Both the presence of power and the feeling of powerlessness can negatively impact a mentoring relationship. And, when it does, it results in conflict, withdrawal, inauthenticity, and unproductive posturing. This is why it is critical that the mentor creates a safe and welcoming space that gives the mentee permission to be authentic, vulnerable and honest.

What are some of the things you can do to level the playing field for a mentee who feels he has no power in the relationship?

First base: Set ground rules at the beginning of the relationship. Ground rules lay the foundation for the relationship and become yardsticks for mutual accountability throughout the relationship. Engage your mentee in creating these ground rules. It will give him an immediate sense of ownership in the relationship. Setting ground rules is even more important in cross-cultural and distance mentoring relationships where the opportunity for misunderstanding is great.

Second base: Check in often with your mentees. Find out how the relationship is going for them and let them know what is working for you and what is not. Benchmark your progress against your goals. Use your ground rules as a yardstick to evaluate how well the relationship is working. Talk about how you are spending your mentoring time. Is the time you are spending productive? Are there things you should be spending more time on? Less time?

Third base: Ask powerful questions. Questions engage the mentee. It is tempting to use your mentoring sessions to talk about your knowledge and experience. It takes less time and you may feel that since you know what works you might as well expedite the process. You may even consider it a waste of time if you don’t. Our experience demonstrates that one-way mentoring relationships miss the mark and frequently end up making the mentee feel powerless.  Use questions to engage the mentee in the conversation. Questions facilitate learning by encouraging a mentee to reflect. Asking questions that require thoughtful answers can help mentees articulate their own thinking.

Home plate: Invite feedback by asking for your mentee’s input. Mentees are generally reluctant to give feedback to a mentor about the advice they have received from them. Encourage their feedback. For example, you may have spent a session talking about a solution to a problem. Ask them if you were on target with your suggestions. Were they relevant? Did they work? What else might they have needed?

Have you touched all the bases?

  (The Mentor’s Guide, 2012)

Mentoring relationships are goal-centered partnerships. Together, mentors and mentees create a reciprocal learning relationship in which they work collaborative on achieving the mentee’s goals.  These goals light the path to career growth and personal development. For some, these goals result in increased promotability, a move up the career ladder, and new roles and projects. For others, it means focusing on a lattice goal rather than a ladder goal. In this case, development moves laterally, rather than vertically. The mentee works on expanding skills, deepening knowledge, and increasing competence within a current position. Sometimes mentoring goals focus on both lattice and ladder goals simultaneously.

Setting mentoring learning goals is one of the most daunting challenges for mentors and mentees alike. The process unfolds through conversation.

Let’s take a look at Mac’s conversation with his mentor, Gaye. Mac’s goals were anything but focused.

Gaye began the goal conversation by asking Mac about the goals he wanted to work on. Without hesitating he stated that he wanted “to feel like he was on top of things.” Gaye needed more information than that and asked him what he thought might help him become more effective. Mac heaved a sigh and blurted out, “I just wish I didn’t feel so overwhelmed right now.” Gaye paused for a moment before she commented, “Mac, I have heard other new managers express similar feelings.  I think that perhaps you might share something in common with them. Your feelings of being overwhelmed may really be a symptom of a deeper issue.  It has been my experience that when someone feels that they have too much on their plate it usually means that there are other related issues at play, like relinquishing control, trusting others and delegation. .  . or even, issues around understanding priorities and working on what really counts. And sometimes it can be a confidence thing, and you feel you have to prove yourself.   What do you think, Mac?  Do any of these issues resonate with you?”

Mac nodded his head in acknowledgement, and Gaye felt permission to probe a little further. “Mac, let’s try to get to the root of your issue, so we work on the right thing.  Do you think the issue is that you lack the confidence or is there some skill set you are missing to do your job?” Mac stared out the window before responding, “No, it’s not that, I just don’t feel like I am getting anything done.  I’m not making headway on our projects and I don’t think I am doing anything particularly well.  I go home at night feeling drained, like I have scaled a mountain, but here I am, still standing at the foot of the mountain looking up.  It’s not a good feeling… it’s just not good.”

