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Establishing a mentoring culture in an organization can be a challenge at varying levels of complexity. It requires support from senior management and the buy in of all staff to do so. I have seen situations where management was interested in pursuing a mentoring culture but the employees were not. Now that begs me to ask who is running the organization! Without the buy-in of the employees it would definitely be an effort in futility.
I have seen where the culture in an organization has progressively deteriorated and in some cases the manager or leader was not aware that things had got to the stage that they had. Rebuilding the culture in that particular case can take some time. The difficult part of this journey is getting the people that have contributed to the cultural demise to realize that they need to be part of the solution rather than continuing to be part of the problem. Once they have crossed over and want to move things forward the implementation of the new culture begins to gain momentum.
Recently I was asked what if you are not able to get the employees to cross over to being part of the solution rather than being part of the problem. Do you allow a few negative influencers to bring down the positive people in the organization? What if they are the perceived leaders in the organization – or perhaps they intimidate the others and everyone then become reluctant followers?
I have had success in getting employees to eventually see the light and cross over to being part of the solution. In one instance it took one employee to grab the reins and take charge! She took a leadership-mentoring role and brought the rest of the team along with her. You can feel the positive energy when you enter the work place. You want to spend time there as it is so refreshing and you leave feeling energized. Now that is definitely the "power of mentoring!"
Your goal as an organization is to create that positive work place where employees help each other grow personally and professionally. With the labor market being so tight, you want to be able to recruit the best and retain them. Without the right culture in place you will not be as successful in your recruitment and retention efforts. Having an efficient HR department working alongside you could help to make all of the difference when it comes to recruiting the best people for the job. What happens in a HR manager's day, and being able to recruit the best and connecting with others, is what makes human resources so appealing to people, and with their help, your company can go on to great things.
How do we deal with the negative employees that are still part of the problem and have no intention of being part of the solution? I am a firm believer in using the "power of mentoring" to change behaviours. I am also a believer that you may not be able to change everyone. There will be that small minority that do not want to change and there is little that you can do to convince them. It is at this stage that you have some options! If you look at your organization as a bus and each seat on the bus is a function that needs to be performed to move that bus forward. In order to be successful, you need to have the right people occupying those seats. If you have established the culture that you want the bus to operate under then you must make sure that the people in those seats have adopted that culture. It becomes a way of life for them – a mentoring culture!
What happens if we don't deal with this? Employees will become more disengaged or might even move to the point of becoming actively disengaged. Once they have reached that stage they are a poison to your environment. It will be hard to determine how many others they will infect before you realize what is going on and take some corrective action. Productivity will further decline – as it becomes easier to focus on the negative in the work place rather than on the positive and the work that needs to get done. Retention of the great employees becomes more of a challenge as they decide that getting up in the morning and coming to work should be a positive experience and not a negative one. The great employees leave – because they can and you are left with the mediocre. Your clients begin to see what is going on and wonder if they want to continue to do business with you. You do not react to these situations and you begin to see lost opportunities drift away which begins to impact your bottom line.
The picture is not a pretty one but it doesn't have to be that way. You can take steps to ensure that this does not happen to you. You need to look at establishing the mentoring culture and you need to make sure that you have the right people on your bus. A positive work place with positive employees creates happy clients and a positive bottom line for your organization! A mentoring culture enabled through the "power of mentoring!"
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