The Arguments For Formal Mentoring

Social inclusion

The main arguments in favour of a formal structure for mentoring centre on the need for some control of a process that, left alone, may not always work to the advantage of the organisation or the majority of the people in it. Social inclusion is an issue of increasing importance in most large organisations - how do we ensure both equal opportunities and the effective use of the diversity of talent, experience and backgrounds of our people? There are many well-documented cases of programmes aimed at a specific group that break the glass ceilings in gender, race or disability. The Cabinet Office, for example, runs a highly successful mentoring scheme aimed at people with severe physical (and sometimes mental) disability who have ambitions to progress. The mentors are all very senior Civil Servants who see the relationship as a stimulating challenge. Some of the most dramatic figures on mentoring for social inclusion come from the programme Big Brothers/Big Sisters, which links young people at risk in North America (and more recently in the UK) with a mentor in the community. The 10-16-year-old mentees in this programme are:

• 46 per cent less likely to begin drug abuse (70 per cent for minorities)

• 27 per cent less likely to begin underage drinking

• 30 per cent less likely to hit someone else.

They also skip 80 per cent fewer schooldays than non-mentored peers and have better relationships with parents, peers and teachers.

By contrast, informal mentoring appears to reinforce social exclusion because the scarce pool of mentors tends to be snapped up by those who are from the dominant social group, who are better educated and more obviously ambitious. In Europe and North America, this means that white male graduates are far more likely to find an informal mentor than any other group. Because mentor and mentee are so similar, an additional negative is that relatively little learning takes place on the part of the mentor. Diversity in a mentoring relationship stimulates examining issues from different perspectives.

Positive mentoring

Formal mentoring also helps ensure that the relationship has clear purpose. The most common reason that so many mentoring relationships fail is that neither mentor nor mentee is quite sure what he or she is aiming for, so there is no sense of direction. A formal scheme provides an umbrella purpose for the organisation, which helps mentor and mentee establish more specific goals for their own relationship. Formal mentoring also ensures that there is a practical framework of support for mentor and mentee, including initial training and, in good practice environments, some form of continuing review by which mentors can address any further skills needs they identify. Training ensures that both parties understand what is expected of them - not least who manages the relationship and what the boundaries are. The formal process also helps to weed out ‘toxic' mentors. People who have manipulative goals, who represent values the organisation is trying to move away from, or who have so many problems of their own that they end up transferring these to the mentee are all common characters who can damage both the mentee and the organisation and who may actively seek to find mentees in an informal environment.