My personnel opinion is that workplace mentoring plays a key role in both individual as well as organizational development. I believe that mentoring programs would help in proper knowledge management between employees within the same firm. It often helps in proper Organizational behavior among employees. I had the privilege of having one of my Enterprise systems Professor as my mentor and i can proudly say that he had a great impact on my education. With almost every interaction that i have with him, i feel like i learnt something new and i realize how useful this knowledge is in my future endeavors. I would appreciate if someone can add more and also provide more insight into workplace mentoring.
Let us first define who is mentor and what is mentoring. A mentor is a caring and responsible senior or experienced individual who takes time to listen, to support, and to guide an inexperience or junior individual on a consistent basis over a specified period of time. Mentoring is a process by which more experienced individual who has achieved some feats shares his or her experience and knowledge to help others who are either going through similar situation or who are trying to achieve similar feats. Mentoring can be on either personal or professional front at work place. We discussed in the class that every individual at workplace has different set of needs and those needs are ever changing. I believe that mentoring process is not to satisfy those immediate needs but it is to help individuals help themselves achieve their long term needs. Therefore, the process has to be a continual process and not a one-time advice. Mentoring can help motivate employees, help them stay competitive, and by collective competitiveness organization will prosper. Mutual trust, respect and open communication are the foundations of mentoring process and mentoring process helps strengthen this foundation in return. For example a competitive engineer does not see himself being an engineer in long term. He or she is interested in joining management side of the business in long term. In other words his/her self-actualization need is to be on the management side of the business. Mentoring process can help properly guide him/her in achieving this need. Again, mentoring process would not offer him/her management position. I do not consider skill development or career development programs as mentoring programs. I would rather consider them as coaching programs. Mentoring process not only help individuals decide what to do but also can show what not to do. Let us take another example. If an employee is feeling insecure about his/her employment, mentoring process can help this employee by providing multiple options to offset insecurity, such as asking him to obtain different skills, providing him proper information about the current situation, showing him other opportunities, and so on. Mentoring process can help avoid expensive mistakes such as investing in training programs in which individual employees are not interested and wrongfully promoting or rewarding an employee. This mentoring program must be on voluntary bases. By voluntary I mean that both mentors and mentees should join the program at their will. Mentees can choose whoever they want to choose and mentors should have choice to opt out if he or she feels uncomfortable. One way to implement this would be to post profiles of mentors on company local area network and mentees can choose and contact individual mentors.
Mentoring is a very important system in my company. My senior colleague who worked as a mentor helped me get on track quickly when I was a junior teacher and consultant. Compared with the group training, I feel I have learned more in the mentoring system. There are two main advantages I have found the mentoring brings to my company.
1. Reduce cost : Each of mentor brings 3-5 junior colleagues. My mentor spent lots of time training and sharing experience in depth with us which I don't think the group training can do as specifically as it can. It really helped me avoid mistakes average rookies would make. As a result, customer satisfaction in my company is quite high in the consulting industry.
2.Positive competition and cooperation: every mentor leads a small team in which everyone shares our practical work experience and is asked to find the best solution to others' difficulties in the meeting. Individualism and conflict of interest are put aside. My mentor guided us to reach the goal by cooperation instead of unhealthy competition.
However, I would like to ask whether anyone has ever had not positive experience through the mentoring in your workplace? If so, is it possible to share your experience? Thanks!
I completely agree with comments posted by fellow colleagues on Workplace mentoring. Mentoring involves supporting, guiding and assistance to an individual. It involves mentoring number of people, trainees and qualifieds alike. It is always beneficial if a mentor and mentee are from the same profession. If a Mentor had the benefit of being mentored himself, then that particular individual understands the advantages and the experience of being what is it like being a mentee.
In order to have a good mentor-mentee relationship at work, patience is the key to success. It is very important for the mentor to win trust and understand the mentee's personality type. For a mentor it involves intensive listening to watch mentees' behavior, the way they talk-their physical behavior gives you a good idea of what they're like as a person. Some people think faster than they talk others do the exact opposite. The mentor should have the ability to judge (just like personality analysis).