Gaye could sense that he was frustrated and knew she needed to help him figure out what wasn’t working.  She started with some of the easier issues to tackle and asked him if time management or perhaps organizational issues were at play. Again, Mac shook his head, saying, “No, it’s not that. I am pretty organized, but it doesn’t seem to make a difference.  I’m discouraged and I don’t really know where to begin.”

Gaye tried getting at the issue from a different approach. “Maybe you are working on items that aren’t producing results.  It sounds like you may be struggling with prioritizing and delegating.  Does that make sense?” 

Mac pondered Gaye’s question and then a light bulb appeared to go on and his frown vanished.  “You know, I probably don’t delegate as much as I should.  I know I want to, but I am so overworked and overwhelmed, I don’t have the time to stop to figure out what to give and to whom.  I think I do struggle with priorities.  When I have so much to do I find myself trying to get something done that I can cross off my list.”

Gaye knew the importance of clarifying and working on the right goal. She knew that without it Mac’s motivation would be low, her time would be wasted, and that there would be little, if any real progress. She had to admit that engaging in goal setting conversation was hard work, but well worth the effort.

Lesson Learned: Getting on the path to growth and development requires setting goals, but not just any goal will do.

Remember:

1. Fuzzy mentoring goals lead to fuzzy outcomes.  When goals are not specific they do not provide energy and direction.
2. Mentoring goals need to be linked to something larger than just the goal. When goals are linked to development it creates momentum for completion.
3. Mentoring goals should be reality-based and context-relevant. When they are not, they are merely wishes.
4. Mentoring goals must be future-oriented. They should link to growth and development goals.
5. Goals should require a stretch for the mentee. If goals are too easy to achieve they will be self-limiting and the mentee will never grow beyond them.

And yet, when it comes to mentoring program results, measurement frequently gets put on the back burner. How is that possible?  Why is it that mentoring measurement is so easily dismissed?

Many organizations claim that it is a matter of time (“it isn’t the right time to measure”). We hear comments like, “our people are surveyed to death.” Or, “we are waiting until our program is up and running and then we’ll find the time to do it.” Or, “this just isn’t a convenient time. There are so many other organizational priorities we are dealing with right now.” Or, how about, “we want to get it right before we go out and measure it.” Do any of these comments sound familiar? If measuring your mentoring success is not your strong suit here are some suggestions for strengthening your efforts.

Ensure that results will be measured!

• Plan your measurement process at the same time and with the same intentionality as your mentoring initiative.
• The methods of measurement, data collection procedures (both qualitative and quantitative), data analysis treatments, and dissemination of results should be detailed as part of the planning process.

Consider the following questions:

• What do you want to measure?
• What are your criteria for measuring success?
• How will you go about measuring success?
• What baseline data do you already have in place?
• What additional data will you need to measure success?
• How will you go about obtaining these data?
• What will you do with the data once you get it?
• Who will be responsible for gathering, analyzing, and interpreting the data?
• How will results be distributed?

If what gets measured gets done and you are running a mentoring program, you need to get busy. Senior management needs to see results. Sometimes, data speaks louder than words.

The mentee plays an active role in the learning, sharing responsibility for setting priorities, formulating goals, and identifying resources, a process which should help them become increasingly self-directed. The mentor nurtures and develops the mentee’s capacity for self-direction (from dependence to independence to interdependence) over the course of the relationship. Throughout the learning relationship both mentoring partners share accountability and responsibility for achieving the mentee’s learning goals.

Gary was everyone’s ideal of what a good mentor should be and when word got out that Frank was going to be his mentee a serious case of jealously spread throughout the company. Frank couldn’t believe his good fortune. He was excited but also a little anxious. Gary was so accomplished, articulate and knowledgeable, that the idea of having face time with him was more than a little intimidating. As it turned out, Frank needn’t have worried. Gary’s inviting warm smile made Frank instantly comfortable.  Frank left their first mentoring meeting on a high, motivated, inspired and ready to get to work.

