Susan Carroll

If I were to ask you how you are, what would you say?

 

I suspect there is a strong possibility your answer would include the word ‘busy’. Most of us feel busy and we see being busy as a positive thing. If you’re busy, that must mean you’re productive, useful and high-achieving. If you’re not busy, what are you doing with your time?

 

It’s not surprising that we feel busy, because our world feels busy. If your day involves commuting on a packed train, to spend a day in an office full of people, with emails constantly arriving and meetings filling your diary, it’s difficult to feel anything other than busy.

 

But is being busy desirable, or do we just perceive it as such? We often assume that a busy person is a capable person, someone who is able to focus on tasks easily and get things done. People say: if you want something done, ask a busy person.

 

Busy people should, we think, be focussed people. But could it actually be the opposite: that people who feel constantly busy are actually distracted and unable to focus?

 

The value of a strategic no

 

Some people genuinely are busy. They are constantly rushing between tasks, always with something inescapable to do.

 

Others feel that they are always busy, and say they are, but their busyness is a choice. They are too busy for some things, but not for others. Most people have some choice or control over how busy they are. Unless you have no down time at all, you are able to make a choice about what you want to be busy with.

 

To exercise choice over your own busyness, you need to be able to say a strategic no.

 

This means that when you are asked if you can do something, you feel able to say no, even if you could make the time to do it. You can say no because you want to keep time free for other things, rather than because you really cannot find the time.

 

You don’t have to be at full capacity before it’s OK to say no. Indeed, it’s desirable to say a strategic no before you reach capacity, because spare capacity is the space where creativity and growth happen.

 

But saying no is difficult, because we are constantly distracted. Our world is constantly distracting. There is so much for us to potentially do that prioritising is hard. It can even seem impossible. So how do you do it?

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It’s impossible to prioritise or focus, if you don’t know what to focus on. If you don’t know what your destination is, you cannot choose a route.

 

That’s why having a clear vision is so important. A vision is a statement of your ideas, hopes and dreams. If you can write down and determine these, you can work out how to achieve them. You’ll be prioritising.

 

Create daily sanctuary

 

If you’re constantly busy, if you never stop, you cannot look beyond today. You have no room to plan for the future. You’ll certainly struggle to have or define your vision, or to find your path towards it. Busyness then becomes a cycle, a treadmill that it’s very difficult to leave. Having no time to spend on contemplation means you never contemplate just how busy you are.

 

Take time. Give mind the refuge from busyness it needs. When you do this, great things happen, because they have the space to happen. In your refuge, your sanctuary, you’ll have the chance to recharge. Your mind, freed of busyness, will wander towards creativity, ideas and solutions.

 

Many choose to find sanctuary in contemplation, meditation or exercise. Your sanctuary may be one of these things, or something else entirely. Find the space that you want occupy.

                                                                                     

Give yourself boundaries

 

Perhaps you feel that while you’d like to say no to things, to prioritise and take time out, you know you’ll find it difficult to do. But it is your responsibility to decide how you would like to be treated. We teach people how to treat us, by being clear about where our boundaries are and modelling the behaviour we’d like others to show in their interactions with us. If you want to be listened to, listen to others. If they fail to listen, tell them what you need.

 

The next time someone asks you how you are, what will you say? Spend some time working on your vision and on giving yourself the sanctuary and boundaries you need to do it. Let us know what happens to your life, your work, and your ability to focus.

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Photo by Teddy Kelley on Unsplash

After the sparkle and busyness of the Christmas holidays, early January is a time of awkward transition for many of us. Commuters travel to work past brightly-lit Christmas trees. Indulgences are still being felt, and with them come resolutions. Promises of change and something better. The celebrations are ending, replaced with determination.

 

Dwelling in possibility

 

In the words of Mary Chapin Carpenter, “I dwell in possibility on New Year’s Day”. At the beginning of the year, we feel everything is open to us. The year stretches ahead of us, full of hope and opportunity.

 

There is of course no reason we can’t create just as much opportunity in June as we can in January. We tend not to because we naturally live our lives by rhythms and patterns. The closing of one year and the beginning of another gives us pause for thought, as does the change in routine we tend to have for a week or two.

