Testing The Programme

Start in a modest way to make sure that the initial effort is well designed and fulfils its objectives. Once a trial programme, involving say 5-20 mentoring pairs, has been successfully established, the company can decide to be more ambitious and expand its size and timescale. In this way the organisation can avoid most of the disillusionment and backlash that can come when a full-blown programme fails to live up to its objectives.

The key questions in designing the training support for a mentoring programme are:

• Who should be trained?

• How much training is needed?

• Should mentor and mentee be trained together or separately?

• What makes for quality of training?

• When and how should training be delivered?

Who should be trained?

The basic statistics of training in mentoring appear roughly to be:

• Do not train or brief any of the participants - expect 10 per cent of relationships to deliver significant learning for one or both parties. (That is the baseline of people who have had previous exposure to effective mentoring or who have a very strong instinctive capability. )

• Rely on a briefing only - expect 30 per cent of relationships to succeed. (That is the proportion of mentors who will extrapolate from other situations and training to lock into the role. )

• Train mentors but not mentees - expect up to 60 per cent of relationships to deliver learning for mentors and perhaps half as many to deliver learning for the mentees. (Mentees will typically fail to take over the management of the relationship and will not fully appreciate their own and their mentors' roles. )

• Train both mentors and mentees - expect 90 per cent plus of relationships to deliver significant learning for both parties, especially when line managers are also well briefed and informed in general about the programme.

It also helps if the steering group and/or scheme co-ordinator have attended a workshop aimed at broadening their understanding of mentoring concept and good practice.

How much training is needed?

The answer here is that it depends on the level at which mentoring is to take place. If the mentor is to be a professional working with, say, executives or young offenders, an extensive period of theoretical learning and practice is essential. (See Chapter 5 on competencies for a longer examination of this issue. ) For the manager in a workplace, however, the basic need is for enough understanding and skill to respond appropriately to the mentee's needs for guidance, help in thinking issues through and general support, and to know where the boundaries of his or her competence lie (and hence to refer on to specialist support if needed).

Realistically, this cannot be done in less than a day. Moreover, experience indicates time and again that a single sheep-dip event is not enough. To sustain the programme, mentors need to come back together again at least once over the following six to eight months to review what they have learned, to identify problem areas, and to be equipped with additional techniques relevant to the situations they have encountered.

Extracting sufficient time for mentor training is almost always a problem. Particularly at senior management levels, people often think they already have the skills. What this often means is that they have attended a coaching course at some time in the past, but do not understand the difference between the two approaches. The reality is that the more senior people are, the less effective they may be at listening and the more reliant on giving advice. Some of the approaches we have taken to overcome senior manager reluctance to invest properly in training include:

• adapting the content to emphasise advanced developmental techniques and the role of mentoring in shaping future leaders

• giving top managers individual, customised one-to-one training sessions, both to get started and to review their experiences in the mentor role

• breaking up the initial training into two-hour chunks.

Mentee training is usually easier to arrange, especially when the mentees are relatively junior in the organisation. Some organisations have skimped here, opting instead for a briefing, in the mistaken belief that the mentees' role is relatively passive. In reality the mentees need to have as broad an understanding of the process as the mentor. They also need to acquire a portfolio of skills to manage the relationship and to help the mentor help them.

Should mentor and mentee be trained together or separately?

(This section is extracted from an article by David Clutterbuck and Jenny Sweeney, ‘Apart or together: good practice in training mentors and mentees', published in the Clutterbuck Associates newsletter, September 2003. )

One of the most difficult and contentious questions we encounter in helping organisations design and implement mentoring schemes is whether to conduct the training for the two groups separately or together. There is no generic right answer and our experience covers both options. Yet getting this aspect of it right can make or break a programme, and we have seen a number of examples of failure where it has been badly managed.

The starting-point for the scheme co-ordinator in considering this issue is that both mentors and mentees need to undergo some training if the majority of relationships are going to deliver significant benefits. The quality and quantity of mutual learning and the proportion of relationships seen by both parties as successful is greatly enhanced with appropriate initial training. Bringing participant groups back together again to review experience and receive additional ad hoc training as needed also improves the success rate.

Within the initial training, the critical elements for both mentors and mentees are:

• gaining a complementary understanding of how to manage the relationship - the roles, responsibilities and expected behaviours - and how it should evolve over time

• learning the skills of being an effective mentor/mentee. Our observation is that the mentees are best able to help the mentor help them, if they understand the processes/techniques the mentor is using and can collaborate in making those processes work.

In both elements, an appreciation of the other party's perspective is going to be very helpful, if not essential, in getting the most out of the relationship. But whether that need is best addressed through joint or separate training events depends very much on circumstance.

Let's look at the arguments for each approach, with some examples of positive and negative experience.

The case for training together

Certain situations make it quite difficult to separate out mentors from mentees. For example, at a pharmaceutical company, people who came to the initial workshops did not know whether they wanted to be a mentor or a mentee. In practice, people who came with one role in mind often decided they would best adopt the other - and some adopted both.

