Mentorship programs matter now more than ever
People of all ages, genders and ethnicities need guidance amid pandemic
The COVID-19 pandemic has accelerated many changes in business and organizational practice. Now more than ever there is the need to fully engage all employees and develop their skills, thinking and achievement while recognizing and rewarding them.
Flattened organization hierarchies and well-led groups of crossfunctional skills and achievements are a superior model for our emerging postpandemic world. Old concepts of our work life and home life being separate and often competing environments are not helpful or productive. We need greater humanity in our organizational designs.
These changes require an ever-increasing mentorship approach. One that while continuing individual mentor– mentee approaches builds in more group mentoring and rec- ognition of the work- and home-life needs of all genders, ages and ethnic backgrounds.
Mentorship is a human process. Its roots are deep in human culture. They were too often forgotten through the 19th and 20th centuries when the advances of technology often suppressed the humanity. In this current technological age, that same risk persists.
Research from the Carroll School of Management at Boston College with U.S. executives in 2020 concluded: “Employees, particularly younger ones, received less mentoring and coaching during the shift to remote work than they did before the pandemic. If people don’t get the feedback they need to develop into more mature employees and leaders, the deficiency could negatively impact career development over time.”
The Harvard Business Review Press defines mentoring as “the offering of advice, information or guidance by a person with useful experience, skills or expertise for another individual’s personal and professional development.”
Across global cultures and religions there have been similar types of relationships: the roles of a guru or spiritual leader, councils of elders in many Aboriginal groups, or guilds that have master-apprenticeship relationships — all contain similar notions to mentoring.
Mentoring is generally regarded as having career and psychosocial functions. Career functions include:
› Sponsorship: opening doors that might otherwise be closed.
› Coaching: teaching and feedback.
› Protection: supporting and acting as a buffer of criticism.
› Challenge: encouraging new ways of thinking and acting; pushing the mentee to stretch their capabilities.
› Exposure and visibility: increasing awareness of mentee capabilities.
Psychosocial functions include:
› Role modelling: demonstrating kinds of successful behaviours, attitudes and values.
› Counselling: help with difficult dilemmas.
› Acceptance and confirmation: supporting and giving respect.
› Friendship: personal caring. Mentoring is often associated with internal organization programs. However, increasingly, external mentorship programs are developing especially in areas like professional experience, gender or ethnic support. These relationships have the advantage of being less political than internal mentoring and more psychosocial in emphasis. They suffer the obvious disadvantage of being less directly utilitarian in career management.
Internal mentoring done well aids people through the competencies, knowledge, judgment and the internal politics of a specific organization. By being specific to the organization it can focus on the specific disciplines and managerial skills judged to be those essential to the organization’s success. Companies like CIBC, IBM and Shopify have extensive and successful mentorship programs for their various internal groups.
External mentoring allows a greater focus on the professional discipline and general industry perspective; organizations like the American Marketing Association’s Toronto chapter do extensive mentorship programs in marketing. External programs can also focus on gender and ethnic mentorship like the Scotiabank Women Initiative and the Toronto Regional Immigrant Employment Council (TRIEC) Mentoring Partnership program.
In any organization an employee’s skill and motivation are essential ingredients of success in achieving organizational goals. Mentoring arrangements are now an essential motivational ingredient.
Additionally, the need to engage and motivate at all levels, all genders and all ethnic backgrounds, and not waste talent is an increasing imperative and the reason behind the growth in all types of mentoring groups. These should include internal programs to enable people to “on-board” by being introduced to colleagues not only in their immediate work silo but across the organization. They should also include external programs that enable learning and development in a broader context than the immediate workplace. And, most importantly, both should include counsel and conversation with people with different experiences and viewpoints.
Mentorship is, thereby, a critical way to humanize work relationships and improve organizational performance. It matters more now to all — mentee, mentor and organizations.