, while firms are only beginning to have clear sponsorship expectations from mentors in their high-potential programs, some sponsorship was occurring. In one example cited, IBM Europe has a clearly defined sponsorship program for senior women below the executive level.  Sponsors are expected to get their candidates ready to for the next level within a year. Failure to obtain a promotion is viewed as a failure of the sponsor, not of the candidate.

 * * *

We encourage you to sign up for future updates of this blog. Send us an email if you would like a copy of our White Paper, Mentoring with Four Generations in the Workplace  Info “at” MentorResources ”dot” com

Ask us how WisdomShare™ can help you achieve your firm’s mentoring or sponsorship goals.

We cannot do the differences justice in a single blog. Scroll down for past commentary and subscribe (on the right) to get future updates.   Or send us an email requesting our White Paper, Mentoring with Four Generations In the Workplace.

The four generations, of course, are Baby Boomers, Millennials (Gen Y), the Traditionalists (Silent Generation) and Generation X. Each of these demographic groups has different touch points and is at different stages of their work and life cycle.

As a result of their stage in the life cycle, Traditionalists have the strongest urge to give back and to teach.  The workplace focus on technology may make them feel less valuable or slightly out of touch yet, because of their experience, their ability to negotiate, influence, listen and convey information may be among the best in the organization.  They make ideal mentors for anyone in the younger demographic groups.

The Millennials want significant feedback, so the ideal candidate for their first mentor (during the on-boarding process) is another Millennial.  This mentor should be coached on the importance of assimilating the new hire into the corporate culture and the norms for corporate communication.

In the earlier stages of a career, the technical skills are the source of about 80% of success, with the  “people” skills accounting for only about 20% of success.  But in the middle stages of a career, this reverses, and the “people skills” become the critical differentiator.  These skills include influencing, listening, communicating, negotiating, managing expectations and accomplishing things with people who are not your direct reports. These skills are those which Traditionalists and Baby Boomer mentors can extend through suggestions and support to Gen X-ers and Millennials.

Given all the factors described elsewhere in this series, let’s consider the six types of mentoring and the four demographic groups:

• New Hires –  This is sometimes referred to as on-boarding. A new employee is assigned a Mentor who is a peer. The Mentor is there to explain the unwritten rules of the workplace and to shorten the learning curve of the new employee. Ideally, this is Millennial to Millennial, Gen X-er to Gen X-er or Boomer to Boomer.   (All new hires need some coaching in getting things done within the organization.)
• Skill Transfer – This is frequently used by corporations with a commitment to cross training or trying to build “hives” of technical expertise. Since skill development is a central focus of Millennials and Gen X-ers, these demographic groups should be matched with each other or Baby Boomers.
• Employee Resource Groups – Employee Affinity Groups often have desire for a formal mentoring program to enhance their employee’s career advancement. Often these diversity groups want their members to be able to connect and share information about how to succeed in the organization and handling stressful situations.

Mentoring programs within ERGs/BRGs are an ideal way to get Millennials and Generation  X-ers to focus on those softer people skills.  The strongest sharing is between employees one or two levels apart, regardless of their demographic group.  However, as employees move up the ladder, there is an increased need to have a mentor from outside their protected class,  to broaden their perspective.  So these mentoring programs need to be balanced with the career development or talent management sponsored mentoring programs.

• Career Development – These mentoring programs are generally set up by Human Resources under the name Talent Management. Their goal is to make sure High Potential employees and “Emerging” High Potential employees acquire the right set of experiences and visibility to move up the organization. In today’s workplace, these generally pair Baby Boomers with Millennials and Gen X-ers.
• Reverse Mentoring – Is one of the newer areas of mentoring. One of the side effects of a well matched Mentor-Mentee pair, is a broadening of perspective on both sides. This has become an important part of the development of Senior Managers.  Generally, these are Millennials paired with Baby Boomers or Traditionalists in Senior Management.
• Communities of Practice – Similar to Skill Transfer Mentoring, but longer-term programs for participants in Tech Clubs and other  matrix management type organizational structures. These mentoring programs are geared towards encouraging the development of advanced professional skills, as well as the “people skills.”  Traditionalist and Baby Boomers should be paired with Gen X-ers and Millennials in these programs.

If you missed our webinar on Mentoring and the Four Generations in the Workplace or would like a copy of our White Paper on the topic, please contact us at info “at” MentorResources.com.

