I recently facilitated a mentor training course and was blessed as always to have course candidates that were fully engaged and shared the passion for mentoring. What was interesting was that we entered the room as mentors and we left with a better understanding of mentoring and started the journey to become an “effective mentor.”

We have all either been a mentor or been on the receiving end of some mentoring. We all have stories that we can tell about the success of that relationship. One of the course candidates this week raved about the mentoring that he had over quite a period of time. That relationship was still alive and serving him well. I have also had conversations with people that the relationship was not that great in fact it had put a bad taste in their mouth regarding mentoring. Stories like that really bring tears to my eyes as I see a great person being held back from being the best that they can be because they do not have that one trusted adviser to reach out to – an effective mentor.

I see that mentoring is becoming more and more popular in almost all aspects of our lives. We hear about it in the work place, in personal situations and in some of the various sports venues. There is always a discussion going on about mentoring this person or another. The thing that we need to always remember though is that we need to focus on effective mentoring. What was once the way to mentor is now not meeting the needs of our future leaders of tomorrow or is it?

The paradigm is shifting when it comes to effective mentoring. Reverse mentoring is a term that we do not use anymore. It has such negative connotations with the use of the word “reverse”. It usually refers to a younger person mentoring an older person. This takes place when a young professional is perhaps teaching an older work colleague the use of technology. The paradigm shift is that is really effective mentoring. You are hopefully in a culture where mentoring flourishes and everyone mentors everyone as part of the learning and development environment.

Mentoring programs can falter if the culture will not support mentoring. You will see this take place in organizations where there is a lot of negativity or the leadership of the organization have not fully bought in to mentoring. Any attempt at mentoring in this sort of environment will likely leave bad tastes in some of the participants and make it difficult to turn this into a positive.

Effective mentoring is all about building a trusted two way relationship where both parties grow through the relationship. It really is the leveraging of a learning and development environment that benefits both parties in the relationship. What we lose sight of sometimes is the benefit to the organization as it can’t but help the positivity in the organization and the increase in productivity. Effective mentoring and a mentoring culture create engaged, empowered and accountable employees and that is a win-win for everyone.

My last point is that in every effective leader – those leaders that we see as transformational leaders or great leaders as defined by Jim Collins in his book are leaders that have used effective mentoring skills as part of the leadership tool kit. They are the leaders that see their people as valued assets in the organization. They see their people as people that they engage, empower and hold accountable for the success of the organization because they are the people that make that happen.

The paradigm shift is taking place. Are you ready for the change and are you ready to embrace the “power of effective mentoring?” Can you afford not to?

References:

1. Good to Great, Jim Collins - http://www.chapters.indigo.ca/books/Good-To-Great/9780066620992-item.html?s_campaign=goo-BooksByTitle&gclid=COX2-bX4ybkCFYk9QgodATgAqw