 

If we’re unhappy with something – and most years will bring pain as well as pleasure – then the change in the year seems the perfect opportunity to move on.

 

What do we do with possibility?

 

The traditional way to meet this endless possibility with resolutions. But as anyone who’s ever made them knows, the chances are, they’ll be broken by February, if not before. Our resolutions are all about how to make ourselves, our lives and our businesses, better.

 

We all want to be happier, healthier and more productive. We want to do less ‘bad’ stuff and more ‘good’ stuff. We begin the year full of resolve to be ‘better’. Walk into a gym in the first week of January and you’ll see people who won’t be there in the first week of February. Many people keep paying for the gym, but quickly stop going.

 

This happens because it’s hard for us to accept that we don’t really want to keep our resolution. It’s not enough on its own to make us change our behaviour. For the gym-goers, this means losing out twice: paying for a service that’s never used, and not being open to finding another form of exercise that will be enjoyed and stuck to.

 

When we promise ourselves that we’ll be better, do more and achieve more, we’re telling ourselves that we should not falter at all. There’s a feeling that if we can’t make it in January, we can’t make it at all. Then, on reaching February having broken our resolutions, the temptation is simply to wait another 11 months before making resolutions again.

 

In this way, resolutions narrow the possibilities we have on New Year’s Day. They are goals with shallow foundations. We make them because we feel we need to do something to iron out our perceived faults and improve ourselves. Instead of doing this, we could work on a vision for our lives that allows us to accept ourselves.

 

Make your goals part of your vision

 

Rather than setting goals for your year ahead in isolation, think about what your vision should be. Setting the vision provides clarity and allows you to prioritise your goals.

 

What changes will you make that will provide you and your family, friends and colleagues with genuine, heartfelt, positive change?

 

Don’t ask what your resolutions should be. Ask yourself what you can do to generate ideas, be more creative and innovate. Ask yourself how you can encourage others to do the same.

 

Resolutions don’t work because they take no account of the reality that things change constantly and we need to respond to change. This is something we know, but somehow, we choose to forget in January. The pressure that creates can be destructive, forcing us into rigidity. Resolutions say, you’re either a new you, or you’re a failure.

 

The ability to create a successful vision is a vital leadership tool. It gives you a clear view of your team or organisation at a point in the future, and with that view, a direction. It gives you the knowledge you need to get to where you want to be.

 

The role of goals

 

There will always be goals we want to achieve. Indeed, they’re usually a vital part of measuring achievement and performance. But for those goals to mean anything, they need to be tied to a vision of success. Use the opportunity January presents to set goals thoughtfully within the context of a vision. Allow yourself to do your best, even if your best isn’t always what you thought it would be.

 

At work, embrace the possibilities that exist for your organisation. Involve everyone in developing a vision for your team and beyond. Enjoy meaningful thinking, beyond the limits set by narrow goals. And don’t stop just because it’s February.

 

 

What is your experience of setting goals in January? How do your goals contribute to the development of your vision? Let’s have a conversation.

 

Photo credit: Photo by Simon Matzinger on Unsplash

The Feedback Loop

 

When we see a job has been well done, it’s natural to offer feedback to the person responsible. But a simple expression of appreciation has limited value on its own.

Feedback is often given and received with thanks, and while it will brighten someone’s day, it is won’t have really significant benefit beyond that.

 

If no-one knows what you’re doing, they might think you’re doing nothing at all. That’s where the feedback loop comes in.

 

Feedback as a tool

 

Feedback can be used by leaders to let people know what’s being done and who is doing it well. Leaders can use feedback to champion their team and demonstrate its value to people at all levels of the organisation.

 

For feedback to have this kind of impact, it needs to be known about and talked about. This happens when it is deliberately, purposefully talked about across teams and organisations.

 

Feedback forms a loop around the organisation, with everyone, on every level, hearing it.

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The first level of the loop: a job well done

A job is well done, and this is noticed. The job might be a one-off exceptional effort, or simply consistent good work over time.

 

The second level of the loop: the 1:1

Feedback is given to the person who did the job, by their direct leader in a 1:1.

 

The third level of the loop: the team

The leader lets team members know about the job well done, shining a spotlight on their exceptional effort or consistent work.

