Organizations today seem to be caught up in a sea of business challenges.  Some of those include an aging work force, a looming if not already here talent shortage, and a lack of succession planning. What about some other challenges, you ask? Interestingly enough when you view your employees as the most important asset in your organization, these three problems seem to take the seat at the front of the bus!

We have talked before about the “power of mentoring” and how it can be of an asset to most organizations. Mentoring most definitely is not the “golden egg” solution, but it can certainly work in your favour. The challenge for you as an organization is to ensure that you leverage the “power of mentoring” correctly. Today some 79% of mentoring programs that have been implemented worldwide have failed or been terminated. So why are you pushing a mentor program on my organization you ask? If done properly with corporate support, structure and training, your mentoring program can provide a great Return on Investment (ROI) for your organization. Let’s take a look at some of the advantages.

In a study that was done by Triple Creek Associates, 88% of the mentors and mentees agreed that their productivity or effectiveness increased due to their mentoring experience. That’s great you are thinking but I have many other challenges that I am dealing with as a senior executive in our organization. Some of those would include; interpersonal effectiveness, employee confidence in their role, and leadership skills. Through the “power of mentoring” 63% of the respondents saw improvement in their interpersonal effectiveness, 62% saw increased confidence in their role, and 59% saw an increase in leadership skills. Overall 79% felt that coaching and mentoring were more effective than e-learning!

It is great to be able to quote a bunch of statistics, but what you really are looking for is a culture that values and demonstrates performance against stated objectives and that is transferable from current leaders to others. That in a nutshell is a mentoring initiative. Mentoring is a critical leadership development opportunity that supports many business imperatives, business imperatives that we have already mentioned in this article and more.

Let us not forget that mentoring is all about professional and personal growth. If any of these two are not in alignment with the other then it is a recipe for failure.

So with the many challenges ahead of us let us not lose sight of the “power of mentoring” as a strategic business initiative that will provide you with great returns on your investment in your people!