Mentoring in workplace- assignment

1

8

Mentoring in the Workplace (013106)

Individual Assignment

Subject coordinator: Dr Catherine Raffaele

Student Name: Manni Xia

Student Number: 13011731

Workshop: Sunday 2-5pm cohort (MEDLL)

Date: 04/09/2020

Introduction:

The process of learning is gradual but continuous. It starts early form life and continues until death. The process of learning does not have to be necessarily formal; it can be in any form: formal, informal, or semi-formal. This learning process cannot be defined as just a teacher or a student. One can learn from fellow human beings, parents, siblings, teachers, class fellows, colleagues, boss and mentors. A mentor is someone who has more experience, knowledge or skills and is willing to share this crucial information about their own learning with others especially with subordinates for emotional support, guidance and motivation. A mentor often acts as the central figure in career development for exploring careers, defining goals, create a professional network, identification and execution of resources. Mentorship is a point of connection between two people with an aim for personal and professional development—the two individuals involved act as mentors and mentees (Kram, 2015).

Context Analysis:

The mentor is usually the one with more experience, knowledge and expertise and is willing to share with a less experienced, less skilled mentee for his or her personal and professional development. This relationship is not bounded by age but it does exist a hierarchy based on knowledge, experience and skills. It is the development and leaning partnership between an unexperienced person and an experienced person irrespective of their age, gender or other such factors. The support by the mentor is not limited to professional guidance; it includes role modeling, career guidance, effective communication about aspirations, hopes and dreams and psychological support by the mentor for these dreams and hopes. The transfer of social capital, knowledge and psychological support form mentor to mentee can be free of cost or it can be based on benefit for both but the most benefitting entity is a mentee in this process. The concept of mentorship exists among all fields of life but it is gaining a growing acceptance in the corporate world where the mentorship results in increased performance and high loyalty from employees for their organization. This paper will explore in detail the benefits of mentoring and critically analyze a mentoring program to see its pros and cons (Woods, 2018).

Literature Review:

Mentorship is a crucial part of personal and professional development and growth. Mentorship could be restricted to just professional growth or skills acquisition for the work-life but it has diverse impacts on the betterment of overall life. The mentoring programs are believed to help students doing in their studies. If they get sufficient attention from their teachers who act as mentors, in this case, student’s grade and learning improves largely. Because the mentor (teacher) knows the shortcomings of the students and knows how to cure it so a little attention by teachers drastically improves the academic performance of the students along with improvement in the confidence (McLaughlin, 2010). Furthermore, mentoring plays a central role in employee performance and productivity. Career development is directly proportional to the mentorship offered to employees. When organizations develop mentoring programs for career development, it enables their employees to learn from skilled managers and supervisors and quickly move up the ladder of professional development. Mentorship is the program through which sports teams find and mentor their star players. Those athletes with the most potential are sorted out and then they are passed through closed and personalized mentorship to make them a star. This is not limited to sports only. This concept is present in every field. Organizations employ the concept of personalized mentorship for making leaders. They train them through an effective mentorship program and prepare them for future leadership positions (Eby, 2008). Mentorship programs are very beneficial because they help the mentors to develop their leadership skills, improve public speaking and communication skills along with advancement in career. The mentors are familiarized with new perspectives through working with new mentees on a continuous basis. This keeps on adding to their information about younger trends. The mentors also gain personal satisfaction through mentorship programs. On the other hand, mentees gain valuable advice from professionals who have gone through a similar situation. Mentors share their personal experience and this help mentees relate with a mentor because there exists a distinction between learning from personal experience and learning from books and journal. The mentees can develop their skill base and knowledge through mentoring programs. Furthermore, mentees seek guidance on how to develop their network and social capital is transmitted from mentors to mentees through a mentorship program. Lastly, the mentees can see clear advancements in their career through skills, knowledge and advice from the mentor (Steven, 2019).

Mentoring and Professional Experience Analysis:

The nature of the mentoring program varies from organization to organization. Nature, scope and the leadership approach has a significant impact on the mentorship program of organizations. I have been part of one mentorship program in the early years of my university life which has helped me advance my knowledge, skills and abilities and most importantly, it helped me develop a professional approach towards everything in career, from communication to growth and expansion. The mentorship program I was part of was introduced by a startup. The startup XYZ was technology-centric and believed in facilitating human lives through advancement in technology. But the founder of the startup believed that any organization, big or small could only be able to achieve its goals if it has the skilled and dedicated manpower. With this mindset, the whole focus of the organization during the first year was on the development of a skilled and motivated team. This was achieved through an effective mentorship program.

This mentorship program started with the selection of candidates for the team. The selection is based on the personality attributes and the potential in the candidates. The educational background or presence or absence of skills were not deemed as the necessary criteria for the selection of candidates. Once the candidates were selected they were introduced with the team and they were taught about the basic communication skills. Despite the excessive use of social media by our generation we were taught to correspond through email. This correspondence through email was strictly formal from the email writing process to the response. Once the communication segment was covered, we were made to move forward to skill development. The focus of skill development at the first stage was not technical skills for every individual. Rather it was focused more on the development of an open approach where we were and to go through continuous activities for inducing creativity and invention. We were not only made to read about it but also induce it in everyday life by small activities and tests. At the end of every meeting, we would have one quiz which consisted of very interesting questions with no right answer. The questions were supposed to be creative and the answers were bound to be creative based on the questions. The meetings were not headed by one individual. The first few meetings were headed by the founder of the firm but soon a rotation started where every team member was asked to head the meeting. The selected head of the meeting was responsible for deciding the agenda, activities, quiz, time and all related factors. This was the first phase of skill-building where we leaned creativity, communication, public speaking, leadership, being a team player and organizing. Before the initiation of the second phase, the whole team of 6 members was split into three respective teams (Demers, 2014).