 

The fourth level of the loop: peers

The leader makes sure that their colleagues at peer level know.

 

The fifth level of the loop

The leader tells senior managers. They may remember the feedback and use it to help them make decisions. They may personally congratulate the person or team behind the work. Both the giver and receiver of the feedback get a boost.

 

The loop continues

Feedback comes back to the 1:1 via senior managers, peers and leader. The person who did the job well knows that their leader has taken the time to let everyone know, inspiring them to do well again.

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The effects of the feedback loop

 

The feedback loop builds relationships and strengthens teams. Individuals feel valued and leaders throughout the organisation know who is especially good at doing what. Rather than being a fleeting moment, feedback gains momentum and has a long-lasting impact.

 

Feedback can translate individual and team performance into impact. Leaders can use it to promote their team without overindulging in self promotion (which everyone sees through).

 

The feedback loop isn’t quick, and should be used with judgement, when something has been done that really warrants it. There’s nothing wrong with offering quick, off-the-cuff feedback, but sometimes, a more thoughtful, purpose-driven approach is needed.

Should your organisation get rid of cynicism?

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“How do you get rid of cynicism in an organisation?”

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This question was put to me recently by David, MD of an international sales organisation during a coaching session.

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Why did he ask? Because “it’s the number one thing that gets in the way of making progress”

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The simple, task-driven answer would be to put in place activities to stop the cynicism. But to find a real solution, we need to look deeper and think differently. Our coaching session offered the opportunity to do that: a space to reflect, see significant issues from a different perspective and explore issues at a deeper level than there is time for during the cut and thrust of a busy operational environment.

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To get to the heart of cynicism in David’s organisation, or any other, we need to make sure we ask the right questions rather than focussing entirely on solutions. The right questions reveal answers that may sometimes be uncomfortable but highly valuable.

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Why does cynicism exist in any organisation?

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There are many possible reasons, which will often co-exist.

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·       Recruitment. Cynicism can be caused by lack of cultural fit in recruits.

·       The attitude of team leaders. The behaviours of any team will reflect those of their leader (though this may be different for autonomous teams).

·       The attitude of the organisation’s leaders. Team leaders’ behaviours will reflect those of their own leaders. This can be an unpalatable message: it’s difficult for leaders to see the connection between their attitude and others’ cynicism.

·       Broken promises, as people over-promise and under-deliver.

·       Change. Too much change, and change fatigue.

·       Not enough change

·       A ‘do as I say, not as I do’ attitude.

·       Lack of consequences and accountability. Cynicism thrives when individuals feel it does not matter if they do a good or a bad job.

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Cynicism or scepticism?

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Despite having so many possible causes, we often fail to identify cynicism because we don’t really understand what it is. It’s often confused with scepticism, but it is not the same. Scepticism has potential value where cynicism does not.

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Cynicism is questioning with a closed mind, with no openness to curiosity or exploration.

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Scepticism is questioning, but with an open mind. Like cynicism, it can feel uncomfortable. It challenges us when we don’t have the answers, and we often believe we should have the answer to everything. But good leaders recognise that isn’t always possible.

 

Are you confusing cynicism with scepticism? What you thought was cynicism may actually be:

·       Care for the customer, badly wrapped in poor language.

·       Exhaustion from trying to implement things that don’t work.

·       Fatigue from dealing with processes that are inherently broken.

·       Disillusionment from listening to people in the hierarchy saying one thing and doing another.

·       A result of constantly changing priorities without clear vision or purpose.

 

What to do about cynicism

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If you’ve identified genuine cynicism in your organisation, you need to identify why.

Sometimes, it’s not an organisational failure. If cynicism is linked only to a limited number of individuals, it may simply be that those individuals aren’t a good fit.

But often, the problem does lie deeper in the organisation. It can be hard to know how to address this without compromising healthy scepticism. You want and need to challenge your operations, culture, service and products.

How can you enable this without allowing people to slip into unhealthy cynicism? You don’t need, or want, picture-book harmony, but constructive debate, questioning and challenge.

There is a danger that by trying to address cynicism at a superficial level because you are frustrated with the impact that cynics have, you may end up:

·       Spotlighting cynicism.

·       Focusing on cynicism.

·       Appearing defensive.

