Role of Mentoring on Individual and Organizational performance
Organizational goals cannot be realized without individual development. In order to achieve an efficient performance, organizational and individual productivity should be perfectly aligned. A consistent development of the employees is essential for continuous growth of the organization and development of employees has to be achieved through a planned supervision that prepares them to handle the responsibilities associated. Experts have suggested several processes like coaching, mentoring and e-learning, that contribute to the training and development of the individual. Organizational development can be achieved through the development of individuals employed in it. This report is an attempt towards understanding the concept of mentoring as a development tool, how it is different from coaching and its role in enhancing performance.
The origin of the term ‘Mentor’ can be traced back to Greek epic Odyssey or in Fenelon’s work, Les adventures de Telemaque, where Odysseus’ infant son, Telemachus was looked after by Athena, the Goddess, disguised as Mentor, who was a friend of Odysseus. After Odysseus’ disappearance during the Trojan War, his household was in chaos and it was through the guidance of Athena, Telemachus grew up into an able young man capable of succeeding the throne. Subsequently the process of active guidance to a pupil by an experienced teacher who advised the former, to oversee his/her personal or professional development came to be known as Mentoring. Andy Roberts (2000, 180), has proposed a definition of Mentoring after a detailed research as a ‘formalized process whereby a more knowledgeable and experienced person actuates a supportive role of overseeing and encouraging reflection and learning to a less experienced and knowledgeable person, so as to facilitate that person’s career and personal development’. This definition throws light on the attributes a mentor should possess, the functions a mentor is supposed to perform and the benefits of mentoring.
Attributes of a Mentor
A mentor has been described as a person who has knowledge and experience in his/her field of expertise. Apart from these factors a good mentor’s skills have been presented by Lima. L, (2004, 8-11). He has combined the personality traits with motivational reasons to identify a good mentor. A mentor should be altruistic in nature, gifted with interpersonal skills, must relate well with people willing to learn, keep an open mind, have a flexible attitude and be supportive. She/he should have a willingness to guide others, be helpful and have the necessary empathy towards others. He/she should be able to inspire others by his professional success and mannerism. The ideal motivational reason to be a mentor is intrinsic satisfaction rather than extrinsic rewards. Therefore the mentor satisfies the motivational need of self actualization in Maslow’s need hierarchy.
Functions of a Mentor
Following functions of a mentor are presented by scholars -A mentor identifies the candidates who have the potential to perform better under supervision. A mentee must be bestowed with certain qualities like ambition, willingness to learn, person goal setting ability and faith in the mentor. He/she shares the mentee’s attitudes, beliefs and dreams, understands the latter’s insecurities to assess his/her capabilities and to determine the areas where he/she needs guidance. The Mentor takes an active interest in the mentee’s growth within the organization as well as helps him/her to evolve as person. He/she provides the feedback on performance and advises on improvement. He/she arranges help in areas where his/her own knowledge may be limited and provides the necessary guidelines to enable the protégé to take a decision.
Thus mentoring functions can be divided into two types – professional and psychosocial (Kram, K.E., 1983. 612); professional mentoring helps a protégé realize his/her career goals whereas psychosocial mentoring helps in evolving as an individual. (Raggins & Cotton, 1999, 530) have observed that informal mentoring is more effective than formal mentoring and lasts through many years. An informal mentor is always available for suggestions even when the specified goals have been achieved by the protégé.
Although Mentoring and coaching has some overlapping areas, mentoring is more informal. Coaching is intended to develop the professional aspects of the individual and gives specific inputs to overcome the deficiencies in the trainee’s efforts. It is a more structured process where there is a definite plan of the training process. There are regular interactions and assessment sessions but the emotional involvement of the coach is missing and his/her motivation is mainly monetary compensation. On the other hand, a mentor focuses on changing personal as well as professional attributes of the mentee. Although both aim to enhance performance, the mentor accomplishes this through concentrating on psychosocial development also. His/her emotional involvement is comparatively more and there is a different motivational reason i.e. self satisfaction. Coaching is a short term process often confined to the learning period only but mentoring extends over a longer period of time. Although they do not meet at regular intervals and exchange information, a protégé can turn to the mentor for advice even after there is no professional relationship between the two.
Role of Mentoring in Enhancing Organizational performance
The organizational benefits of mentoring include easier induction of new recruits. Mentoring helps newcomers to become accustomed to the work environment which enables them to understand the processes quickly and improves performance. Emotional and professional support provided through mentoring contributes towards developing a sense of commitment and loyalty, thereby decreasing their chances of quitting the job soon. Mentors help employees to understand the organizations long term plans and their advancement opportunities consistent with the plans. Mentoring facilitates succession planning by recognizing the aspirations and potential of the employees and developing them in synchronization with organizational goals. Mentoring helps the protégé through informal feedback which may be beyond the formal channels of communication.
