When done right, mentoring can transform people, organisations, and communities for the better! But, without enthusiasm, planning and effective delivery, they can lose focus and their impact reduced. To support your mentoring programme and ensure that it’s as effective as possible, we’re revealing our top 3 secrets to running an effective mentoring programme.
Recruit the ‘right’ mentors
This might sound simple but finding the right members of your team to be mentors can be a challenge. You should be careful to ensure that mentors are committed to the success of the program, and the people that they will be mentoring.
It is also important that your mentoring programme includes mentors from a broad range of skillsets, backgrounds, and seniority levels. This breadth is important as it means that your mentees are more likely to match with someone with shared interests, skills, or knowledge which is key to fostering meaningful relationships.
Finally, there are some personality traits to look for in your mentors, important traits in a good mentor include patience and listening skills. The most effective mentors take in what's happening, assess the path the mentee is on and then guide the person onto the right track.
Communicate the value of mentoring
Communicating the value of mentoring for both your mentors and mentees is so important to build a culture of mentoring. There are proven benefits such as reducing stress and improving productivity that can and should be shouted about! It is also important to use communication to remove any barriers that mentors might be facing, often people are worried that mentoring will take up too much of their time or will be too much work. Make sure that you are clear about the level of commitment that is needed (it could be as little as an hour a month).
Organisations such as yours have introduced a mentoring programme for good reason, make sure that your team are aware of the benefits so that they are invested in committing their time and energy to the mentoring process.
If you are unsure about how to communicate the value of mentoring to your teams and maintain momentum, let us know! Our team are fully equipped to support you with marketing materials, email templates and studies that can help you to share the value of mentoring with your mentors and mentees.
Evaluate your success or learn from mistakes
Running a mentoring programme, no matter what the size is a commitment and can be a huge amount of work. It is so important to continuously review how your mentoring programme is performing against the objectives that you set for it when you began. Is it providing a return on the investment of time and money that your organisation has made?
Consider measuring one of these two points, or design your own measure depending on your goals:
The business objectives outlined
Have you hit your KPIs because of the mentoring program?
Mentee and mentor personal development
Did the mentee or mentor achieve their goals? What impact did the mentoring program have on them?
If you continue to monitor the success of the programme and you notice you are not hitting KPIs or making an impact, don’t give up! It may be time to reassess a single aspect of your mentoring programmes such as the content or the way that you are communicating with your mentors. Speak to your Connectr representative about your challenges and we will support you to ensure your programme’s success.