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Enabling debate and collaboration

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Ask yourself the question:

“How do I enable a culture which supports debate and collaboration, rather than feeling frustrated at cynicism?”

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The answer lies in the question. Create and nurture a culture in which there is a focus on the behaviours that you want, rather than the behaviours you don’t want.

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So, change the question you ask to:

“How do we build trust?”

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Focus on building a culture that supports trust, rather than on preventing cynicism. Culture is vital to success, because how we do things is at least as important as what we do. Culture is often overlooked, but it is vital to business.

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Every organisation has a culture. You may not have fully recognised what your culture is yet, but it is undoubtedly there. Choosing to make your culture more intentional, with the involvement of your people, raises motivation, engagement and results.

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Overwhelmingly, CEOs believe that a strong, healthy corporate culture is key to a strong, healthy business. A study of 1400 North American businesses found that the majority believed that culture influences “productivity, creativity, profitability, firm value and growth rates”.

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Does culture get rid of cynicism?

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David wanted to know how to get rid of cynicism. The answer is that he should not seek to do so, but should instead encourage the development of a culture that supports open-minded questioning.

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When this is done successfully, cynicism will struggle to find a role. When leaders are open to challenge and change, there is little reason for those around them to become cynical.

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David knew that his work was being blocked by cynicism, and so he naturally wanted to get rid of it. But by focussing on cynicism, he was unwittingly at risk of increasing its hold. If a cynic is told to stop being cynical, they’ll inevitably become more so.

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If, like David, you want to get rid of cynicism, be brave. Create a vision that will help you develop a culture of openness, and trust in the strength of that culture. Don’t focus on identifying cynicism, or you risk unwittingly attacking the culture you seek to nourish. If people ask questions that feel cynical, react with openness and honesty.

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Do you find cynicism tends to take hold in your organisation? Have you noticed when and how this happens, and what have you done to change it?

When did you last say thank you? The chances are, it wasn’t long ago. Most of us say those two words many times a day: buying a coffee, arriving at a meeting, eating dinner. We say it often, but what does thank you actually mean?

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It’s easy to say two words, but a real thank you is about much more than two words. Thank you has a power that can bind people together and increase the mental wellbeing of both the thanker and the thanked.

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Thank you stories

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BBC radio has a weekly ‘thank you’ slot. Listeners write in with a thank you story, in which they thank a stranger for helping them. Sometimes, the act of kindness that the listener wants to say thanks for happened as many as forty years earlier. Some stories are relatively trivial, such as someone saying thanks to the person who helped them while they were seasick on a ferry. Others are significant, such as someone who was taken in and fed when they were a vulnerable teenage runaway.

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In all cases, the listener has felt, whether for days or decades, that they should have said thank you for something, but failed to. Despite the fact that it’s unlikely the person they’re thanking will happen to be listening when their thank you is broadcast, they still feel compelled to do it. They’re saying thank you because they feel it’s important, regardless of the outcome.

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These people are wise, because it’s known that showing gratitude improves mental and physical health, increases people’s ability to empathise and fosters high self-esteem.

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Making a point of thanks

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Some people make a point of thanking others regularly. One such is Doug Conant, former CEO of Campbell Soup. He spent a significant amount of time hand writing notes to his employees thanking them for achievements, personal or professional, silly or noteworthy. During his time at Campbell he wrote 30,000 of these notes. The company had 20,000 employees.

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When Conant was later involved in a near-death car-crash, he received thousands of hand-written notes of appreciation from former employees. So, by saying thank you regularly, and honestly, he built a culture of gratitude that benefitted himself and thousands of others.

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The ties that a thank you can bind

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When you thank someone, you create a relationship with them, however brief. To thank someone is to acknowledge that they have played a part in your life. It’s so easy to say the words ‘thank you’, that it’s equally easy to fail to see their meaning.

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Thank you is a shortened version of the more personal, ‘I thank you’. The word thank was derived from think, so the original meaning of thank you can be translated as ‘I think favourably on you, for what you have done for me’.

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The power of thanks

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Saying thank you creates a connection between two people. It means that a good deed is acknowledged and remembered. It is a potentially powerful act, and so is the act of choosing not to say thank you.