Mentoring not only helps the development of the mentee at work but also it helps mentor develop understanding of people in general, how people think and behave, and of how to help them. Work place Mentoring further can enhance your setbacks or the lessons you’ve learned in career and life for the benefits of his/her mentees, so that they can a more fulfilling experience at work. Mentoring is a serious and daunting task because the mentor plays a pivotal role in the mentee’s life and sometimes in situations you haven’t come across yourself- and the mentor have to be confident in is judgment and answers. It all depends upon enjoying the experience, sharing ideas and expectations.
I also believe workplace mentorship allows companies to grow and mold employees in order to get the best performance from them. Throughout my first position after college I was lucky enough to be mentored by one of the "star" employees at my company. Even though she herself had just graduated from college 3 years earlier, she had already made a name for herself in the business. This manager taught me to always strive for more. Even though I would receive high scores on quarterly reviews and great customer feedback she always pushed me to look for ways to improve. This not only forced me to become a better employee but it also increased business for the company as well.
In 2006 I read Homer's Ilead and gained a greater appreciation for the term Mentor. Mentor was a father like teacher to a friend's son. You can imagine that a man would have a greater amount of interest in the well being of his friend's son compared to common workplace mentoring taking place in Corporate America today. That is not to say that some mentors do not sincerely care for their coworkers.
In my opinion it would be of interest to the mentor to have a great amount of interest and investment in an individual being mentored because the production of the individual being mentored will be a reflection on the mentor to some capacity. Ideally the type of people who become mentors are the types of people who actually care about other people and are not self serving in their role as a mentor.
I think it is of importance to allow for mentoring relationships to originate organically if possible. I have witnessed some managers assign mentors to new employees and at times it works out well. I personally was lucky to find two mentors in my current organization and I found those mentors organically. My professional development has been greatly influenced and strengthened by my professional mentors. I feel that I can turn to these individuals and speak to them in confidence and get pure altruistic and honest answers. In Response to Ya Ling Wu, unfortunately I have once had a mentor who would give me advice under false pretenses. This was a mentor who had been promoted to a management position and the fraternity of managers was (and probably should be) a greater priority to this individual compared to mine and the "mentor's" relationship. Therefore, be cautious and aware of the mentors you choose.
In larger work groups it may be a good idea for a manager to assign a temporary mentor, this way the new employee can feel more comfortable asking a full range of questions to the mentor as oppose to occupying a great deal of the manager's time as the new employee works through the learning curve period of the job.
As it pertains to this writing it is important to point out that a mentoring relationship can be both short term and long term. Good, bad, or indifferent both time ranges of mentoring can and should appropriately take place.
I also feel that it is important to find mentors for many areas of your life. Whether it be at your church, a family friend, or a relative.
Mentoring is about developing goals, a strategic partnership focused on growth of the mentee and is a two-way learning experience based on trust, honesty and commitment. It is also pivotal to understand that workplace mentoring is not about job training or performance correction or that it is tied to advancement in position or pay. Mentoring in workplace is important not only for the mentor and the mentee but for the organization as a whole. Few reasons why I believe it is a mutually beneficial activity: • As anyone in today’s workforce can attest, organizations are becoming complex, jobs are getting specialized, everyone’s working on cross-functional team and so it is becoming more and more important to understand not only what your department does but also how other value chain functions in the organization interact and support each other. Having a mentor fills the gap and the mentee can accelerate their learning curve and be more productive and effective. • Employees have different needs at different times for example a new engineering hire initially might be focused on his/her job requirements, department objectives and immediate supervisor. However, those needs will change over time as the individual gets more acquainted in the organization. Having a mentor available to address and guide, would help with setting appropriate goals, talent development and identify opportunities more suitable with mentee’s evolving skill set. This helps both the mentee and the organization as employees feel more empowered and willing to take positions of higher responsibilities and organizations have their future leaders groomed and grown organically.
