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Why You Should Be a Mentor

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During a conversation with Susan Bender Phelps, founder of Odyssey Mentoring and author of Aspire Higher, she told me that mentors make an average of $25,000 more a year. WOW.

Most people focus on the benefit of mentoring for the mentee - but there are lots of advantages for the mentor. Once I heard that compelling statistic, I sat down with Susan to learn more about the importance of being a mentor and how it can affect the bottom line, morale and retention.

Why is mentoring so important for companies? 

The two most important reasons companies need effective mentoring programs are: profitability & productivity and leadership development for sustainability.

Think about your employees. Most likely, you have a few top performers and a few who clearly have potential. Imagine what would be possible if the "potentials" catapulted to the top and your company experienced increased capacity or a sales boost as a result. This is possible with the help of an effective, internal mentoring program.

We know that employee engagement and job satisfaction are the top predictors of high performance, productivity and profitability. When employees participate in effective mentoring programs we see higher levels of job satisfaction for both mentors and mentees. This means they are coming to work, ready to achieve their goals, assist their colleagues and understand how their role make a difference in the company’s future and their own. When the going gets tough, and it will, they have a trusted and effective support system in place to get them back on track.

Mentoring provides employees with the opportunity to hone and exhibit their leadership skills. This can make a real difference in the dynamics of your organization. That’s because success flows upward. You can leverage that success when you have a supportive, learning environment.

Established companies with a steep bench of graying leaders must begin to cultivate the younger leaders within their organizations so what I call the Boomer Brain Drain has as little impact as possible on their business and their stock options (which could dramatically affect their retirement plans). For those organizations that aren’t prepared, the leadership gap could cause a greater economic downturn than the current recession. That’s because people with little or no leadership experience will be catapulted to positions they’re not ready to fill. Companies will poach qualified people, making retaining top performers and hiring new leadership even more expensive than it is now.

Newer companies with younger leaders need to develop a bench of future leaders so that they can withstand the poaching frenzy that is coming and be prepared when the unexpected happens. Consider the recent death of two CEOs in their 30’s and 40’s. Rachel Jacobs, 39, of ApprenNet in a train crash and David Goldberg, 47, of Survey Monkey in an accident while exercising. Companies need to be prepared.

What are the benefits for mentors and mentees? 

According to a 2012 Catalyst report, mentoring pays off for both emerging talent and those who invest time in cultivating them. And high-potential talents who have been mentored, coached, or sponsored to advance in their careers are more likely to “pay it forward” by developing the next generation of leaders.

For both mentees and mentors, we see tangible career advancement. Most exciting is that for mentors and sponsors we see serious compensation growth — up to $25,075 in additional compensation between 2008 and 2010, say the report’s authors. That wouldn’t happen unless those employees were being more productive and producing added revenue.

Why? When you are mentoring effectively, you are also walking your talk. That’s because while you are supporting your mentee in creating breakthroughs in their work, you are creating them in your own. In addition, when you develop emerging talent you elevate your own visibility as a high-potential employee who develops leaders, and that leads to greater reward and recognition for the extra effort.

How Can a Company Implement A Mentoring Program?

Identify a program coordinator. This could be your human resources director, executive assistant or special projects person, or an outside consultant (you could also take on the role yourself). The coordinator is the person who matches mentors to mentees. Choose mentors with good communication skills and mentees that are on the cusp of turning into top performers. Being selected for the mentoring program should be an honor.

Provide training.  Mentorship training can increase the numbers of high producers and potentials who can and will be effective mentors and sponsors in your organization. That’s why our Odyssey Mentoring & Leadership Mentorship Launch Program can make such an important difference. Both sides of the mentoring partnership learn critical listening and actionable feedback skills. They learn and have an opportunity to practice conversational tools that lead to breakthrough thinking and results. It allows mentors and protégés to hit the ground running.

Ask questions instead of giving advice. It can be tempting for mentors to tell mentees exactly how to solve problems. Instead, teach them to ask questions that might lead to a solution. Good questions could be:

Have you ever had this problem before? 

What have you tried? 

What had you going in that direction and why did you think it would work?

What was working until things went wrong?

Give actionable, specific feedback. Words of praise or criticism are only effective when you are specific about what they did well or what needs improvement.

Set up a hard structure. Mentorship programs sound great in theory, but can easily fizzle when mentors/mentees play endless games of phone and e-mail tag. Make sure your program is structured with a specific number of times they should meet each month.  

Identify goals. Have mentoring partners set three realistic goals for being in the mentoring program and make them measurable and specific.

Sponsorship component.  A mentorship program needs to have a path to leadership or advancement for the mentees. Mentors also need to be willing to use their influence with senior executives to advocate for a mentee by recommending them for plum projects when they are ready and introducing them to industry contacts that broaden their network and access to resources.

Stephanie Burns is an author, speaker and founder of Chic CEO - a free resource for female entrepreneurs looking to start a business. You can follow her on Twitter at @StephanieABurns or Chic CEO at @ChicCEO.

POST WRITTEN BY
Susan Bender Phelps