5 Reasons Your Company's Mentoring Programs Will Fail

Article

Jul 15

By Elizabeth Ruske and Peg Rowe

Companies know that mentorship works, and companies know that their people are looking for mentoring. Yet organizations of all sizes fail time and time again to create successful, strategic mentoring programs, and we know why. Avoid these common mistakes, and you will be positioned for mentorship success.

Reason 1: Ineffective Matchmaking

Some mentoring programs are doomed from the start because the matchmaking between mentors and mentees was not strategically thoughtful.

When building your program, design the application, nomination, mentor selection, and matching processes with care. Consider the following:

Make sure to integrate nomination, invitation, and self-selection into the process.
Avoid making it mandatory which detracts from motivation of the participant and the reputation of the program.
Use an application to learn about the mentee’s goals.
Be clear about the expectations for being a mentor with potential candidates, and ensure they are 100% on board and available before you include them as potential matches.
Challenge yourself to make developmental matches that will grow the mentee’s career, expand the mentor’s influence, and benefit the company strategically.

Reason 2: Unprepared and Unsupported Mentees

We know that the most successful mentoring relationships are mentee-driven. Yet several mentees feel intimidated about managing their mentor and the relationship, which is understandable. Providing mentees with the basic tools they need to build their mentoring relationship into a mentoring partnership over time makes a significant difference. For example, we provide mentees with:

A simple plan with priority goals to share with their mentors
Suggested expectations and structures for their meetings
Get-to-know-you questions to establish the connection
Problem solving to make the most of the relationship over time

Reason 3: Unprepared and Unsupported Mentors

Additionally, we can’t expect people who have been successful in their career to instinctively know how to mentor. Successful leaders often confuse mentorship with teaching, advising, philosophizing, or managing. Mentorship is none of those things. Being a mentor requires allowing the mentee to drive the relationship according their career priorities and interests. As a mentor, you do provide wisdom, perspective, and experience. You may also ask tough questions of your mentee. However, you are not responsible for managing their performance, telling them what to do, or going on-and-on about your own success story.

Other issues companies need to be aware of when preparing their mentors are:

Have a point person who who performs mentor check-in calls to ensure mentors are satisfied in their relationships as well as to hold them accountable for fulfilling their role
Be clear about the time involved so that mentors can plan to make themselves available and fully engage
Host a series of calls for the mentors to answer their questions and remind them of mentor best practices
Encourage mentors to share personal and professional choices appropriately, to establish a human connection

Reason 4: Keeping Mentorship Separate From Talent Management

A very common mistake companies make is to treat their mentorship programs as separate, stand-alone initiative. Mentorship is a key leadership development strategy, and it should be closely tied to talent management initiatives including:

Leadership Competency Development
Performance Reviews
Succession Planning
Inclusion and Diversity Initiatives
Retention Initiatives
Cultural Development

Reason 5: Not Connecting Mentorship To Strategic Company Objectives

We’ve also seen mentorship programs fail when they do not have clear, visible alignment with the strategic objectives of an organization. When this is missing, there is often little or no budget, no time availability, no support structures, and limited access to mentors.

Mentorship programs are strategic if they have:

Visible Senior Executive Sponsorship
Direct Alignment with Strategic Initiatives
Metrics of Success
Investment of Resources
Credible, Diverse Mentors

MentorshipElizabeth RuskePeg Rowe

Peg Rowe

Through her business experience, Peg Rowe brings knowledge, wisdom and unique perspective on building high performance teams, creating a collaborative culture, developing leaders and delivering exceptional results. She works seamlessly with all levels of management, across groups or in one-on-one settings.

Her intuition, calm manner and orientation to action, once critical to her leadership, are key assets in her work with clients. Peg takes a practical, strengths-based approach to executive coaching. Practical in that it focuses on the key behaviors required for improved performance. Strengths-based, in that the focus is on what is currently working in the executives leadership style that can be leveraged for improved performance and satisfaction.

As a seasoned executive and leader of geographically diverse cross-functional teams, she has served in line management and staff positions while spending ten years in senior executive level operations and general management roles at American Hospital Supply Corporation, Baxter International, Caremark International and Paidos Healthcare Management Services. As a leader, Peg coached teams during major corporate transitions and change initiatives, exceeding business objectives.

As a coach and consultant, Peg has worked with leaders and teams at organizations such as Allstate, Caterpillar, Fresenius Medical Care, Gensler, Methode Electronics, Microsoft, Navistar, and National Opinion Research Center, as well as Not for Profits including The Center On Halsted, The National Runaway Switchboard, and The Neumann Association. Peg has a Masters in Management from the University of Missouri – Columbia. She has trained with the Coaches Training Institute (CTI) and the Gestalt Institute of Cleveland, and has fulfilled coursework in Organizational and Relationship Systems, High Impact Teaming, the DiSC Assessment, MBTI and FiroB. Her certifications include the Best Year Yet® Program, the Coaching in the Moment program, the Genos EI Assessment and John Kotter’s Leading Change Program.

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