As long as the framework is set correctly and there is a good understanding of what mentoring is and is not, organizations should foster workplace mentoring for talent development, employee retention rate, productivity gains and company’s need for future leaders.
I agree that workplace mentoring is essential for companies to develop their employees into valuable assets for their company. During an internship I had last year, I was paired up with a team of mentors consisting of someone two-years into working at the firm, a manager, and one of the partners in the firm who really helped me decide and establish the direction I wanted to take my career in. The matching of my mentors and I was through common interests and other similarities like the schools attended. Throughout working there I had meetings with my mentors that consisted of informal lunch meetings, social events, and formal meeting to review how I was doing and meetings with HR to evaluate the program. The reason I think this program was effective was because of the genuine interest those involved had, as well as the constant evaluation of how well the program was working as well as implementing new things to improve it.
Yes, it is very important to have a mentor to guide and walk you through challenges and opportunity. But some times in reality, we do not use the word "mentor" in the workplace but we constantly maintain that relationship with someone we can trust and ask for advise. I feel that the real mentor-mentee relationship doesn't have to be formal but the mentee should respect his/her mentor's time and ideas. For the mentor, its quite a responsibility.
Mentorship is a powerful training tool and I feel everybody should have that opportunity to be educated and guided by someone we can trust. I personally have two mentors outside my work life, from whom I gain tremendous benefits. But in reality I think its the mentor who is benefited more.
After all, your success in life is determined by the number of people who became successful because of you lived.
Workplace Mentoring is an effective way of fostering relationships, improving performances and ensuring that employees feel valued. Mentoring could be formal or informal. Formal is an assigned relationship in which the organization oversees and guides the mentoring programs inorder to promote employee development while the informal refers to relationships that develop on their own. Mentoring is an added value because it provides an organization the opportunity to share and spread its acquired learning and technical skills, exposes employees to diverse perspectives and also helps identify the skill gaps and expand their leadership abilities.
My personnel opinion is that workplace mentoring plays a key role in both individual as well as organizational development. I believe that mentoring programs would help in proper knowledge management between employees within the same firm. It often helps in proper Organizational behavior among employees.
ReplyDeleteI had the privilege of having one of my Enterprise systems Professor as my mentor and i can proudly say that he had a great impact on my education. With almost every interaction that i have with him, i feel like i learnt something new and i realize how useful this knowledge is in my future endeavors. I would appreciate if someone can add more and also provide more insight into workplace mentoring.
Let us first define who is mentor and what is mentoring. A mentor is a caring and responsible senior or experienced individual who takes time to listen, to support, and to guide an inexperience or junior individual on a consistent basis over a specified period of time. Mentoring is a process by which more experienced individual who has achieved some feats shares his or her experience and knowledge to help others who are either going through similar situation or who are trying to achieve similar feats.
ReplyDeleteMentoring can be on either personal or professional front at work place. We discussed in the class that every individual at workplace has different set of needs and those needs are ever changing. I believe that mentoring process is not to satisfy those immediate needs but it is to help individuals help themselves achieve their long term needs. Therefore, the process has to be a continual process and not a one-time advice. Mentoring can help motivate employees, help them stay competitive, and by collective competitiveness organization will prosper. Mutual trust, respect and open communication are the foundations of mentoring process and mentoring process helps strengthen this foundation in return. For example a competitive engineer does not see himself being an engineer in long term. He or she is interested in joining management side of the business in long term. In other words his/her self-actualization need is to be on the management side of the business. Mentoring process can help properly guide him/her in achieving this need. Again, mentoring process would not offer him/her management position. I do not consider skill development or career development programs as mentoring programs. I would rather consider them as coaching programs. Mentoring process not only help individuals decide what to do but also can show what not to do. Let us take another example. If an employee is feeling insecure about his/her employment, mentoring process can help this employee by providing multiple options to offset insecurity, such as asking him to obtain different skills, providing him proper information about the current situation, showing him other opportunities, and so on. Mentoring process can help avoid expensive mistakes such as investing in training programs in which individual employees are not interested and wrongfully promoting or rewarding an employee.
