TRANSCRIPT

Sara Orem

Welcome to "Mentoring for Future Success"! This is Sara Orem, and I am a faculty member in Human Resources Specialization School of Business at Capella University. Prior to my 12-year at Capella, I was director of Learning and Development at a global bank where I both placed mentors and joined mentors and mentees, and I feel privileged to be able to present this to you today.

First, I would like to talk a little bit about what a mentor is and how mentoring happens. First of all, a mentor usually has some specific expertise in a particular field. So, a mentor might be an expert in mergers and acquisitions, for instance, and know about mergers and acquisitions because of direct experience and someone who has managed that process, somebody who is participated in that process or somebody who has been merged or acquired and has had therefore received expertise in that process.

I mentored — usually, has years of experience and solid credentials. So, in the case, I have just pointed out someone who has been through three or four mergers and/or acquisitions has quite a lot of experience, and probably solid credentials in that area as well. A mentor can do something well that you, as a potential mentee, want to learn how to do it. There is also chemistry involved. It is not enough to join someone who has expertise with someone else who wants expertise. There is the element — the important element of the strength of that relationship or the strength of the relationship that the two people are able to build together.

Initially, mentoring is an unequal relationship where the mentor is the expert and the mentee is the learner. But a good mentoring relationship grows usually into a more equal relationship where each person admires the other for various personality attributes as well as skills and experience. One thing that I am often asked, as a credential coach and a person who plays mentors is, "Are mentoring and coaching the same thing?" And I do not believe they are the same thing but the words are often used interchangeably. So, I want to see if I can clarify for you, the audience what the difference between someone who is acting in the role of a mentor versus somebody who is acting in a role of a coach.

A mentor, as I said in the first slide, usually holds expertise and wisdom. Now, wisdom implies age, I think, and a mentor is not necessarily an old or older person, but is a person who has sufficient experience with both people and organizations so that they have a certain detachment from the everyday crisis of organizations. They have seen enough come and go so that they have both expertise and wisdom. A mentor is usually more a teacher than anything else and the mentee is usually the learner.

Mentoring is usually not a paid relationship. It is a choice made by one and ultimately, both of the people involved in a relationship, but it is not a choice that is paid. It is a choice that is voluntary. Mentoring has a defined beginning but no defined ending. I know people who talk about mentors that they have known or been in a formal or informal relationship with whom they have been in this relationship for years. So, there is not an end necessarily to a mentoring relationship.

Mentoring has wide ranging topics. So, it is not necessarily, in terms of the first choice that I gave you, it is not necessarily someone who has specific expertise in the area of mergers and acquisitions. That person can also have a great understanding of organizational politics, for instance, or the culture of an organization. The mentor may have an unusually large or diverse number of contacts as well as being able to help someone else builds skills. So, mentoring can be organized by many, many different things.

And here are some of the differences between mentoring and coaching. A coach believes and it is a part of calling oneself a coach. A coach believes that the answers to issues and concerns that a coachee or client has are within the client. They are not applied by the coach. So, the coach is not a teacher and that coachee or client is not necessarily the learner. They really are co-creators together of new behavior or new experience or a new way to reach a goal. A coaching relationship is often but not always a paid relationship. There may be some sort of "quid pro quo" where a coach offer services to a coachee in exchange or yoga lessons, for instance, but there is some form of payment usually to the coach. Coaching usually does have a defined beginning and a defined end. Often coaching contracts last for a period of months where laid longer than a year. And coaching is based on the goals and the preferred style of the coachee, so that if a coachee prefers a particular style of coaching, such as a wholistic style or a more directive style, that is what the coach is called upon to provide. And so a coach usually has at least a few approaches to coaching that she or he might use with any given client.

In choosing a mentor, the most important thing is to be clear within yourself, "What it is that you want?" And this may take a while. I know that it is very difficult for a potential mentor to say, "Yes. I am enthusiastic and whole hearted about entering a relationship with you, the mentee if you do not know what you want."

