Alison Martin, Founder of Engage Mentoring, works with employers to create talent pipelines through access to skills-based relationships.
What do you do when you realize your company has a weak bench and employees lacking the necessary skills to promote them into leadership roles? Or worse, when you realize only after you have promoted them that an employee lacks the necessary skills to be successful in their new role? If you are like most employers, you may first decide to invest in some leadership cohorts or executive coaching.
While these investments are important, they are often expensive and come as a reactive move once you’ve recognized you have leaders who simply don’t know how to lead. Leadership programs are usually afforded only to existing leaders or other employees who are deemed high potential, and executive coaching is typically reserved for those already occupying executive roles.
As the founder of a company that provides mentoring software, I’ve noticed that skills-based mentoring is an often overlooked strategy that can be wildly effective in helping employers develop leadership pipelines of talent.
The Benefits Of Skills-Based Mentoring
Skills-based mentoring is an incredible way to meet employees where they are and can be an efficient way to shortcut learning and engage employees in the process of taking ownership of their own development. It can also help increase employee engagement and productivity because mentoring and access to relationships address so many of the key drivers for why employees stay with a company, which include having caring, competent and engaging leaders and managers, concern for well-being and effective teamwork at all levels.
In addition, I’ve noticed the generation of employees entering the workforce is asking different questions and looking for different things. They want to know they are going to be afforded development opportunities, and many want to see an obvious career path. These employees are often accustomed to receiving feedback in a timely manner, and access to relationships is a critical part of the retention strategy for employers wishing to attract the very top talent.
The Challenges
So why isn’t every employer adopting a formalized skills-based mentoring program as a part of their critical talent strategies? Many employers do not even attempt to construct a mentoring program due to a lack of available mentors and/or a lack of resources.
In addition, I’ve found most attempts at a formalized skills-based mentorship program fail. They fail due to poor planning, not being scalable, a lack of proper training, poor measurement and bad matching. Additionally, many companies attempt a mentoring program based on hierarchy, which also sets the program up for failure due to having fewer available mentors compared to the pool of mentees.
Key Components Of A Skills-Based Mentoring Program
For any program to work, it must address several key components, which include:
• Scalability: Establish an easily administered program that is able to serve a population of any size without making it a full-time job for someone.
• Matching: Ensure the matching process takes into account the true developmental needs of the mentee and keep specific outcomes in mind.
• Training: Both the mentor and mentee should be trained to ensure they understand what is asked of them and how to approach the mentoring conversation successfully and with outcomes in mind.
• Measurement: Measuring success of the program should be tied to desired learning outcomes, and a plan must be in place for how success is measured. In addition, tracking promotability and retention of employees can demonstrate a return on investment for the skills-based mentoring program.
How To Start A Skills-Based Mentoring Program
Perhaps most importantly, an effective program must have leadership buy-in and involvement. Employees want the opportunity to learn from and have visibility to leaders in your company, and this opportunity should not just be afforded to a select few.
In order to set up a skills-based mentoring program, it is first important to identify the skills which will be used for matching participants. This can be a combination of leadership skills, which are often referred to as “soft skills,” as well as hard skills, which are the skills necessary for your workforce to perform their job responsibilities.
Once those skills are defined, allow mentors to identify topics they have relevant experience in and a willingness to teach. Once this is established, mentees can be matched to the available pool of mentors based on targeted learning outcomes and skill development for the mentees. You can then track outcomes utilizing a variety of methodologies, which may include a post-assessment or a survey.
You owe it to your company, and you owe it to your employees to ensure they have the tools necessary to be successful—both now and in future roles they may occupy.
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