How To Get The Best Out Of Mentoring Programme Standards

Because they are distilled from the experiences of many organisations, with many types of scheme and in many cultures, any set of standards tends to be generic in tone. That is something of a two-edged sword. On the one hand, you know that the issues identified have proved to be significant for many other organisations, and are therefore likely to be important for your scheme too. On the other hand, you may have very specific contextual elements to compare which will not be covered by the standards.

For example, if you are managing a reverse mentoring scheme (where one party is substantially more junior in the formal hierarchy than the other, but where both take the role of mentor), then it would be helpful to be able to benchmark against other organisations with similar programmes.

The ideal situation appears to be one that integrates the formal assessment of a programme through the standards with informal benchmarking on a scheme-by-scheme basis. The European Mentoring and Coaching Council - website www. emccouncil. org. uk - is a good starting-point for finding other organisations with which to exchange data, and there is also a register of mentoring schemes on www. clutterbuckassociates. co. uk and www. coachingnetworks. org. uk. The National Mentoring Network - www. nmn. org. uk - is also able to put scheme co-ordinators in touch with other peers, primarily in schools and community programmes.

In deciding whether a set of standards will be useful for a particular scheme, it is important to consider what sort of schemes formed the core of the research. Were they mainly from one sector, or were they a few similar types of scheme?

In general, the more generic a set of standards claims to be, the vaguer the benchmarks within it. At the moment this is a moot point, as there is not much choice in standards. However, in due course it can be expected that more specific standards - say, for schemes supporting diversity objectives in the workplace - will develop out of (or in competition with) the existing standards. When this happens, making the choice between generic and specific will become an important decision in the design of the mentoring scheme.