The Case To The Mentee


Most of the early literature on mentoring assumed that the beneficiary would normally be a career-minded graduate with ambition and a desire to tap into the power sources of the organisation. The reality, of course, is that mentees come from a wide range of circumstances and that the benefits they seek are equally diverse.

Among the most common benefits are:

  • obtaining opportunities to network and advice on how to grow your networks

  • having available someone sympathetic who will understand difficult situations and help you work your way through them

  • having someone to believe in you and your ability

  • being given help to work out what you want from your life and work, and how to make the appropriate choices and sacrifices

  • being given help in developing greater confidence

  • working through tactics to manage relationships with other people

  • becoming more comfortable in dealing with people from unfamiliar backgrounds

  • making sense of feedback from other sources - putting it into context and deciding how to deal with it

  • being given an opportunity to challenge the organisation's thinking and be challenged in one's own.

Although promotion to a more senior level is often a goal for the mentee, for many people the aim is to develop as a person and open up wider possibilities.

For example, Liz sought a mentor to help her through the transition from full-time employment with a construction company to being a self-employed consultant. She sought from the mentor reassurance that she had the capability to fulfil the new role, and assistance in planning how to make the switch in career. Hal, by contrast, wanted to stay in the same company but become more effective in integrating his work and non-work lives. (In practice, he did not have much of a life outside work. ) For him, the mentor was someone who gave him permission to let go of responsibilities - even though, as someone outside the company, the mentor had no formal authority to do so. The mentor also provided a resource to whom Hal could talk when he found the going difficult.

Easier induction for those coming straight from university or moving to a new country

One mentor comments:

Mentoring is a means of smoothing out graduates'transition from an educational environment - one of the major changes of their life - and enabling them to settle in more quickly.

According to the NHS in Wales, it ‘provides exceptional opportunities and the unique status of having someone to trust in a bewildering environment', who can direct the mentee's learning opportunities.

A French mentee working in England stresses how important her mentor has been:

My mentor has worked abroad and can speak French. He has helped me to adapt to the British way of life. The scheme has definitely helped me to settle into this country and the company.

Chemical company Hoechst had a dozen or so British apprentices in its German operations. Although they had a tutor in the UK, they also assigned German mentors to relieve isolation and to provide career counselling.

The same principle can be applied at a much more senior level - expatriate managers taking on roles in a new country need to learn the business and social culture rapidly. Having a local person, perhaps from another company, helping them through this transition is often greatly valued.

Improved self-confidence

The mentee gains a sense of self-worth and importance. The one-to-one relationship between the mentor and the mentee helps the latter feel that the company values him or her as an individual rather than as a cog in the managerial wheel. A mentor gives mentees (in particular, graduates) undergoing frequent job rotation and management change a point of stability in what may seem an unpredictable environment. By helping them explore their own potential, the mentor also enables them to gain the self-knowledge necessary for well-founded self-confidence.

Learning to cope with the formal and informal structure of the company

Through the mentor, the mentee learns about the formal culture of an organisation, its values, its company image, objectives and predominant management style.

The mentor advises the mentee on self-presentation and behaviour so that he or she can fit into the company's formal culture. Mentees learn how to promote themselves within the organisation, when to be noticed as an individual, and when to be seen working collaboratively. In one large multinational, the primary aim of the mentoring scheme was to help ‘invisible' people in the finance department manage their reputation within the organisation in general.

A mentee learns how to operate successfully within the informal culture. The mentor helps the mentee work through the internal company politics by identifying the key decisionmakers in the company and the executives who have the real power. As one senior executive comments:

If you do not know the rules of the game, you cannot operate. The only way to know these rules is to be invited by an insider to participate.

Career advice and advancement

A mentor can act as a role model - a tangible symbol of what the mentee can achieve in the future. As a role model, the mentor helps the mentee to focus career aspirations and turn them into realistic objectives. This is a double-edged sword, of course. The mentee has to beware that he or she does not adopt the mentor's weaknesses as well as his or her strengths!

The mentee learns how to move up the promotion ladder. When the mentor is more senior and more experienced in corporate politics, he or she can help the mentee choose which jobs or projects to take and when to take them.

A female mentee in the social services was advised by her mentor to apply for a position she felt was unattainable. She comments:

Before the internal interviews my mentor kept dropping my name to other senior administrative officers. He also frequently mentioned me to his own superior. Two other people in the department also applied for the vacancy. There was a woman on my level who had four years' experience and a man a grade higher. Everyone was very surprised when I got the promotion, since it was virtually unknown for someone of my age and experience to jump three levels.

Sometimes the mentor may suggest a total reorientation of career direction and may recommend a decrease or increase in the pace of advancement. One young manager recalls his attitude before he had a mentor:

I was never sure about the timing of my career - when I should try to move upward or when I should stay in one position. I thought I ought to understand a job completely before I applied for promotion. Then a senior executive took an interest in my career and told me that if I stayed too long in one job I would probably get stuck there since I would not be recognised as a high-flyer. He advised me to apply for a post two grades above my current one. I didn't think I'd get it - but I did.

