Creating and fostering a mentoring business culture starts with leaders recognising the importance and value of mentoring. This starts with leaders and those around them. Mentoring is not a ‘tell’ culture’ from the top. It is a shared culture where everyone pulls together in shaping and developing a mentoring culture.
The true value of mentoring requires a cultural approach to work. A mentoring culture requires both mentee and mentor to work together to develop shared mentoring skills, as summarised below. Without the right mentoring environment then these skills will not support a sustainable mentoring culture.
The ABC Key Mentoring skills
There are many ways to develop mentoring culture within an organisation. It has to start with a clear vision led from the top of the organisation. Finding and developing good mentors takes time and valuing mentoring skills for what they deliver. Mentoring skills come from experience and understanding, from being a good listener, but above all these three the ABC of mentoring are consistently seen to be the basis of good mentoring.
A Being an Active listener
Non-one is perfect, no matter what past they have had or the job title they have today. Everyone needs to learn. So owning up to errors, failings or weaknesses is vital if a mentee is going to be mentored effectively. Without that openness and honesty, a mentoring culture will not succeed.
A mentoring culture requires the approach that we are all continuously learning. Even the most experienced and respected have had to tackle some unfamiliar tasks and they inevitably made mistakes.
For leaders being honest about mistakes reveals vulnerability. It makes them infinitely more human, approachable and a better leader.
B. Be Genuinely Interested in your People
Getting to know team members on a personal level is vital as a mentor. Genuinely understanding people supports building stronger relationships with them. Seeing them as a person also enables them to share openly what they want to achieve.
Being genuinely interested in your mentees supports leaders to understand who they are as a person. From identifying their strengths and weaknesses, how they interact across the organisation.
Being able to listen without interruption is at the front of mentor leadership skills. This active listening skill unlocks the value a mentor provides to mentees. Good thoughtful questions that drive to the root cause of key issues for the mentees, moves the mentee forward.
Being interested mentees growth also requires the hardest skill for a leader; do not provide the answer, ask the right question which gets them to find the answer. It is the self-discovery which makes mentoring valuable. That’s why mentees must be genuinely interested in their people.
C. Mentoring Must Create Value
Mentoring cultures that support both mentors and mentees require both parties to value the process of mentoring. Positive mentoring cultures develop over time and enable organisations to pull together. That allows leaders to overcome hurdles which drive the organisation forward at a faster rate than other cultures.
To support people leaders, need to create and sustain a learning culture. Where people learn and develop themselves. Resourcing people to learn rather than just do is central to a successful organisation.
Mentoring cultures need to be supported with people development planning. Supporting people with appropriate resources is central to a learning culture. From learning and development time, through to specific skills training programmes and mentoring development are essential that leaders provide to support that culture.
Mentoring is all about the ABC’s, be honest, interested and create value for the director so that they understand the value that being mentored delivers to their role.
Developing A Mentoring Culture
People development Planning provides an active development plan upon which mentors can support mentees. Identifying which areas to focus on first, building a clear rollout plan covering key mentee priorities, this develops clarity of purpose and progress against goals.
For leaders to create and develop a mentoring culture these are the core drivers of mentoring and creating a learning and development culture within your organisation.
For leaders being able to think becomes more important as conceptual work, such as planning and thinking become more important skills than technical skills in senior roles.
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