As good as many mentors are intuitively, the potential of a really great mentoring relationship is too critical to leave to chance: truly effective and memorable mentors are not just born, they’re made. So, the art — the intention, commitment, awareness and skill — together with knowledge and experience, combine to create something much bigger than the sum of its parts.
Dani Ticktin Koplick: THE NAME OF THE GAME: The Making of a Mentor:
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As you build your career, as you increase your effectiveness, as you commit to, and follow through on, the challenge of “getting better,” you need help. A lot of help!
You need good teachers, and then good managers/supervisors, and then maybe a good coach, and then, a good mentor. “It takes a village” to build a really effective worker in this complex work world of today.
But, it is a mistake to think that any one person can fill all of these “roles.” It really does help to have that “village,” a team of career building, effectiveness building helpers and guides and patient “correctors.”
I recently created this chart, which I shared in my presentation on mentoring for a client – a client in the beginning stages of implementing a formal mentoring program for their current and future leaders.
• Developing people (developing leaders) at work
Supervision | Teaching | Coaching | Mentoring | |
Relationship | Employee | Student | Team Member | Protégé |
Duration | While in this position | While in this class | Short-term (for this season) | Long-term |
Sessions | One-to one; and in “team meetings” | “Classes” | One-to-one; and in groups | One-to-one; “regularly scheduled” is best |
Focus | Get the work done | Learn the skills – “skill development” | Refine the skills – figure out how best to use the skills | Mutual learning, giving shape to Personal values and personal development;
“career development” |
Visibility | Generally pretty visible | When in a live learning session (a class), very visible | One-to-one; and in groups | One-to-one; private/confidential |
• There is also a need (at times) for:
• A Counselor
• A Sponsor
Here is another way to look at this “village’ of people-building professionals:
Problem:
Does the officer need to be supervised/managed (“this is what to work on this day, this week, this month)?
Solution:
— ongoing management and supervisionProblem:
Does the officer need to be taught – is there a gap in his/her education?
Solution:
— more education and formal trainingProblem:
Does the officer need to refine some skills (“get a little better”)?
Solution:
— Coaching
• “A coach is someone who can offer correction without creating resentment.” — John WoodenProblem:
Does the officer need help in “mapping out” a career, and figuring out what to develop/work on next?
• Note: both hard skills and soft skills
Solution:
— mentoring{Observation:
• Hard Skills are “easier” to teach, and certainly easier to measure. “Soft Skills” are much harder to teach, and much, much harder to measure.}Problem:
Is the officer facing a crisis, a “problem?”
Solution:
— counseling
In the olden days, a “journeyman” would take an “apprentice” under his wing and train the young apprentice. But both the journeyman and the apprentice would spend a lifetime getting really good at one specific task.
In todays world, it is not a journeyman, it is men and women, in a growing, almost indefinable array of jobs and even professions. People change jobs, and careers , and no one person can begin to understand all that any other person needs to know, and master. It really, truly is much more complex these days. So that “village” of helpers is not only useful, but essential.
And maybe the most valuable of all is that wise, sounding-board, co-learning mentor.
Randy, thanks for the mention!
Soft skills are, indeed, difficult to measure at least in the short term. I prefer to recalibrate the metric and think about the cost involved in not having or imparting them, e.g. employee turnover, dysfunctional teams, unmet objectives, redundancy/lost in the cracks, etc.
We live in a global marketplace and the soft skills are actually critical skills necessary to prevail, both domestically and internationally.
I taught coaching in a day-long seminar at the University of Dallas in the MBA program for six years. The major distinction between mentoring and coaching is that mentoring focuses upon the person as a model. Coaching focuses upon behaviors. Coaching and mentoring share many of the same behaviors, but it is the personal emphasis that distinguishes mentoring. Mentoring means “follow me.” There also a sense of expertise in mentoring that you do not have to find in coaching. A coach does NOT have to be as good as the skill as the recipient. The coach’s job is to provide an external perspective. Whoever is Peyton Manning’s quarterback coach is not as good as Peyton Manning – I guarantee it. But, that coach can see things that Manning cannot. That coach is not a mentor. I don’t know if Peyton Manning even has a mentor. But, whoever it may be is not coaching him.