Quality relationships vital in formal mentoring schemes

A few decades ago the only people who had personal minders and mentors were royalty, matinee idols, opera stars and athletes.

In contrast, most chief executives claimed to have no such help - though their address books might have contained a dentist and a doctor. That they had become chief executives might have suggested that along the way they had had mentors or patrons. But these relationships were informal and non-commercial.

Things have changed. Now, chief executives also have retinues of mentors, minders, advisers, coaches and physical trainers - to say nothing of masseurs, dressers, mediators, crystal-ball gazers, colour co-ordinators, interior decorators, party organisers and even feng shui consultants.

The trend for paying for a variety of personal services is booming. Part of that boom is the increased use of formal mentor programmes at work.

The term "mentoring" refers here to a relationship between two people in the same company.

One is senior and acts as an adviser for a younger executive.

The role has three functions: to give advice on career options, to provide social support and to help people to be more effective in their current roles.

The good news is that mentoring appears to pay off. Working with a mentor has been shown to correlate positively with higher rates of pay, faster career progress, greater clarity of professional identity and more self-confidence.

Mentors have limited hierarchical authority. Instead their impact is based on influence and trust.

For this reason, people tend to prefer their mentor to work outside their unit, divorced from office politics. The stereotype of an effective mentor is of a caring, helpful, considerate, objective source of feedback and advice.

Good mentors use their experience to explain the realities of corporate life. While empathy is a popular term among mentors, to be effective they must give both positive and negative feedback.

Research has shown that effective mentors are mature people who understand themselves well. One of their motives is to pass on that tacit knowledge, which experience has given them, to the next generation.

They are sufficiently senior to be able to move about the business, to bypass functional and geographic boundaries in matching younger people with jobs.

To do this, mentors must have the interpersonal skills to persuade others to break the rules. They also need access to the people who can open otherwise closed doors.

They are not psychotherapists or a focus for dissatisfaction. Nor is mentoring a role for those seeking self-gratification or to redress the irritations of a career that is nearly over.

Given these limitations, good mentors are rare. Like any other interpersonal relationship, sometimes mentoring is fulfilling for both people; sometimes it is disastrous.

Studies of informal mentoring do show highly positive results. Informal mentors are older and choose their protΘgΘs carefully. They see them as younger versions of themselves. Conversely, the protΘgΘ chooses a mentor for being a role model. Many of these informal relationships last for years - and endure even when the people involved are no longer in the same location.

In contrast, formal mentoring schemes use third parties to match protΘgΘs and mentors and establish formal expectations and monitor outcomes. Most of these relationships last less than a year.Despite the boom in formal mentoring schemes, we know little about their impact.

Companies usually adopt such schemes because employees want career advice and development, rather than through a conviction that formal mentoring will help the company.

There have been many critics. Human resources professionals worry about their design. Reluctant mentors complain that schemes invade their privacy and force them to become amateur shrinks.

Yet what unites enthusiasts and critics alike is the difficulty of the task. Can we make it less daunting?

Be clear about the role. The objective is to assist employees to see their roles more clearly and to discuss their career development.

See the role of mentor as that of coach, not player.

Mentors help protΘgΘs to understand the corporation better, to learn how to get things done, how the politics are played. Mentoring should not be seen as remedial.

The way a company introduces mentors is important. Any scheme affects expectations.

Most often, I recommend that a formal scheme be introduced through the management development function. That is, mentors and younger employees work together on a development activity such as a leadership skills programme, ideally off-site, and get to know each other. At the end of that activity an action plan moves the relationship forward.

Linking this off-site training activity to some form of assessment provides some independent, "hard" data on the younger employees' relationships with their teams, bosses and peers. It also provides a focus for developing the mentoring relationship A follow-up of the assessment six to 12 months later is a simple way to extend the mentoring relationship beyond the typical "six months and die" pattern of formal mentoring schemes. (Through follow-up surveys, we have been able to extend formal schemes to two years.)

This brings me to the most consistent conclusion of the research that exists. The vital issue of any form of mentoring is the quality of the relationship at its heart. Get that right and the benefits of informal mentoring will be found in the formal schemes as well.

Get it wrong and no amount of fiddling with the design will fix it.

The writer is emeritus professor of organisational behaviour at London Business School.

johnwhunt@aol.com