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Dacher Keltner, in his book, The Power Paradox, identifies some of the ways in which a thank you can create lasting benefits for both thanker and thanked. People who were thanked for the work they do, for example, were twice as likely to volunteer for more. Students who were thanked by their teacher were up to five times more likely to try hard when solving problems than those who weren’t thanked.

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But the paradox, according to Keltner, is that while leaders are usually happy to thank people on their way up, once they’ve attained a position of power, some will stop thanking people, feeling they no longer need to do so. This is a problem, because it means that the organisations they lead lack the social glue that gratitude brings.

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The virtuous circle of thank you

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Most of us understand that saying thank you makes people naturally more receptive to us, hence why Keltner’s study found that people are happy to thank others when they need their help. But when people are thanked, they also become more likely to help people who haven’t thanked them. They display what psychologists call prosocial behaviour: they’re willing to help others because they feel it’s important to do so, rather than because there is a direct benefit to them.

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Imagine a group of people in which no-one ever expressed thanks. The group would fall into acrimony fairly quickly. Communities, including workplace communities, need gratitude in order to function. They need acts of kindness and appreciation to make them whole.

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If you can show your appreciation to people, and mean it, both you and they will benefit. And, like Doug Conant, or the people being thanked by radio listeners, you’ll find that your appreciation will have beneficial ripples many years later.

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How do you say thank you in your organisation? Let us know.

Great leaders are visionaries. They can inspire, innovate and nurture both people and ideas.

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These qualities don’t appear in a person by accident. To have a vision for others, you must also have a vision for yourself, and that takes investment.

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What is your leadership vision? If that’s a difficult question to answer, you haven’t invested enough in yourself as a leader. The process of investment is exciting. It stretches your imagination and forces you to reflect on your impact. It means you’re able to analyse your behaviours and see how they are driven by your values and beliefs.

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The ability to invest in yourself isn’t an optional extra. It is part of the definition of good leadership. These are 5 reasons why you should invest in yourself as leader.

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• Leaders are made, not born

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Think about it. Are you where you are now as a result of random chance? Or have you worked hard and made sure you’ve learned whenever you could? Of course, you may have had a helping hand and been blessed with some natural ability, but you will have done a lot of work to get to where you are now.

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Now isn’t the time to stop working. Wherever you are in your leadership journey, if you want to remain a good leader, keep working at taking the next step. Take a thoughtful, systematic and rigorous approach to your development, by deciding what kind of leader you want to be and making a plan that will help you be that leader.

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• Learning doesn’t stop

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The credibility of your desire to teach and lead others depends on your own willingness to be taught. Leaders who believe that they have arrived, and no longer need to learn, begin to fail. If you believe that you have reached a point where you no longer need to learn, that is a sign that you do need to learn, much more than someone who doubts their ability. Those with doubts automatically seek learning opportunities, those without them sometimes ignore this need. Think of everything you do as an opportunity to reflect, gain feedback and learn.

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• Your relationships are nurtured by your investment

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If you were asked to define what leadership is about, what would you say? If your answer involves mainly things that are about you and your own progress, it’s time to rethink. Leadership should be about other people. It’s about inspiring and motivating others. It’s about recognising potential and nurturing it. It’s about achieving results, of course, but those results can only be achieved by working with people. If your focus is not on developing people, you’re missing the point.

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• There’s no such thing as a leadership formula

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Great leaders are thinkers and visionaries. If you’re looking for a magic leadership formula that will allow you to become more successful, stop looking. It doesn’t exist. Leadership is not a box-ticking exercise. We all know this, but it’s sometimes tempting to think that it can be that simple. But it cannot, and to become a great leader, there are things you must understand. You should know who you are, what your values, beliefs and behaviours are, and what impact these have on other people. Taking the time to understand these things is a crucial part of your investment in yourself as a leader. When you do understand them, you’ll find you have the kind of clear head you need to develop your vision and strategy.

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• You’ll be demonstrating the importance of development

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If an organisation’s leaders actively invest in themselves, that gets noticed. Self-investment and development become a natural part of the organisation’s culture, something everyone does. And when that happens, talent is always alive.

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It’s difficult to make the right investments without the right support. We developed our Connected Leader programme to help ambitious, effective leaders have an even greater impact.