Gary had given him an assignment for their next meeting. He asked Frank to do two things. First,  make a list of three significant challenges he would be facing in the coming year,  and second, to identify a learning goal for each that would help him become more effective in dealing with each challenge. The goal assignment, while initially sounding simple to Frank, became more and more complicated and confusing for him.  At the next meeting, Frank offered up a sheet of paper with his list of challenges and goals. He confessed to Gary that he was struggling with the assignment and still wasn’t sure he was on the right track.

Gary looked over Frank’s list.  He was clearly disappointed. “Frank, would these goals make a big difference in your personal success?

It took Frank a moment to respond to Gary’s question. “A big difference in my success? No, probably not, but a load off my plate? Yes.  I actually thought that these goals would be easy to work on, and we would both feel like we had some success when they were completed.”

Gary offered, “What we are going to be working on is Project You. I am not interested in easy. You are here because we believe in you and your potential to be a future leader in this company. Low hanging fruit is not where we should be spending your time or mine. So, let’s just dig in. Tell me about your vision of yourself as a leader and where you want to go.”

Frank could see that Gary was not going to be happy spending his time with someone who couldn’t get the ball over home plate.  Nervously, he took a deep breath.  Revealing his ambitions to a senior leader was way out of his comfort zone, but Gary was quietly waiting for Frank to share his vision of himself as a leader.  The more Frank talked, the easier it became to let go of his hesitation about being open with Gary.

Gary asked questions and encouraged Frank to look deeper and explore his motivations. Before Frank realized it, an hour had passed and the haze had cleared. He had articulated a vision that excited and energized him.

The Lesson: Don’t settle for low hanging fruit! Low level goals result in low-level outcomes. If you are a mentee in a mentoring relationship, honor your mentor by using your time well. Mentoring is a development opportunity only if you fully open yourself up to it.  It requires honest self-reflective, candor, and a willingness to do the work.  If you are a mentor, encourage your mentee to stretch and grow. Ask questions that lead them to deeper places of insight. 

The Goal-Driven Mentoring Relationship

Getting honest feedback from peers and supervisors in a work environment is challenging.  The pervasive concerns are always about how it will be taken, fear of damaging the relationship, and the potential for resistance.   If one or more parties tend to be conflict averse, it makes it even less likely that they will engage in candid feedback. In mentoring, just the opposite occurs. Mentees look to their mentors as a trusted source of candid feedback.

Mentees appreciate receiving feedback because they know it is given in good faith, with the intention of improving their performance and supporting their long-term development and career success.  Mentors and mentees who commit to building their own competency and confidence in the feedback process report more positive outcomes than those who do not.

When Joe was assigned Henri as a mentor, he expected to get feedback about how he was doing and how upper management perceived him.  Despite asking Henri several times about how thought things were going and what he was hearing, all Joe ever heard is, “everything’s fine.”  Joe found it hard to believe that there wasn’t something to work on and began to suspect that there really was an underlying problem.  Because Henri wasn’t offering specifics, Joe started second-guessing everything he was hearing from Henri.  He began to dread mentoring meetings and rarely invested energy in their conversations.

What went wrong?
Clearly, absence of candid conversation and a clear feedback process undermined the trust in this mentoring partnership.

What can you do?
1. Start your relationship with the expectation that feedback will be part of the process.
2. Create ground rules and agreements about when, how often, and what process is best suited to your relationship.
3. Tell the truth; develop a habit of straight talk and don’t let either side stray.
4. Balance candor with compassion, but tell it like you see it.
5. Encourage your mentee to be candid.  It is hard for mentees, especially new hires and those in the lower tiers of the organization, to speak up.
6. Be positive.  Offer positive feedback along with constructive comments.
7. Show appreciation even when you receive negative feedback. Remember: it requires courage to offer negative feedback.
8. Practice difficult conversations.
9. Master behaviors and processes that can help you become more effective at constructive feedback.
10. Focus on what can be changed.

