The bigger scheme of Coaching involves several critical leadership practices: Coaching, Mentoring and Counseling. These practices are important for unlocking people’s potential to optimise their performances.
Notably, mentoring is very much lacking in today’s dynamic environment where leaders struggle to find time for strategy development, execution and review, apart from the daily business challenges facing the organisations, among other pressing issues.
There is no question that leaders know the importance of succession planning, talent management, and building the leadership pipeline to ensure business sustainability. However, leaders need to invest in mentoring their young people if they want to achieve business continuity. How can existing leaders find the time to mentor the budding leaders of their organizations?
1) Manage the time committed to mentoring
THE IDEA: Intentionally allocate time for mentoring will faciliate quicker, more meaningful and success mentoring initiatives.
For leaders to make full use of their time with their mentees, leaders can adopt the 70:20:10 concept which was developed by three researchers in the 1980s and it has since been commonly used for training and learning.
The 70:20:10 time management concept for mentoring can be defined as:
70: Mentor young leaders on the job, in the context of their role within the organization
20: Engage young leaders in peer learning
10: Send young leaders to formal learning, thereafter taking the time to review what they learned.
One of the ways to help leaders create effective on-the-job mentoring activities (the 70%) that are targeted at raising the leadership readiness of young leaders, is through different fit mentoring.
2) Organisation-fit mentoring to improve understanding of company culture
THE IDEA: Organisation-fit mentoring refers to the intentional mentoring engagements centered on speeding up the assimilation of young leaders to help them better understand the future of the business and the right culture needed for the organization to thrive.
When young leaders champion strategic activities, it requires them to have a good grasp of the past, present and future strategic directions of the organization. It also encourages them to participate in the cultural transformation journey of the organization once they establish the organization’s strategic directions. Walking alongside them throughout this strategic process is the best opportunity for you to mentor them and prepare them to be part of the future of the organization.
In my experience, what has helped me mentor and empower my young leaders is getting them involved in the preparation phase of our strategic planning process. They are assigned to spearhead discussions on critical topics like market intelligence, SWOT analysis of the organization, sense making of past and existing data on business achievements and failures. However, not all of my young leaders have the potential to do this, so I select the top 10% of my young leaders to lead this effort. I personally mentor them, review their findings, and hear their perspectives before the strategic planning sessions with the rest of the organization.
Quick tips for leaders to encourage young leaders:
- Mentor your young leaders on data selection - Guide them to think about where they should look for information and what not to look for.
- Provoke young leaders with quality questions - This will facilitate better thinking processes when they analyse the data.
- Allow millennial executives to explore how they would like to present the findings and interpretations - This is a great opportunity in the mentoring process for them to demonstrate the quality of their thinking.
ROIs of organization-fit mentoring: Improved productivity and greater organization strength.
3) Job-fit mentoring to drive up interpersonal skills
THE IDEA: Job-fit mentoring refers intentional job rotation activities for selected young leaders to explore their capabilities and potential to stretch.
Having young leaders take up different portfolios for a period of 3 to 6 months will develope their learning agility, as they will be required to perform in situations with different or steep learning curves. This requires leaders to be willing to take risks with them, by allowing them to do real work and not merely become observers of the process.
This form of mentoring is one of the best ways to get them highly engaged, highly productive and highly rewarded. 99.9% of this intentional mentoring has turned out really well, as these young leaders take on higher level of responsibilities with almost complete understanding of the business and workplace relationships needed to succeed. Truly, these young leaders tend to stay with you longer too.
Quick tips for leaders to consider while doing job rotation:
- Selected young leaders must have a positive attitude towards job rotation - As we do not expect them to fully contribute to a particular business area for the entire 12 months, we must be prepared to do short term appraisals that fairly assess their contributions.
- Look out for openness to risk-taking - Young leaders who succeed in this job-fit mentoring are those who tend to be more open to risk-taking.
- Monitor their energy levels - It is key to monitor their energy levels throughout their involvement in this form of mentoring. I found young leaders highly charged and driven to see tangible outcomes, in the process.
- Quarterly check in on thier progress - On a quarterly basis, you will need to check in with the young leaders on their achievements and challenges faced to ensure that you provide recognition as well as solutions.
ROIs of job-fit mentoring: Builds workplace relationships with key stakeholders, peers and customers, and improves one's interpersonal skills at work.
4) Career-fit mentoring to drive up quality of work
THE IDEA: Career-fit mentoring comprises of intentional and deep expert-driven mentoring activities that require young leaders to delve into the nuts and bolts of core areas in the business.
Allow your leaders to be mentored by the best of the best in your organization to encourage them to grow roots in their areas of expertise. There are some young leaders who prefer the mentorship of specialists in their career rather than generalists. You will need to provide clear procedural mentoring activities for them to build strong foundations in the core business areas. Also, ensure that time is given to explore and experiment with new ideas for the business, and knowledge management system in the organization.
Quick tips for leaders to consider regarding the deeper development of young leaders:
- Select mentors with deep expertise - The main intention is for the young leaders to succeed, so select mentors who know what it takes to achieve success.
- Watch out for mentors who may not enable young leaders to explore and experiment - Check that your young leaders are acquiring knowledge and understanding continuously.
- Support when they are lost - As a mentor, you need to pull the brakes when your young leaders dive in too deep, as they can get lost in their search for greater depth and understanding.
- Work with them on new, novel projects - Use your seasoned expertise to facilitate meaningful mentoring, so as to raise the meaning that they derive not only from work, but also from their new-found role as subject-matter experts.
ROIs of career-fit mentoring: Better work quality and greater job satisfaction at work.
And there you have it. With an understanding of the 70:20:10 concept and the mentoring guidelines highlighted above, mentoring millennials should be more manageable. These young leaders of today will be the future business leaders of tomorrow, and it is our obligation and duty to help develop our future leaders.
