Why Your Mentorship Program Isn’t Working

by | Oct 27, 2020 | Business Planning

A word cloud centered around the term "MENTORSHIP" in large, bold letters. Surrounding words include "Coach," "Experienced," "Improve," "Career," "Direction," "Learning," "Success," "Guiding," "Business," "Training," and more, reflecting the professional relationship and expertise inherent in effective mentorship.

After various surveys from around the world, we observe that people with good mentors have higher salaries, stronger identities, significant organizational commitments, and many more. Good mentorship has some personal benefits, like increased self-esteem, development of workspace skills, better physical health, and many more.

REASONS FOR BAD MENTORSHIP QUALITY

  1. The mentor is not adequately skilled for the right job and gets recruited without seeing his/her qualification regarding the stream he/she is going to work. Many organizations think that any successful manager can be a good mentor with minimum training. They also believe that mentorship can be acquired easily. Reports say that poor or inadequate mentoring can be worse than having no mentor at all.
  2. If there are a single type of rules and regulations in an organization for decades, it is called Marginal mentoring. Marginal mentoring happens because the person assigned as a mentor is too busy, not interested, lacks competence, or is not functioning at all. These kinds of mentors fail to provide all the resources needed for the group’s well-being or the organization.
  3. Most of the people join mentoring programs without searching the ideal option for them. It turns out to be a failure for them and a waste of their money. A survey says that 3,000 professionals across industries and only 25% have mentoring skills.

THINGS THAT SHOULD HELP GETTING AN IDEAL MENTOR

  1. A mentor should have the following skills: listening, feedback, affirmation, role- modeling, Interaction, visibility, advocacy, mutuality, and collegiality. These skills are visible in a mentor through training programs.
  2. The organization should choose a mentor according to his/her virtues and abilities. A mentor should be caring and should help his/her team to cope with the situations. The mentor should be good at judgments for boundaries and confidentiality. The mentor should be useful in creating awareness among the team members and interacting with the members physically and emotionally.
  3. The organization should choose the mentor after examining his/her competency for the stream. The person should have genuine expertise in the role.

An organization can choose its mentor by consulting the Master Mentor approach of the John Hopkins Institute. They created the Master Mentor program to develop experienced and trained mentors who do their jobs effectively and helpless experienced mentors.
There are some salient points that Hopkins institute made to create a Master mentor.

  1. The mentor’s nominations should range from employees to managers keeping in mind their informal mentoring record like communication skills.
  2. Workshops should take place to see who the best applicant to be a Master mentor is.
  3. After following these steps, a Master Mentor certificate is issued for a particular applicant keeping in mind the amount of work he/she has done in the workshop.

By following these approaches, you can choose a good mentor for your organization that can accelerate your productivity and create a sense of togetherness among the team members.