Successful Mentoring Programs

Michaela Stickley, Director of Human Resources, A.W. Chesterton Company

You’ve clicked on this article about mentoring for one of many reasons. Perhaps you have a mentoring program already and are looking for more information. Maybe you know a little bit about them but haven’t implemented them yet. This could even be the first time you’ve thought about a mentoring program for your organization. On some level, everyone agrees that a corporate mentoring program is a benefit, but we sometimes forget to measure the success of these programs beyond the obvious “do people seem to like the program?” question.

So, how do you know that you have a successful Mentoring Program? Many professionals will tell you that if you can measure that your mentees have learned something new, you have a successful program. Some would say that you can determine the success of your program by the future career paths of its participants. Others will tell you that if your mentees display new skills, they have developed throughout the course of your mentoring program, then you have a successful program. And none of them is wrong – but they’re missing one of the most critical components of a world-class mentoring program.

Oftentimes when companies think about a mentoring program, everything is centred around the mentees: what will they learn, who will they learn it from, and what will their takeaways be? We focus the design of the program on creating the best possible learning environment for them. And that makes sense - it’s natural to focus on the mentees since they are often the target audience of a mentoring program. Many organizations use a mentoring program as a talent-surfacing tool. Good programs focus on facilitating learning for their mentees through a combination of self-driven learning, learning from others, and formal education. But what about the mentors? Great mentoring programs do all those things for mentees AND mentors. Great programs are targeted to both mentees and mentors: What will they learn from each other, who should be paired together to ensure learning on both ends, and what will both of their takeaways be?

Career development is too often miscategorized as something that is only important for early-career professionals. Maybe it’s because once someone masters something through years of experience, they feel like there’s not much left to learn. Or maybe it’s because some consider career development as a vehicle to receive a promotion and advance in their field and later-stage career professionals are already where they want to be. Often, the day-to-day hustle gets prioritized over career development. We’re all human and putting ourselves second is a natural tendency that we develop.

Regardless of why that misconception exists, some of the most exciting career development success stories we’ve seen at Chesterton have occurred when someone who has years of experience in our industry and our company participates in the mentoring program as a mentor. There’s a two-way exchange of knowledge and perspective. You cement the difference between managing and mentoring and coaching and fine-tune your ability to know when to use each skill set. You get a chance to see different situations and challenges through a new set of eyes. There’s renewed energy and passion for the company and the job you’re tasked to do. But you must design your program to enable those experiences. Set expectations upfront that this is a learning experience for every participant, mentee or mentor. Make it acceptable for the mentor to reap their own benefits from participation. Encourage your mentors to participate in any or all developmental activities with their mentees. Build it straight into the program that each time a mentee does something for the mentoring program, they talk about it after with their mentor and exchange viewpoints and ask questions. You’d be surprised at how differently two individuals can perceive the same situation or how two people can walk out of the same meeting focused on entirely different takeaways.

We’ve seen a manager (Hey, Ben!) participate in the mentoring program, who certainly thought he may retire in the role he was in, and join the company’s Leadership Team as a Vice President two years later. Of course, it doesn’t all stem from the mentoring program, but I’m willing to wager that it might have been a catalyst. There have been people we witnessed who start to become disengaged with the company and start to lean in again after discovering their mentoring capabilities and rediscovering the company. We have countless mentors who have made the jump into formal management roles after building up their confidence through mentoring. We’ve certainly seen our mentees take on new career opportunities afterwards, but so have our mentors.

Each time we kick off a session of the mentoring program, just a short twelve weeks later we watch not only our mentees graduate, but our mentors graduate with them. And that’s the way it should be – the mentors have also developed deeply and prioritized their own professional development throughout their time in the program. When looking at your company’s existing mentoring program, or thinking about the program you’d like to implement, don’t short-change the mentor’s experience. They’re every bit as important as your mentees.