This mentoring program must be on voluntary bases. By voluntary I mean that both mentors and mentees should join the program at their will. Mentees can choose whoever they want to choose and mentors should have choice to opt out if he or she feels uncomfortable. One way to implement this would be to post profiles of mentors on company local area network and mentees can choose and contact individual mentors.
Mentoring is a very important system in my company. My senior colleague who worked as a mentor helped me get on track quickly when I was a junior teacher and consultant. Compared with the group training, I feel I have learned more in the mentoring system. There are two main advantages I have found the mentoring brings to my company.
ReplyDelete1. Reduce cost : Each of mentor brings 3-5 junior colleagues. My mentor spent lots of time training and sharing experience in depth with us which I don't think the group training can do as specifically as it can. It really helped me avoid mistakes average rookies would make. As a result, customer satisfaction in my company is quite high in the consulting industry.
2.Positive competition and cooperation: every mentor leads a small team in which everyone shares our practical work experience and is asked to find the best solution to others' difficulties in the meeting. Individualism and conflict of interest are put aside. My mentor guided us to reach the goal by cooperation instead of unhealthy competition.
However, I would like to ask whether anyone has ever had not positive experience through the mentoring in your workplace? If so, is it possible to share your experience? Thanks!
I completely agree with comments posted by fellow colleagues on Workplace mentoring. Mentoring involves supporting, guiding and assistance to an individual. It involves mentoring number of people, trainees and qualifieds alike. It is always beneficial if a mentor and mentee are from the same profession. If a Mentor had the benefit of being mentored himself, then that particular individual understands the advantages and the experience of being what is it like being a mentee.
ReplyDeleteIn order to have a good mentor-mentee relationship at work, patience is the key to success. It is very important for the mentor to win trust and understand the mentee's personality type. For a mentor it involves intensive listening to watch mentees' behavior, the way they talk-their physical behavior gives you a good idea of what they're like as a person. Some people think faster than they talk others do the exact opposite. The mentor should have the ability to judge (just like personality analysis).
Mentoring not only helps the development of the mentee at work but also it helps mentor develop understanding of people in general, how people think and behave, and of how to help them. Work place Mentoring further can enhance your setbacks or the lessons you’ve learned in career and life for the benefits of his/her mentees, so that they can a more fulfilling experience at work. Mentoring is a serious and daunting task because the mentor plays a pivotal role in the mentee’s life and sometimes in situations you haven’t come across yourself- and the mentor have to be confident in is judgment and answers.
It all depends upon enjoying the experience, sharing ideas and expectations.
I also believe workplace mentorship allows companies to grow and mold employees in order to get the best performance from them. Throughout my first position after college I was lucky enough to be mentored by one of the "star" employees at my company. Even though she herself had just graduated from college 3 years earlier, she had already made a name for herself in the business. This manager taught me to always strive for more. Even though I would receive high scores on quarterly reviews and great customer feedback she always pushed me to look for ways to improve. This not only forced me to become a better employee but it also increased business for the company as well.
ReplyDeleteIn 2006 I read Homer's Ilead and gained a greater appreciation for the term Mentor. Mentor was a father like teacher to a friend's son. You can imagine that a man would have a greater amount of interest in the well being of his friend's son compared to common workplace mentoring taking place in Corporate America today. That is not to say that some mentors do not sincerely care for their coworkers.
ReplyDeleteIn my opinion it would be of interest to the mentor to have a great amount of interest and investment in an individual being mentored because the production of the individual being mentored will be a reflection on the mentor to some capacity. Ideally the type of people who become mentors are the types of people who actually care about other people and are not self serving in their role as a mentor.
