Why You Need a Mentoring Program

 

Without a clear purpose and measurable goals, your organization's mentoring program will take off to an unknown destination. Instead, you need to plan in advance where your mentoring program is headed and how you'll know when it gets there.

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You need to identify the program's purpose, set short-term goals, and establish long-term goals.

 

First, decide on your mentoring program's purpose. The program may serve newly hired Team Members, leadership candidates, or various other groups of staff members. The program's purpose may be to aid with induction, give support, or provide a fast track to leadership positions, depending on the specific needs of the Team Members it serves.

 

* New Team Members- You may wish to set up a mentoring program to help with the induction of new Team Members. Providing new team members with training, information, and support can help them become productive faster and accelerate their advancement.

 

* Rising Stars- Perhaps you need a program to fast-track promising Team Members. In that case, mentoring activities would help prepare proteges for advanced work or leadership positions.

 

* Isolated Workers- Does your business employ lots of telecommuters, or are its divisions spread across a large geographic area? In that case, you may need a mentoring program that provides support to isolated workers.

 

* Unrepresented Groups- If your business is trying to increase diversity in its work force, you may need a mentoring program designed to provide support or leadership training to members of traditionally underrepresented groups.

 

When deciding on the purpose of your organization's mentoring program, don't expect too much from one program. Choose only one purpose and devote all the program's efforts to it alone. Naturally, you want to make sure the program's purpose supports organizational goals. If your business wants to recruit more leaders from outside, you won't want to implement a mentoring program designed to increase promotions from within. Finally, write down the program's purpose and make sure all participants know what it is.

 

Clear goals provide you with a target. Without them, you never know if your mentoring program scored a bull's-eye or missed the mark entirely.

 

To be useful, your mentoring goals must be:

 

* Specific and measurable

* Aligned with the program's purpose

* Written

 

To track the effectiveness of your program over time, you need both short-term and long-term goals. You may define short-term goals as those that can be achieved within a year and long-term goals as those that take more than a year. Or you may choose a different time span to differentiate between them. Proteges will demonstrate proficiency with the business's accounting system on an assigned project within six months of entering the mentoring program. Proteges will have 25 percent fewer projects returned for corrections in their second quarter than they had in their first quarter.

Mentoring a Personalized Learning

Like short-term goals, long-term goals are specific and measurable, aligned with the program's purpose, and committed to a written record. Unlike short-term goals, long-term goals describe desired outcomes that require more time to unfold. Below are a couple of examples of long-term goals:

 

At least 50 percent of proteges will advance to the next classification level within 18 months of entering the program.

 

The number of leadership positions filled will increase by 30 percent in the next fiscal year.

 

The first steps in organizing a business wide mentoring program are to identify the program's purpose, set short-term goals, and establish long-term goals. By identifying a purpose and goals, you will chart a course for your program; without them the program would be adrift with no clear destination.

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