The second phase of skill development started soon after the first phase. This phase of skill development was focused on technical skill development. The skillset for this phase were computer languages and tools for web development, app development, digital marketing and content creation. I was part of the marketing team so my defined skill set included digital marketing: SEO, PPC, social media marketing and content marketing. I did not possess any of these skills before. But a proper plan was made for acquiring these skills. Since I was open to any new experience based on training in the first phase, I was very excited to learn new skills. Now the meetings were either individual or department-based. The founder of the company would teach us the basics of the skills and spent his time, efforts ad money in our skill acquisition phase because we were made familiar with these skills at first phase but then we were given the aces to courses for these skills. The approach of our founder was never to spoon-feed the mentees. He put us on the right path and then asked us to increase the proficiency on our own. In a matter of a few months we were capable of all the skills which were defined at the start of the second phase. This mentorship program helped me learn the skills I would never have learned on my own (Murphy, 2019).

Although the mentoring program is unique to every organization based on the organizational objectives there are some elements that should be part of the mentorship program of every organization. These elements are open and effective communication, predetermined goals, the inspiration for mentor and mentee, trust and mutual respect, exchange of experience, skills and knowledge, role modeling, compassion and psychological support. The presence of these factors is crucial for the success of any mentoring program. In the above mentioned mentoring program almost all these elements were present. Although the mentoring program was for just six members it was extensive and included all crucial elements. First, there was a definite exchange of knowledge, skills and experience. The founder of our startup had a skill set and knowledge that the rest of the team members lacked so he shared this knowledge and skills with the rest of the team. He did not restrict the team members (mentees) to just acquire the skills which he had, but also motivated them to learn more and buy the courses online for skill development of mentees. This is a crucial aspect because the abilities of mentees ought not to be restricted and limited to the skills of the mentor. The goal is not to match the level of skills of a mentor but to achieve skills and abilities according to one's own abilities (Shah, 2018).

Second, the mentoring program developed an effective and open communication channel. Developing effective communication skills was the first step in the mentoring program. We were taught to communicate well in both written and spoken manner. For written communication, email writing lectures were conducted after which sufficient practice was done by all team members. A semi-formal platform for communication was also sought to break free from social media amounts for official communication. Third, the mentoring program has definite goals and objectives which were defined before kick-starting the mentoring program. Based on the organizational objectives the mentoring program was divided into three parts with communication skills and professional etiquettes at the first stage and then general skills during second stage and technical skills during the final stage. Having clearly defined goals helped them in creating right strategies and effective implementation of these strategies which eventually lead to realizing the goals into reality. Fourth, the mentoring program had a definite model of collaboration. This collaboration was not just between the mentor and mentee but also among mentees. Everyone shared their experiences, skills and expertise and helped each other in collective growth and development. Furthermore, there was a shred inspiration among mentees and the mentor for achieving a shared goal. Finally, this mentor-mentee relation led to the development of a caring and compassionate personal relation between mentor and mentee (Kram, 2018).

Suggestions and conclusion:

To conclude, mentoring is central for professional and personal growth. The presence of a mentor in anyone's life helps them in realizing their dreams and vision in an efficient manner as the mentor shares his or her experiences, knowledge, skills and expertise along with psychological support. Different organizations have different mentoring programs but some features ought to be part of every mentoring program including effective communication, predetermined goals, the inspiration for mentor and mentee, trust and mutual respect, exchange of experience, skills and knowledge, role modeling, compassion and psychological support. These elements were present in the mentoring program I was involved in which make it very effective and result yielding (Lockwood, 2019).

References Demers, J. (2014, October 1). 7 Key Qualities of an Effective Mentor. Retrieved from Inc: https://www.inc.com/jayson-demers/7-key-qualities-of-an-effective-mentor.html Eby, L. T. (2008). Does Mentoring Matter? A Multidisciplinary Meta-Analysis Comparing Mentored and Non-Mentored Individuals. SAGE journal, 254–267. Kram, K. E. (2015). Improving the mentoring process. Training & Development Journal, 39(4), 40–43. Kram, K. E. (2018). Mentoring at work: Developmental relationships in organizational life. University Press of America, 45-55. Lockwood, T. (2019, February 3). The Importance of Being a Mentor and Having a Mentor . Retrieved from Getting Smart: https://www.gettingsmart.com/2019/02/the-importance-of-being-a-mentor-and-having-a-mentor/ McLaughlin, C. (2010). Mentoring: What Is It? How Do We Do It and How Do We Get More Of It? SAGE journal, 871–884. Murphy, J. (2019, October 15). 6 Key Elements of Mentoring by John Murphy. Retrieved from People Development Magzine: https://peopledevelopmentmagazine.com/2019/10/15/key-elements-of-mentoring/ Shah, A. (2018, October 2). Be One, Get One: The Importance Of Mentorship. Retrieved from Forbes: https://www.forbes.com/sites/yec/2018/10/02/be-one-get-one-the-importance-of-mentorship/ Steven, E. (2019, May 23). Why is mentoring important? Retrieved from the University of Nebraska: https://www.unl.edu/mentoring/why-mentoring-important#:~:text=Mentoring%20is%20important%2C%20not%20only,enhances%20students'%20chances%20for%20success. Woods, E. (2018, March 12). Mentoring: A Mutually Beneficial Partnership. Retrieved from Mind Tools: https://www.mindtools.com/pages/article/newCDV_72.htm#:~:text=Mentoring%20is%20a%20relationship%20between,person%2C%20or%20%22mentee.%22