Building an Effective Mentoring Program
A mentor–mentee team needs chemistry to have a successful relationship. When an effective mentoring program is chalked and implemented, the derived value is very high. A mentor is often a person who is outside the core work team of the mentee. This creates a comfort level for the mentee and helps him be transparent in discussing and solving his problems and growth areas.
Firstly, is mentee the right word to use? Some people call it a “mentor-protégé” team instead. Although there is no marked difference between protégé and mentee, let’s use the word protégé which has a more constructive and positive connotation than the word mentee.
In any relationship, program, or charter, the buy-in from all entities is critical for success. The same is true in the case of a mentor-protégé program. This cannot be emphasized enough, especially because most of these relationships are voluntarily and not mandated by an organization or a project. This buy-in calls for additional discipline in planning and implementing the mentoring program from both sides.
In the fast-paced workplace environment that we all deal with today, people have started acknowledging the value of a mentoring program even more, and recently specific forums have been discussing this topic. One such detailed discussion talked about the role of a protégé, including qualities like self-confidence, persistence, and spotting the right mentor.
It brings out a very good point on how mentors can, at times, be very focused on participating in a mentoring program for their own benefit. Such an attitude is perfect for leading to the program’s failure. While you want to avoid such mentors, the discussion also talks about how a protégé should look at giving back to the mentor in possible ways.
A ground rule for a successful mentoring program is an acceptance from the mentor and the protégé that they are both committed to sharing each other’s knowledge and learning from each other to help create a win-win situation, rather than making it a unidirectional and prescriptive form of learning. Phil Collins’s quote rightly sums up this message: “In learning you will teach, and in teaching you will learn.”
Given the desire for mentoring programs, several organizations are thinking ahead about how to make them successful. Besides traditional mentoring approaches, they are also taking on newer forms of mentoring, including ones like reverse mentoring, where the management team is closely involved in being mentored by engineers.
Such mentoring programs go a long way in building not just technical knowhow, but also great relationships, trust, and confidence in the organization. This creates a very positive workplace and makes the overall mentoring program truly effective.