The enhancement of organizational performance through retention of employees facilitated by mentoring was further illustrated by Payne and Huffman (2005, 159) by deriving a relation between organizational commitment and Mentoring. Organizational Commitment gives rise to a sense of loyalty because of the extra attention given to the employee’s career advancement plans through mentoring. Employees are more reluctant to leave an organization because of the emotional attachment and also because of the fear of losing the personal and professional support gained from mentoring in an organization.
There are many examples of enhanced organizational performances by introducing mentoring as a development tool. (Groves, K.S., 2007. 244) conducted a study in organizations to establish a relation between mentoring and leadership development. The executives in this research informed that their organizations actively encourage the value of mentoring by conducting formal mentoring programs and promoting informal mentoring relationships among managers and subordinates having strong growth potentials. Managers cultivate mentoring relationships with high potential personnel of different business units, work experience, and functional/product specialization, thereby developing a mentor network. The process of managers creating a network of mentors compared to traditional one-on-one mentoring is in alignment with researchers proposing that mentor networks are crucial to managerial career success in today’s organizations and that presence of multiple mentors is strongly correlated with high promotion rates. A CEO of a hospital included in the study illustrates the personal learning benefits of mentoring relationships and the significance of managers practicing a proactive role in providing advancement opportunities to high potential staff, “I think if I had not had that experience of starting off going to board meetings, working on projects that were of significance to the organization, I think that I probably would be more reluctant to give people that opportunity now when they come into this organization. So because of that orientation and the opportunities [my mentor] gave me, it has translated into an administrative resident here right now who is working on a problem related to increasing group health costs. It’s a very important issue for us and that’s her project, so she’s giving board presentations, attending medical executive staff meetings, and I just don’t know that I would have been as open to creating those opportunities for somebody just starting out if my mentor hadn’t had that orientation with me and other administrative fellows that were around at the time.” From the comment it can be inferred that managers who have been mentored at the course of their career are more inclined to act as mentors themselves later in their career.
Another organizational mentoring program is concerned with development of entrepreneurship. (Memon, J. et al, 2015, 4) has matched 5 types of entrepreneurs with the 4 stages of Mentoring proposed by Kram & Raggins. Mentoring for entrepreneurship is being promoted by Government Organizations as an effective strategy to give an impetus to entrepreneurship especially in developing countries. The programs consist of arranging meetings between prospective entrepreneurs and business owners and industrial development centre officials. The general idea is to provide guidance to the aspiring entrepreneur about project viability, credit facilities from banks, availability of subsidies and exemptions from the Government and other facilities. The assigned mentor then supervises the steps to establish a venture, arrange for the resources and guidance on various issues that concern an enterprise. (Bisk, L. 2002, 264) has discussed the efficacy of a third party managed entrepreneurial mentoring programs and has examined the prevalent practice of aligning entrepreneurs with mentors.. Entrepreneurs, engaging the counselling services of mentors provided by Ireland’s Industrial Development agency were mailed a questionnaire that evaluated their satisfaction with the mentoring program, and their opinion of the performance of their assigned mentors. The inferences suggest that the entrepreneurs’ age and education are factors that influenced their takeaways from the engagement. The initial findings also suggest that mentorship program effectiveness was independent of Mentor’s knowledge of the related industry. The study also discusses socio‐cultural issues in the mentoring process and how they might affect the choice of a formal or an informal entrepreneurial mentoring program arranged by Government organizations.
Role of Mentoring in improving individual performance
The role of Mentoring in enhancing individual productivity is of great significance as it helps in evaluating the potential of employees and gives them the necessary impetus to grow within the organization. Mentoring is an activity that offers valuable suggestion, arrangement of resources, counselling and opportunities for advancement to the mentees. The mentee has the distinct advantage of soliciting advice from an experienced and knowledgeable senior who shows an active interest in his/her growth. Individual mentoring examples are seen between a manager and subordinate, a student and teacher, trainer and sports person. An illustration of student mentor model presented by (Smithwick, J.et al., 2014) is presented below
Continuous 2 weeks 3 – 9 months
Feedback Survey
The mentorship model presented above is particularly designed to illustrate industry and practical experiences by facilitating the use of an industry mentor. There are four constituents of the model:
1. Filling a form giving detailed mentorship information. Students and mentors can register to participate in the program by submitting a form that describes their interests and objectives. The student chapter in charge will align students with mentors depending on their mutual interests.