In traditional US mentoring, the mentor acts as a kind of sponsor, increasing the visibility of the mentee at executive levels by frequently describing how well his or her charge is progressing. The mentor may involve the mentee in his or her own projects and bring the mentee into executive meetings, inviting him or her to speak up. The mentor will brief the mentee beforehand on how to behave, and give background on other subjects scheduled to be discussed.

Within the context of developmental mentoring, the mentee gains a sounding-board who will also help him or her think through the decision-making process, through which the mentee selects between career options. The mentor helps the mentee identify what he or she values, and helps assess each option against his or her personal values and goals. As a result, the mentee gradually becomes more self-confident in making career choices and more adept at turning down those that are likely to lead to blind alleys.

Managerial tutorage

A mentee may gain an insight into management processes through observing his or her mentor closely. The mentor provides an example of effective management and successful leadership and so accelerates the mentee's learning pace. This will apply only where the mentor and mentee are close enough in location/function for the mentee to observe in the normal course of work - or when the mentor specifically invites the mentee to shadow him or her (for example, in making a presentation. ) An American mentee at Unisys comments:

A mentor teaches the invaluable lesson of people management to a mentee who is often straight out of management school. He may know all about cost-benefit analysis and be an economic wizard - but he needs to be shown, for example, the importance of building support teams. A mentor has the experience to teach this.

A mentor is able to use his or her knowledge of the organisation to facilitate the mentee's access to areas otherwise closed. As a result, the mentee better understands how the organisation functions. Interviews with ‘graduated' mentees reveal that one of the most valuable parts of the relationship is frequent discussion of how the business works and why middle and senior management do not do things the way the mentee would.

My own experience of being guided in this way remains fresh in my mind, although it happened some 25 years ago. As a young junior manager in the publishers McGraw-Hill, I was convinced my boss's boss, the publisher, had no idea what he was doing. So many decisions he made appeared to be irrational. Then he retired and his successor took me under his wing. Although there was a reporting line through my boss, we developed a strong rapport, especially as we travelled together on sales calls to major advertisers. John spent much of the time asking me about my job, but also talked to me about his own role and the context of the decisions he had to make. After a while, I realised that his predecessor was not as stupid as I had thought - he had simply been operating at a level of management more complex than I had previously been exposed to. As I understood this more deeply, I applied what I was learning to my own department, and soon found myself promoted. I had, in effect, graduated to a new level of thinking that opened new doors for me.

A mentee has a legitimate source of advice and information in the mentor. For example, Jenny Blake found:

It was very difficult to sell to the Middle East, especially since I was a woman and not allowed to go there. My mentor was in charge of the Middle East marketing section and was able to give me invaluable advice. He made me aware of important cultural differences and expectations when I was dealing with foreign marketing representatives - for instance, how they expected to be treated with respect and to be made a fuss of.

A junior manager describes the problem he faced without such a figure:

Often a young manager has to try to gather information without betraying his ignorance. It is a very risky business. To get ahead you have to supply the right answers and not ask the wrong questions.

In a mentoring relationship the mentee can ask naïve questions in an unthreatening atmosphere. Helen Martin, a mentor at BP Chemicals, feels that

a mentor is not an agony aunt or a miracle cure for all problems. We are simply people who have probably experienced similar situations in the past. We can therefore help individuals to find the best way to tackle an issue themselves.

Leadership development

Besides teaching managerial and people management skills, mentoring between senior and junior people reveals to the mentee how power is gained and wielded within the company. This is frequently a crucial lesson and is one of the most powerful sources of motivation for a young manager. A business school education may teach valuable theoretical skills but it cannot normally teach a manager how to exercise and feel comfortable with power, nor can it give him or her the confidence to make a major deal on his or her own initiative, take calculated risks or launch a new product. The mentor becomes a valuable sounding-board for difficult decisions and for developing the skills of judgement.

A conscience and guide

One of the behavioural aspects that has impressed me about many of my mentees, particularly those at senior levels in organisations, is how easily I become a kind of conscience for them. Often a week or so before our next meeting they will recall all the actions they said they were going to take. Not wanting to admit that they have not dealt with them, they tend to switch focus from more day-to-day issues so they can report progress to me. It is not that I have any authority over them, or seek to give approval or disapproval - what drives them is their own self-image and self-esteem.

Even when the mentor is not there, some mentees find they can use the mentoring process to address issues that they need to deal with. A quote from one of my mentees:

I do try to have conversations with you in my thoughts, to see if I can imagine what you'd say to me if told you some of this stuff. Occasionally it sort of works, because I start to see things from the point of view I envisage you might take, and think about the kinds of questions you might ask me, to make me consider other perspectives (like: Who am I trying to prove things to and why?). Needless to say, when I do actually write to you, your reply always contains the unexpected and unpredictable.




Everyone Needs a Mentor(c) Fostering Talent in Your Organisation
Everyone Needs a Mentor
ISBN: 1843980541
EAN: 2147483647
Year: 2003
Pages: 124

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