I think it is of importance to allow for mentoring relationships to originate organically if possible. I have witnessed some managers assign mentors to new employees and at times it works out well. I personally was lucky to find two mentors in my current organization and I found those mentors organically. My professional development has been greatly influenced and strengthened by my professional mentors. I feel that I can turn to these individuals and speak to them in confidence and get pure altruistic and honest answers. In Response to Ya Ling Wu, unfortunately I have once had a mentor who would give me advice under false pretenses. This was a mentor who had been promoted to a management position and the fraternity of managers was (and probably should be) a greater priority to this individual compared to mine and the "mentor's" relationship. Therefore, be cautious and aware of the mentors you choose.
In larger work groups it may be a good idea for a manager to assign a temporary mentor, this way the new employee can feel more comfortable asking a full range of questions to the mentor as oppose to occupying a great deal of the manager's time as the new employee works through the learning curve period of the job.
As it pertains to this writing it is important to point out that a mentoring relationship can be both short term and long term. Good, bad, or indifferent both time ranges of mentoring can and should appropriately take place.
I also feel that it is important to find mentors for many areas of your life. Whether it be at your church, a family friend, or a relative.
Mentoring is about developing goals, a strategic partnership focused on growth of the mentee and is a two-way learning experience based on trust, honesty and commitment. It is also pivotal to understand that workplace mentoring is not about job training or performance correction or that it is tied to advancement in position or pay. Mentoring in workplace is important not only for the mentor and the mentee but for the organization as a whole. Few reasons why I believe it is a mutually beneficial activity:
ReplyDelete• As anyone in today’s workforce can attest, organizations are becoming complex, jobs are getting specialized, everyone’s working on cross-functional team and so it is becoming more and more important to understand not only what your department does but also how other value chain functions in the organization interact and support each other. Having a mentor fills the gap and the mentee can accelerate their learning curve and be more productive and effective.
• Employees have different needs at different times for example a new engineering hire initially might be focused on his/her job requirements, department objectives and immediate supervisor. However, those needs will change over time as the individual gets more acquainted in the organization. Having a mentor available to address and guide, would help with setting appropriate goals, talent development and identify opportunities more suitable with mentee’s evolving skill set. This helps both the mentee and the organization as employees feel more empowered and willing to take positions of higher responsibilities and organizations have their future leaders groomed and grown organically.
As long as the framework is set correctly and there is a good understanding of what mentoring is and is not, organizations should foster workplace mentoring for talent development, employee retention rate, productivity gains and company’s need for future leaders.
I agree that workplace mentoring is essential for companies to develop their employees into valuable assets for their company. During an internship I had last year, I was paired up with a team of mentors consisting of someone two-years into working at the firm, a manager, and one of the partners in the firm who really helped me decide and establish the direction I wanted to take my career in. The matching of my mentors and I was through common interests and other similarities like the schools attended. Throughout working there I had meetings with my mentors that consisted of informal lunch meetings, social events, and formal meeting to review how I was doing and meetings with HR to evaluate the program. The reason I think this program was effective was because of the genuine interest those involved had, as well as the constant evaluation of how well the program was working as well as implementing new things to improve it.
ReplyDeleteYes, it is very important to have a mentor to guide and walk you through challenges and opportunity. But some times in reality, we do not use the word "mentor" in the workplace but we constantly maintain that relationship with someone we can trust and ask for advise. I feel that the real mentor-mentee relationship doesn't have to be formal but the mentee should respect his/her mentor's time and ideas. For the mentor, its quite a responsibility.
ReplyDeleteMentorship is a powerful training tool and I feel everybody should have that opportunity to be educated and guided by someone we can trust. I personally have two mentors outside my work life, from whom I gain tremendous benefits. But in reality I think its the mentor who is benefited more.
After all, your success in life is determined by the number of people who became successful because of you lived.
This comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeleteWorkplace Mentoring is an effective way of fostering relationships, improving performances and ensuring that employees feel valued. Mentoring could be formal or informal. Formal is an assigned relationship in which the organization oversees and guides the mentoring programs inorder to promote employee development while the informal refers to relationships that develop on their own. Mentoring is an added value because it provides an organization the opportunity to share and spread its acquired learning and technical skills, exposes employees to diverse perspectives and also helps identify the skill gaps and expand their leadership abilities.
ReplyDelete