Another situation in which joint training is common occurs in cascade mentoring programmes: where several layers of employees are being mentored by those above, many of the participants end up playing both roles, within different relationships.

An important consideration in the success of a programme is ensuring that both mentor and mentee receive appropriate training as soon as possible after they are selected for inclusion. One programme ran into severe problems because the time gap between training of mentors and training of mentees gradually extended until many of the participants simply lost interest.

A third factor in favour of training together is that it provides a valuable opportunity to experience the other side's perspective directly. An illustration of what happens when one or both parties does not understand the other's perspective comes from a large and venerable financial institution. The programme failed because mentees did not really believe that mentors were approachable and willing to discuss a wide range of developmental topics. Their observations about the organisation's culture (‘Sort your own problems. ' ‘Don't complain. ' ‘Never admit any weaknesses. ') got in the way because they had never heard the mentors - either individually or as a group - commit to the different agenda.

There are other ways to share perspectives and expectations - for example, a number of companies co-opt mentors from the previous year's programme to talk to mentees about their experience, and vice versa - but it is difficult to create the same level of understanding as comes from the immediate and intuitive responses of a number of mentors or mentees together. BP, which introduced an upward mentoring programme - in which junior people of different race and/or gender become mutual mentors to senior managers - opted to train both together because it needed to build initial confidence among mentees that senior managers were genuinely committed to open dialogue on diversity issues. In such circumstances, there is no real substitute for hearing it direct.

Case Study
A government department with offices across the world

The programme is designed to be open and self-selecting. Mentees use a website to select a mentor from a pool of volunteers, but not everyone is sure at the beginning which role he or she will take. For this reason - and to manage the numbers, so that training can be on offer as soon as possible after a pairing is made - the practical solution was to train both together. Those people who are sure they want to become mentees usually find particular value in skills training, because it helps them get more out of the programme and their mentors.

Case Study
The Acquisition Leadership Development Scheme (ALDS)

This programme draws its participants from military and civilian employees in the three armed services of the UK and is part of a larger leadership development programme. Each year the intake of 100 participants (mentors and mentees) attend mentoring training in groups of 25. The wide range of levels and backgrounds from which participants come allows almost everyone attending the training to find a mentor, mentee, or both, within the 100-strong cohort. Some find it useful to pair with members of earlier cohorts.

The case for training apart

The case for training apart is equally strong, and equally dependent on circumstances. Most commonly, it occurs in relatively traditional programmes in which mentors and mentees have already been selected, although they may or may not have been matched.

Among the arguments for separate training are:

• It enables mentors and mentees to be open about their hopes and fears for the programme. Typical fears among mentors relate to whether they are really capable of doing the role well. Among mentees there may be concerns about confidentiality, or about why they have been selected to take part. (For example: ‘Is there really a hidden remedial agenda?') The point is illustrated by the following quote from a mentee in a major chemicals business when the mentees as a group were offered the chance to merge their training with a mentor group:

  I've got to know one mentor very well and I'm very open with him. That doesn't mean I see all the other mentors in the same light -they are still senior managers to me. My behaviour would revert to normal in that group, which would make me feel false in the relationship with my own mentor.

  In cultures that are not very positive towards developmental behaviours and where mentoring and coaching are not seen as natural to everyday management, such concerns will be particularly influential on the success of the programme. By contrast, organisations with very positive developmental cultures may well find that people prefer to be trained together because it is one more opportunity to learn from another group.

• It is much easier to focus the workshops around the specific needs of each group. Although much of the broad agenda for a workshop will be common, mentors need to spend more time practising skills and techniques, while mentees need more time to consider how they want to use a mentor and how they will gradually take the lead in managing the relationship.

• The difficulty of getting senior managers to commit sufficient time to training for the role. A day is generally regarded as the minimum initial training for both mentor and mentee, but if the mentors resist, then the programme co-ordinator has the choice of training separately, or trying to cram training for both into insufficient time. Training separately does not overcome the senior manager problem, but it does ensure that the mentees are adequately prepared for their roles.

So there is no right answer, but hopefully this analysis will help you decide which approach will work best for your scheme.

What makes for quality of training?

Because quality derives from ‘fitness for purpose', a lot depends on the objectives of the scheme and the context in which it takes place. In mentee terms, what will suit a group of legal analysts seeking partnership is unlikely to do the job for a bunch of young offenders - and the same would be true for their respective mentors.

Key factors to take into account include:

Composition

There should be a good mix of:

• theory (most training we have evaluated is very poor on mentoring theory, although it often includes generalised management or behavioural theory)

• discussion of scheme purpose

• discussion of roles and responsibilities

• opportunity to explore one's own motives and objectives and, if possible, those of the other party

• exploration of competencies of an effective mentor and mentee

• exposure to relevant skills of relationship management

• practice of relevant skills for learning within the mentoring dyad.