Dear Mentoring Matters,

I supervise six people in my lab, and although I manage these folks, I want to be an effective mentor to them as well.  I am responsible for keeping them on task and holding them accountable for performance standards, but I also want to have conversations about their goals and long-term direction.  What’s the difference between my supervisory conversations and mentoring interactions? I also struggle with one of the women in our lab that is highly sensitive to any kind of negative feedback. She keeps trying to change the topic or says things like, “this is getting too serious” or “now, I am really uncomfortable.” I am never sure what to do with those comments.  How do I keep focused on the feedback and not let her steer us off course – which she commonly does? Can I do it all?

Thank you.

A Frustrated Lab Manager

 ____________________________

Dear Frustrated,

You raise a very common dilemma for managers who find themselves in the position of wanting to supervise and mentor their direct reports.  First, recognize that there is a difference between mentoring and coaching conversations.  Coaching is about boosting current performance and developing skills.  A feedback session while wearing your upervisoring hat might look like this:

“Steve, I want to talk to you about the report you submitted yesterday.  I was really pleased that you got it to me on time, which was one of the issues we have been working on.  So congratulations on that.  You clearly are doing a better job with your time management.  What I want you to look at more closely is the quality of your work. Getting in on time is great, but you have typos in the report and there is a place where a chart was supposed to be inserted that was omitted.  You need to work on tightening your eye for detail.  Let’s talk about some strategies for doing that.”

Mentoring focuses on creating momentum and direction toward achieving career goals and employee development; it is future-focused. It is important to keep mentoring interactions separate from performance discussions.  Be sure to carve out mentoring time with your employees and engage in conversations about their future development, direction, progress, and learning goals.  A feedback session while wearing your mentoring hat might look like this:

“Steve, it’s been three months since we talked about your goal to become a supervisor and I thought we should spend some time looking at how that is going – what you feel you have learned, what you are doing well, where your comfort level is, and what you think you still need to work on. I have a few thoughts and I want to hear from you oo.  So let’s start by talking about what you have learned over the past 3 months supervising the new intern.”

Supervising and mentoring together is always a slippery slope for those who are resistant or hypersensitive to feedback. When you know you are engaging in difficult feedback with this person, be clear up front about what you want and don’t want to happen during the discussion.

Here is an example of how to stay on focus no matter what hat you are wearing.

“Tina, I want to take a few minutes to talk about some issues that I think are getting in your way.  In the past, when we have sat down to talk about your feedback, the sessions haven’t gone as well as I would have liked.  So, today, I want to make sure we stay on track.  I know you have had some concerns about your project assignments, but I don’t want to get sidetracked on that discussion right now.  I want us to stay focused on how you have handled the workload, worked collaboratively as a team member and managed conflict with the group.  That’s the focus for our time now.”

 So, the bottom line is this:

1.  Know which hat you are wearing and let your employee know.
2. Set ground rules that will help you stay focused and on topic.
3. Hold yourself and your employee accountable for following the ground rules you establish.
4. If you get off track, observe it, acknowledge it and get back on track.

Formal mentoring programs generally fall under the aegis of an organization, and many organizations now are pushing to ramp up the level of practice for both the mentor and the mentee in informal mentoring relationships as well.

When mentoring partners are totally accountable for their own participation, solely determining frequency, duration, content and outcomes, the mentoring relationship is considered informal. How each of these gets played out varies considerably. Popular wisdom to the contrary, informal relationships run the gamut from casual, catch-as-catch-can conversations or “conversations on an as-needed basis” and information sharing to more structured, formalized relationships.

Whether formal or informal, mentoring relationships follow predictable cycles characterized by key tasks associated with each phase. The phases include preparing (getting ready), negotiating (establishing agreements), enabling growth (facilitating learning) and coming to closure (looking back and moving forward). Knowing what to expect ontributes to a more successful mentoring relationship.

