Mentoring: at Work
As explained in the previous posts about mentoring, as the mentor and as the mentee, mentorship at work has its constraints.
However, it can be also very beneficial when done wisely.
The Mentor Perspective
While mentoring your direct and indirect reports is discouraged, doing so for your peers’ directs or more distant coworkers will work as long as there are no direct work relations.
Your time is limited and you cannot help everyone, so you must be smart when investing it. You need to wisely choose your mentee to gain political capital, i.e. mutual value:
- Only high performers/potentials, future leaders
- Directs of leaders you want to do favors
- On departments you want to establish relationships with
- Teams that are growing and expected to grow and promote people
The rationale: beyond the relationships created and being associated with success, when you help others get promoted, it raises your value and influence, and they will reciprocate when they have power.
Making an improvement to an already high performing employee has a greater value than a low performing one (think +10% to an imaginary scale of 80 vs. 10% to 40).
After talking to the relevant manager about mentoring their direct, you can directly approach such individual and clarify it is not an improvement plan or an upcoming secret change: “I’d love to mentor you, because it’s great to work with bright people like you”. They are likely to appreciate it! Think how you’d feel if the same was done to you by a manager 2 levels above you.
If you are approached by someone to mentor their direct (or by the direct) make sure they are coachable, that is, receive feedback and grow, and they are a high performer.
The Mentee’s Perspective
As explained above, only high performers and future leaders get a mentor. There is no shortcut.
As always, they must deliver results and work on relationships to get noticed. For example do favors, especially to their boss’s peers a their direct reports and volunteer on top of their normal tasks, and yes, it means additional work.
Mentoring for your direct/indirect reports
As explained before, you can coach and train, but you cannot mentor your reports. You can find mentors in the organization for them.
An advantage of mentorship at work is the acquaintance with the culture, people, goals etc.
Before approaching someone within the organization to mentor your directs, think of only one direct and make sure they are a high performer, because any improvement would be more valuable than low performers.
Create a list of strengths and weaknesses of your direct reports.
What are the biggest gaps to the current role and the next potential role?
Who could help bridging that gap?
It can be anyone who is level up or has done this before.
After finding the mentor and getting their agreement, brief your report how to be a good mentee.
Every some time, e.g. 2 weeks, ask both the mentor and the mentee about the progress and relationship.
If it doesn’t go well, stop the mentorship.
If it’s proven enough results, thank the mentor and finish the mentorship, don’t let it suffer from diminishing returns of mere inertia.
If it succeeded, consider expanding to another of your high performers.
Resources
Visit Manager Tools and Career Tools for extensive actionable guidance on the topic or mentoring and much more.