Groundedness

It makes a substantial difference to people's motivation if the training sessions are attended by top management, to outline the value of the programme to the organisation and to talk about their own experiences in the mentor and/or mentee role. It is also useful to invite participants from previous schemes to discuss their experience - warts and all.

Trainer/facilitator knowledge

It adds considerably to the credibility of the workshop if the trainer is able to refer to his or her own experience as mentor and mentee. Participants also appear to value it when the facilitator is able to provide a breadth of example of good practice from other schemes, and especially from other organisations.

Matching training provision to the phases of relationship evolution

One approach that does not work is to throw all the training for mentors and mentees at them in one go. There is simply too much to absorb, and people need an opportunity to practise basic skills and techniques before they attempt more advanced ones. Broadly speaking, training interventions can best be made as they move from one phase of the relationship to the next. (See Chapter 11 for a more detailed description of the phases. )

At the initiation phase of the relationship, mentors and mentees must understand the purpose of the programme, how to build rapport and how to begin to set goals and boundaries for the relationship. A few months later, they need the skills to review progress and sharpen up personal goals. They also typically value an opportunity to refresh their understanding of the basics. Some months later again - by which time they should be in the progress-making phase - they will appreciate more advanced skills of drawing out and exploring issues. One very successful scheme, for example, instructs participants in emotional intelligence at this point. Finally, both mentor and mentee must be prepared for a positive winding up of the relationship, and they usually value an opportunity to discuss how best to accomplish that.

Some organisations, especially corporations in the United States with very large mentoring programmes, have established monthly lunch or breakfast seminars aimed at providing continuous development for mentors and mentees. Other organisations have opted for an initial intensive one-day introduction to mentoring, followed by two or three one- or two-day further development sessions. The aim, in both cases, is to maintain a steady pace of process learning for both mentor and mentee.

Putting training and scheme management together

The chart on the next page (Table 5) is an example of how the scheme management and training processes can be integrated over a one-year programme. It is not intended to be a fixed template - merely an illustration of what a well-planned programme might involve.

Table 5: Integration of scheme management and training processes

Training intervention	Mentor development Skills:	Mentee development Skills:
Rapport-building/direction-setting Communication with sponsors: Programme objectives and expected benefits Results of initial survey of participants Results of development climate survey, if used	Understanding of mentoring process and roles Introduction to reflective space Relationship development and management (including boundary management) Questioning/listening techniques Goal-setting Managing intrinsic feedback Double-loop learning processes Measurement: Training effectiveness Relationship expectations (Dynamics survey, Part 1)	Understanding of mentoring process and roles Introduction to reflective space Relationship development and management (including boundary management) Goal-setting Managing intrinsic feedback Double-loop learning processes Measurement: Training effectiveness Relationship expectations (Dynamics survey, Part 1)
Initial review Communication with sponsors: Results of Dynamics survey, Part 2 Meet the participants session	Skills: Informal relationship review processes (how are we doing?) Using anecdote and story Triple-loop learning processes The mentor as networker/link to resources The mentor as career counsellor/workplace counsellor Sustaining interest: Newsletter 1 Measurement: Dynamics survey, Part 2	Skills: Career self-management How to pose and pursue issues for discussion Managing the learning net Sustaining interest: Newsletter 1 Measurement: Dynamics survey, Part 2
Secondary review Communication with sponsors: Results of Dynamics survey, Part 3 Developers™ Council	Skills: Managing constructive challenge and confrontation The mentor as guardian The mentor as coach Understanding and using emotional intelligence Sustaining interest: Newsletter 3 Developer's Council Measurement: Dynamics survey, Part 3	Skills: Managing constructive challenge and confrontation Sustaining interest: Newsletter 3 Measurement: Dynamics survey, Part 3
Winding-up review Communication with sponsors: Plans for next phases of the programme/new target groups Report of balanced scorecard survey	Skills: How to move beyond the formal relationship Formal learning review Becoming a mentee - whether, when and how Further (advanced) techniques and approaches Sustaining interest: Developers™ Council Measurement: Balanced scorecard Mentoring scheme standards	Skills: How to move beyond the formal relationship Formal learning review Becoming a mentor - whether, when and how Sustaining interest: Alumni group Measurement: Balanced scorecard Mentoring scheme standards

Explanations

Alumni group - one or two of the mentees agree to manage a monthly chatroom for their colleagues. Each new wave of mentees is invited to participate.

Balanced scorecard - a survey method that assesses the programme against four elements:

• relationship processes

• relationship outcomes

• programme processes

• programme outcomes.

Developers' Council - mentors are recognised for their role as developers. They meet with top management periodically to discuss the broader issues of talent management and people development. In this way they become part of the strategic thinking of the organisation with regard to people issues.

Dynamics survey - a three-part survey measuring expectations of the relationship, behaviours within it and outcomes for both mentor and mentee.

Newsletter - a summary of what individual pairs are doing; tips and techniques; questions asked on the hot line or addressed to the programme co-ordinator.