Please subscribe (top of the column to the right) or follow us on Twitter @MentrResources to avoid missing future material on mentoring best practices.

We believe that Age Diversity is going to be one of the “hot” areas for Human Resources professionals in this century. This is the fourth of six blogs on this topic. You can subscribe (look to the column on the right) to get future updates. The four generations, of course, are Baby Boomers, Millennials (Gen Y), the Traditionalists (sometimes called The Silent Generation) and Generation X. Each of these demographic groups has different touch points and is at different stages of their work and life cycle. For a clear definition of each group, and the major life experiences of its members, scroll down to the prior blog.

But the differences are perhaps most pronounced in their preferred way to receive and share information. Keep in mind, the following are generalities and your co-workers and colleagues are individuals who may or may not fit the generalizations.

• Traditionalists prefer formal, prose-style printed material. They are willing to accept a ‘delay’ in receipt of the information, as long as it seems reasonable. When sharing information, they will reach for the phone or try to talk face to face.
• Baby Boomers, by contrast, prefer a more semi-formal prose style. They would prefer memos or handbooks to be bullet pointed, but they still want all the information. When sharing information, their first thought is email, but a phone call or a meeting are good alternatives. Most are willing to use on-line tools to reference information.
• Generation X prefers an irreverent writing style that highlights quickly the main points they need to know. These workers are very quick to seek information on-line, have distain for unnecessary meetings, preferring email, wikis and intranet bulletin boards. They expect to be able to find the information they need quickly and at all times.
• Millennials are the digital natives. They are used to being continuously connected and prefer images and charts that catch the eye and rapidly convey information. They expecct information to be available when they want it (ideally, five minutes ago) and will search for it. When new information is sent to them, they prefer it to come in short, frequent bursts.  It is helpful to remember that the oldest Millennials (now 31) were in their mid-teens when Google was launched.

These trends show up in interesting ways. The chart on the left is based on the study, “The Future @ Work” by Jeanne C. Meister and Karie Willyerd.

On-line contributions

We have broken out each generation, by willingness to contribute to a wiki, a bulletin board or other corporate knowledge management system. The blue bars show the percentage of employees willing to start new topics, ask questions or initiate discussion on bulletin boards. Notice that Millennials and Gen X-ers are strongest at initiating new topics, with over 45% of Millennials starting new discussions.

Notice the brown bars: employees over 65 are the most likely to contribute additional content once a topic has been initiated.  This confirms that Traditionalists and Baby Boomers in the workplace exhibit what sociologist call generativity, a desire to share what they have learned and their life experience.  51% of employees in both groups contribute content to intranet, knowledge sharing systems.

The green bars represent the percentage of each demographic group willing to look for information on-line, even if they are unwilling to contribute new information.

To summarize, 64% of Traditionalists are willing to use on-line information sharing tools, as are 67% of Baby Boomers.

The younger generations are more comfortable with technology, resulting in usage of on-line tools.  Gen X-ers trail Millennials slightly, with 85% of Gen X-ers and 90% of Millennials using corporate wikis, bulletin boards or other corporate knowledge management tools.

Before even considering their differing life-stage/Career needs or their different communication styles, just consider the formative global events of their lives and the single piece of technology which has impacted them the most over the last couple of decades.

Millennials (31 and under) – For these Digital Natives, consider that Google was introduced during the teens of the oldest.  Most Millennials have been using the Internet with homework since their childhood.  What were the formative global events in their lives?  9/11, obviously, but also the Oklahoma City Bombing and the Columbine School Massacre.

Generation X (32 – 47) – These are the highly independent Latch-Key Kids, whose mothers returned to work and whose parents were usually divorced.  The technology which has changed their lives the most is the cell phone.  The formative global events in their lives?  AIDS, the Collapse of the Tech Bubble and The Gulf War.

Baby Boomers (48 – 64) – Do you even need to ask their greatest influences?  The formative global events in their lives were the Vietnam War,  Watergate and the Women’s Movement. The transformative technology in their young lives was television with its wide-scale adoption in the 50’s, but in the workplace the key change was driven by the personal computer.

Traditionalists (65+) or The Silent Generation. Many had planned to retire at 65, but have decided to stay in the workforce “a few more years” until their portfolio recovers. The transformative technology for them was the Fax machine. What were the formative global events in their lives?  The Korean War, the Cold War as well as World War II.