2. Planning meeting. Once the student chapter in charge introduces them, the student and mentor should meet and decide specifically what they want to achieve during the mentorship program. This meeting should formulate attainable goals, practices, and a tentative timeline.
3. Mentoring. While some students only may only want to join the program for a single session, the most successful program stretch over the course of at least one year. The mentor and student should periodically review their plans and make the modifications necessary.
Documentation and Closeout- At the end of a mentorship program, both participants should assimilate their important lessons learned and experiences. The student will gain significantly from this exercise as they might be able to use this knowledge for future assignments.
Survey Results
The scholars reported a high initial success with the first pilot year of the new mentorship program.
There were 14 volunteer mentors and eight student protégés
Four student mentees gained some sort of career progress through a post graduation recruitment or paid internship
100 percent of survey participants affirmed that they would recommend other people took part in the program
The overall satisfaction rating from mentorship showed 8.4 out of 10.
There were two significant takeaways from the first year of the mentorship experiment. First, each mentorship group needs to have a well defined plan for what they will accomplish during the period of the mentorship. Although this was explained before some of the groups did not take time to formulate a plan. Teams that did not have a plan could not find mutually beneficial activities, and were somewhat dissatisfied with the exercise.
The second important lesson inferred was that students should maintain a record of their experiences. It has dual benefit result - it helps them recollect what they learned in an organized system, and it also inspires new students to take part in the program. During the first year of the program, none of the students formally recorded their experiences with the program.
While the first year presented a remarkable success, the researchers were concerned that only a few students and professionals participated in the program.
This exercise highlighted that a formal mentoring program can produce satisfactory results if there was a high involvement from both participants. Essentially mentoring programs in organizations are being introduced to achieve an improved productivity through sharing of view, feedbacks and inputs that make the individual realize his/her short comings and overcome them with active support from the mentors.
Another example of mentoring can be derived from a sportspersons like athletes or gymnasts and their personal trainer. The coach may teach them the techniques to improve their performance but the personal trainer sets goals, provides feedbacks, supervises their practice sessions and creates a progressive schedule.
Conclusion
The report illustrates how mentoring program for organizations and individuals play a significant role in developing qualities of employees and entrepreneurs that may benefit the organization as a whole as well as the individuals. Mentors are assessed as persons who have the knowledge and experience to guide, motivate and advise individuals for self evolution as well as for contributing to the organizational productivity. Individual, one to one mentoring programs can benefit students in improving their academic performances as well as future prospects of getting jobs and starting their own businesses. The results can be extended to the mentoring programs for industrial managers also. Similar examples of one to one mentoring programs are available in the cases of sportspersons where person trainers have played the roles of mentors and succeeded in enhancing their performance. Mentoring can be very effective for changing organizational environment. Mentors can impress upon their mentees the organizational values and inspire them to incorporate them in their activities. This results in realization of organizational goals as well as the implementation of change. Informal feedbacks from mentors have proved to be highly effective in changing behaviour and techniques consistent with organizational practices.
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References
Bisk, L., 2002. Formal entrepreneurial mentoring: the efficacy of third party managed programs. Career development international, 7(5), pp.262-270
Groves, K.S., 2007. Integrating leadership development and succession planning best practices, Journal of management development, 26(3), pp.239-260
Kram, K.E., 1983. Phases of the mentor relationship, Academy of Management journal, 26(4), pp.608-625
Lima, L., 2004. Personality and motivational characteristics of the successful mentor (Doctoral dissertation, University of South Florida)
Memon, J., Rozan, M.Z.A., Ismail, K., Uddin, M. and Daud, D., 2015 Mentoring an Entrepreneur, SAGE Open, 5(1), p.2158244015569666
Payne, S.C. and Huffman, A.H., 2005 A longitudinal examination of the influence of mentoring on organizational commitment and turnover, Academy of Management Journal, 48(1), pp.158-168
Raggins, B.R. and Cotton, J.L., 1999. Mentor functions and outcomes: a comparison of men and women in formal and informal mentoring relationships. Journal of applied psychology, 84(4), p.529 - 531.
Roberts, A., 1999. Homer’s Mentor duties fulfilled or misconstrued.
Roberts, A., 2000. Mentoring revisited: A phenomenological reading of the literature. Mentoring and Tutoring, 8(2) pp.145-170
Smithwick, J., Thurston, A., Hurtado, K., Kashiwagi, D. and Sullivan, K., 2014. Student Engagement in the Facility Management Profession through Mentorship, International Journal of Facility Management, 5(2)