So, here are few, just a few examples of what a mentee what might be looking for. If you are right at the college or law school or just finished an MBA program, you might be looking for a mentor to help you find your first job or your first job in a different field from the field in which you have been working. You might want a mentor to learn the ins and outs of the new company. You might want to mentor to learn a particular skill like public speaking which on a list of the top 10 stressors. Public speaking almost always comes up among those 10 which is why I have included it here. Some others might be conflict management. You may see a particularly masterful potential mentor deal with conflict and want to be able to do that management as smoothly as a potential mentor does. Or you might want to engage your team more immediately or more effectively than you believe you are presently doing.

You might need to build a network for future promotion, so you may have a group of friends and colleagues that are perfectly fine right now, but you have your eye on position that is maybe two or three positions ahead and you know that you are going to need a different sets of people to support you in reaching that promotion, and you will be looking to a mentor to help you build that network. So, to get more specific, you might want to make a list of people you might ask. And usually, this is in a list of 30 to 40 people. It is more like a list of two to five people, and think of what it is that you want to ask for and what you can offer in return.

Most mentors know that this can be a growth opportunity for them too. So, when I say that a mentee has something to offer, the mentee really has growth for the mentor to offer as well as the mentor offering growth for the mentee. Mentoring can enhance listening skills, it can help on mentor build his or her own network and it can sharpen their coaching or managing skills as well. You might want to do some informational interviewing to talk to a potential mentor about what they think their particular skills and expertise are. And what their experience is in the kind of thing that you are interested in having a relationship around. And finally, when you feel like there is a good fit or a good potential fit, you do want to pop the question. And popping the question is as clear and as direct as you can make it. And I got a little scenario in the next slide or two where we can actually look at going through those steps.

Before we get there, however, I want to say a little bit about how to structure a mentoring relationship. Some mentoring relationships have a formal contract and I do not have a template in this presentation, but I think that if you go through the next four bullet points, you will see what needs to be there. At the very least you want to decide how often you will meet and if you want to meet more frequently for a shorter period of time, rather than less frequently for a longer period of time, by all means, ask for what you want. And you may have to settle for some what less than you want. Where do you want to meet?

If you and your mentor are co-located, well then obviously, you want to meet him in person, but sometimes that is not possible. Either you or your mentor may have a pretty heavy travel schedule. You may not be in the same building or even in the same country. So, you will have to arrange to meet by phone or in person or to use something like Skype or Facetime. How much time will you meet in each session? Again, ask for what you think you want or need, but usually no more than an hour. And I would say that neither a mentor nor a mentee usually have more than an hour to devote to this on a periodic basis.

How long did you expect the relationship to last? Now, you may not know this, you probably do not know it if you are interviewing potential mentors. So, all the more reason to suggest the trail period and I know this is worth very successfully. For me, when I was working with a new academic mentor, I was afraid of him. I did not know whether I want to work with him or not. And so, he suggested that we work together on one project and that if we found each other to be compatible, then we would continue to work together. And the one project was actually led to a long relationship including my (00:14:57) has retirement. So, try each other for out for maybe a month or two or three at the most before you decide that you want to solidify the relationship.

Now, I have given you a scenario here and I will not read every word because you can read it yourself. It is a scenario between a person who has experience as an engineer and she wants to get into sales, and she believes that her real talent lies in sales. But — from where she is to where she wants to be. So, she is interviewing potential mentors who are currently in sales and this particular person happens to have an engineering background. So, she needs ideas about how to present her sales, ideas in the company that she is in, and how to present her experience in the sales framework.

She needs to know how to recap her resume, focus on her potential as a salesperson, and particularly, from someone who has already made that transition from engineer to salesperson. And then stating what her particular needs are, she asks the mentor for that trial relationship that we have talked about. In return, this mentee has a few things that she has thought through that she can share. First, she suggest that she can share her decision making process, so that the mentor might use that, as a model for any future mentoring decisions that she or he might make, and her decision process for deciding that sales was a better fit than engineering.