1. A brain to pick. You may have specific experience and expertise to share. Rather than sharing that expertise off the bat, try starting the conversation by listening carefully to your mentee’s questions. Pace the information you provide and check for understanding along the way.
2. Another set of eyes. Mentors offer a vision along the road of possibility. Possibility is the operative word. Sometimes all it takes is another perspective to help a mentee grow and develop. Share your perspectives with the intent of broadening your mentee’s vision and understanding.
3. An ear to listen. Being a mentor puts you in a unique position to provide a sounding board for your mentee to test out new ideas. You will want to push your mentee’s thinking and acting forward by helping her solve problems not providing solutions yourself.
4. A shoulder to lean on. When the going gets tough, tough mentees get going by finding someone whose experience and expertise they can trust and someone they can learn from.  Balance compassion with challenge. Ask questions. Avoid becoming a permanent leaning post.
5. Arms around a problem. These slippery white water times have added layers of complexity to solving business problems. Helping a mentee get his arms around a problem, issue or challenge is often the first step to real understanding.  Encourage exploration of options before pushing to action.
6. A helping hand. Sometimes it is a helping hand provided at just the right time that promotes the mentee’s development. The“hand” may be an invitation to work on a project together, an introduction to the right person, exposure to a new idea, and/or reframing a current problem.
7. A kick in the pants.  Encouragement supports a mentee’s growth and development and keeps up the learning momentum. A mentor can provide encouragement in multiple and timely ways: identifying (and sometimes providing) opportunities, knowing when and how to convey the message “you can do it.”

Have you mentored someone in the past or considering mentoring someone in the future?

If you’ve answered “yes” to these questions, you are probably aware that mentoring is enjoying an unprecedented popularity right now. No longer the curiosity of the 70s or the fad of the 80s, its trendiness and novelty has worn off but not its cache — and what’s more it is here to stay!

Mentoring has become a gateway to personal and organizational growth and development. It can be a ticket up the corporate ladder. It can be a powerful pathway for development and career success. It can be the a way of orienting and acclimating new employees to an organization’s culture. It can align a culture and promote a learning organization.

Preparation is key to ensuring successful mentoring. No matter how much mentoring experience you may have had, it is important to remember that each mentoring relationship is a new partnership and therefore unique.

The assumption that one becomes a mentor because one has an area of expertise or experience and therefore there is little need to prepare that individual is erroneous. There is no such thing as a model, because we mentor “who we are.” Therefore, mentors who are clear about who they are  and, prepare themselves for the role based on that knowledge, are more likely to be successful.

Most people would agree, at least in principle, that a mentor is a more experienced individual who contributes to the enhancement of someone else’s growth, knowledge, skills and/or development. To ensure the likelihood of success however, both partners must be actively engaged in preparing, building, sustaining the relationship. It has been demonstrated that:

• When mentors and proteges share similar expectations about mentoring roles and responsibilities their mentoring relationship is more likely to succeed.
• Commitment to and engagement of mentoring partners is a key element in establishing, maintaining and experiencing successful mentoring relationships.
• Attitudes and understandings formed early on in a mentoring relationship influence the success or failure of a relationship later on.
• Adequate preparation increases the likelihood of high involvement in the mentoring process by both partners.

The Mentor’s Guide: Facilitating Effective Relationships

Mentoring is something I know a little about as an author and practitioner. I have written and read extensively about the topic for the last two decades, and what I appreciate most about Kathy Button Bell is that she is self-aware, willing to keep learning about herself and appears committed to her own growth and development.

I believe that a mentor’s good intention is insufficient. Mentoring shouldn’t be something we do out of our back pocket. It is a leadership competency, which means you practice and grow at it and that takes time. We see a glimpse of mentoring excellence in your conversation with Bryant’s interview with Ms.Bell.

Kudos to Adam Bryant for the ‘Corner Office’ column and to Kathy Button Bell, mentor par excellence.

Lois Zachary, Author of The Mentor’s Guide, The Mentee’s Guide, Creating a Mentoring Culture