We will be posting several blogs about these demographic groups – and encourage you to sign up to receive updates via email or RSS as they are posted.

I also encourage you to read our post Talent Development and Age Diversity 

Ravin Jesuthasan

Mentor Resources recently had an opportunity to talk Ravin Jesuthasan, a thought-leader in evidence-based human resources.  Mr. Jesuthasan is co-author of the book, Transformative HR. Within Towers Watson’s Talent Management Practice, Mr. Jesuthasan is a Managing Director and a Global Practice Leader in the Chicago office.

Mentor Resources: Evidence-based medicine is now practiced within most hospitals, because certain behaviors have demonstrated an impact on secondary infections and other diseases.  Could you explain Evidence-Based in the context of Human Resources?

Mr. Jesuthasan: In both medicine and Human Resources you have skilled practitioners who make decisions upon their prior experience, anecdotes and existing paradigms.  As a result, there is a tendency to skip over the unique nuances of the patient or situation.  In HR, this tends to occur more often than in other business disciplines, because of our life experience.

For example, if you ask ten CEOs for a definition of Free Cash Flow and the impactful levers on  their cash flow, you get the same definition and similar answers. Ask the same ten CEOs for a definition of Employee Engagement or the levers for Retention, and you will probably get more than ten answers, based upon their experiences and observations.

Finance and Marketing have gone down a road to the development of clear definitions and  measurable results, and Human Resources is now moving along a similar pathway.  Evidence-based HR planning and decision making is part of this passage to greater rigor and impact.

Mentor Resources: We have seen an increase in quantitative measurements for Human Resource management. Could you give me an example of evidence-based HR?

Mr. Jesuthasan: An evidence-based approach helped Coca-Cola articulate an economically and globally relevant diversity goal, which was impactful to their Women and Leadership Initiative.

Evidence-based thinking helped Coca-Cola sidestep political correctness and hiring quotas.  With operations in over 200 countries, diversity can be a complex topic.  The team started by noting the purchasing power of women in countries where they do business, was greater than the GDP of the US, China and India, combined.

Evidence-based thinking and the economic imperative focused the organization on the talent lifecycle.  Diversity efforts were not limited to hiring, but included deployment, rewards, engagement and talent development.  Metrics were developed around each to track multiple variables and with a goal of creating a sustainable pipeline throughout the talent lifecycle.

Mentor Resources: That’s powerful.  Will this impact risk metrics, as well as human capital decisions?

Mr. Jesuthasan: Mentoring becomes a central tool in controlling human capital risk.

All businesses take risks, but there are risks they should avoid. Many that can and should be avoided relate to having a pipeline of managers capable of stepping up to pivotal roles as needed.

Approximately 20% of externally-hired CEOs succeed, one example of human capital risk.  Needing to go outside the firm for a CEO, or head of R&D, or President of a division is a risk to execution of the business that can be avoided. Without mentoring or training to ensure a pipeline of talent, companies are at risk of being unable to continue successful programs.

Mentoring is a way of ensuring there is a pipeline of people who know how to get things done in that firms’ culture.

Mentoring becomes a way to speed up readiness.  It is a faster way to transfer the cultural skills related to getting things done in a specific environment. Companies can’t afford the risk that they don’t have managers ready to step up to those pivotal Roles.  In the current environment, where corporations are cost cutting and reducing spending on training, mentoring becomes even more important.

Mentor Resources: We call this Sharing What Works.  Sharing through mentoring the tacit knowledge that can only come from experience.  Can you share your final thoughts?

Mr. Jesuthasan: Evidence-based Human Resources is transformative and has demonstrated its usefulness as a tool for motivating managers across functions and business lines.

Keep in mind, that in the same way that most of a corporation’s financial decisions are made by line managers, rather than the finance department, most of the firm’s human resource decision are not made by the Human Resources department. Evidence-based HR is about making the human capital goals part of the day-to-day functioning of operations, by conveying the story behind the HR metrics.

I would like to thank my mentor, Julie Gebauer, at Towers Watson.

•  •  •

Mr. Jesuthasan will be speaking on Transformative HR: How Great Companies Use Evidence-Based Change for Sustainable Advantage in New York on November 8^th (http://www.evanta.com/events/261/agenda).

His book is widely available through bookstores and as an iBook and on Kindle.

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