She acknowledges that the process that she went through to determine it is fit maybe full of holes and that she really wants the potential mentors feedback about that. She states clearly that she will be committed to the process and that she will be prompt, open- minded, and willing to try what the mentor suggests. And that is really all a mentor can ask for.

What is a good mentoring relationship? Well, I suspect that many of you have had good mentoring relationships, and so you know at least intuitively what they look like. There is an element of mutual respect which is shown by keeping commitments, being on time, carrying though, and following through on what you say you are going to do. There is a two-way communication. It is not just the mentor talking and the mentee listening. It is that the mentor listens carefully and curiously as well as offering advice. Again, is that curious word, both are curious about the other. They are interested in their professional experience, expertise and skills, but they are also interested in each other as people. They openly share contacts and offer networking opportunities. Mistakes, which all of us make, are acknowledged but they are not judged. This is a learning kind of relationship. Humor and warmth help enormously and it helps if both people take themselves lightly and the relationship seriously.

The benefits to the mentee and to the mentor we have sort of glanced upon, but I want to make sure that these are cemented in your mind. The benefits to the mentee are usually increased skills in some area. There is usually increased visibility in an organization or in an industry as a result of this mentoring relationship and the network of the mentee is usually broadened due to that relationship.

One of the most important things, however, is that it provides a relationship outside of direct supervision where ideas and problems can be openly shared. Now, this is not to suggest that one should not talk to one's boss, but it often helps to get an unbiased ear or opinion about something that is troubling you when that person does not have a vested interest in your doing or not doing something a certain way. This is one of the great benefits of a good mentoring relationship. Lastly, mentoring offers both advice and support.

The benefits to the mentor are that it is an opportunity to give back to one's organization, community, and one — in mentors. It allows a mentor to enhance her or his own skills of teaching and coaching and it helps to build knowledge of different industries, challenges people, and ideas. And those are, to mentors, often as important as the benefits to mentees are. And mentors often say that they get as much out of mentoring as they provide.

And then we have the challenging mentor. The challenging mentor forgets or does not honor appointments. Now, this may not even be intentional or — well, it may not be intentional, it may be a time in the mentor's life when she or he really cannot devote a time to mentoring. So, it does not mean that it is a hostile or a mean-spirited kind of thing necessarily.

The challenging mentor, however, may dominate conversation. It is a do it my way or the highway where there is no room for dialogue. The challenging mentor may listen only to rebut, only to tell you why your idea will not work. The challenging mentor may show no interest with little interest in you as a person, and so you do not feel valued in that relationship. The challenging mentor may keep his or her own networking connections to himself, not offering wider visibility in an organization. And so, if this is the case, or if you have ever have this kind of mentor, then you know that not doing anything about it does not enhance your capability.

So, just a word about one might do if you find yourself in a mentoring relationship that does not suit you. First, confront as honestly but tactfully. Both words are important here. So, be honest about what your own part in the relationship is that does not seem to be working. But also, remember that you are doing with probably a more experienced person's feelings as well. So, it is important to be tactful. As your mentor, perhaps, if she thinks the relationship could work better for him or her and how, listen to this with an open-mind and a critical ear. And by that, I mean, try to be open to what you might do differently and to what you might learn in this conversation — painful though, it might be.

If after consideration, you think you still cannot get what you need, thank the mentor and tell the truth that the relationship is not working out for you, and perhaps it is your fault. You are very grateful for what she or he has done for you so far and you think you can take it from here or you may think that you can find another mentor.

So, I have taken you quickly through the ins and outs of what mentoring is, how to find a mentor, how to structure a mentoring contract, what a good mentoring relationship looks like, and what perhaps the challenging relationship looks like. And you may have some questions and I would encourage you to consult your colleagues to who may have more mentoring experience that your organization. Or you can, on this last page, refer to the resources that I have used for this presentation which are Chip Bell's Managers As Mentor, which is an older book, but still a very good one. Or Stone's brochure or short book on Coaching, Counseling and Mentoring: How to Choose and Use the Right Technique to Boost Employee Performance.

Thank you for you attention to this webinar and I hope that you find the information useful and enjoyable.