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We’re also running a leadership programme aimed at senior women leaders to be held early October 2018 in Ireland. It gives you a powerful opportunity to further increase your impact at work. Over two days of coaching and personal exploration, including prework and follow up coaching, you will develop an individual plan designed to give you the tools and behaviours you need to excel at the highest levels of seniority. This is a chance for you to explore your leadership, define your leadership vision and drive your impact. It will give you time to think and to collaborate with your peers. You’ll gain deep insight into yourself and your capabilities and a support network of other senior women. 

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Contact us to find out more about the Women in Leadership programme or the Connected Leader programme.

“If I have seen further, it is by standing on the shoulders of giants” Isaac Newton.

A good mentor provides the shoulders that their mentoree needs to stand on to see, and go, further. All of us can think of people whose shoulders we have stood on, even if only for a short time. Our giants, or mentors, may have come in the form of colleagues and bosses, family members and friends, or with people we’d asked to mentor us. Mentoring may have come in the form of a one-off chance conversation, or a formal mentoring relationship over several years.

One thing is certain: successful and effective leaders have mentors.

Would a CEO be likely to say “I’ve never had any help or support from anyone to achieve everything I have in my career”?

It’s so unlikely as to be unimaginable. Successful people are very likely to be able to identify easily the mentoring that has helped them achieve their success.

CEO of PepsiCo Indra Nooyi says: “If I hadn’t had mentors, I wouldn’t be here today. I’m a product of great mentoring, great coaching”

 

What do Aristotle, Barack Obama, Yves Saint Laurent, Bob Dylan, Cheryl Sandberg and Harry Potter have in common?

All of them were mentored. In every field, we find examples of successful mentoring relationships, some of which cascaded down the generations as mentoree became mentor.

• Socrates mentored Plato, and he went on to mentor Aristotle.
• Gopal Krishna Gokhale mentored Mahatma Gandhi who went on to mentor Martin Luther King who went on to mentor Jesse Jackson.
• Woodie Guthrie mentored Bob Dylan.
• Mitch Albom mentored Morrie Schwartz, author of Tuesdays with Morrie.
• Christian Dior mentored Yves Saint Laurent.
• Andy Grove (Intel) mentored Steve Jobs (Apple) who went on to mentor Marc Benioff (Salesforce.com).
• Warren Buffet mentored Bill Gates.
• Larry Summers mentored Cheryl Sandberg.
• Michelle Robinson (lawyer) mentored Barack Obama.
• In fiction, Harry Potter was mentored by Dumbledore.

 

What does mentoring mean in business?

Your organisation may have a formal mentoring programme. But even if it doesn’t, it’s likely that mentoring happens. To be mentored is to learn from someone else’s experience. This is something that happens naturally, all the time. Without thinking of themselves as mentors, people take others under their wing, inspire them to learn new things and help them move beyond their comfort zone.

Natural, organic mentoring can yield fantastic results. But organised, formal mentoring programmes can do just as well, and often even better. A mentoring programme can make a significant, measurable difference to the success of a business.

In the UK, 70% of small businesses that receive mentoring survive for five years or more, twice the survival rate of non-mentored businesses. Those businesses that receive mentoring are 20% more likely to experience growth than those that don’t (source: The Small Firms Enterprise Development Initiative).

For small businesses, mentoring could be the difference between survival and failure. What about larger organisations? Can mentoring make a significant difference to them?

Yes. Because the success of a business depends on its leaders. And without mentoring, those leaders may not be able to meet the demands of business. Many leaders know themselves that they are not as prepared as they want to be to meet the challenges they face. In 40% of companies, leaders feel unprepared to meet the business issues they face over the next three to five years. And only 20% of managers identified as high performers successfully advance to higher levels of leadership [Right Management’s Global Report 2016] 

 

Developing talent

There are a lot of talented people who aren’t reaching their potential. And if people don’t reach their potential, nor do the businesses they work for. Mentoring can be a key part of changing this. So how does it work? What is mentoring, what are the benefits and who can be a mentor?

A historian would tell you the story of Mentor, who took care of Odysseus’ son while he went to fight the Trojan war. A neuroscientist would speak of the plasticity of our brains and the way they change as we learn and absorb information from different sources. An economist would pull out statistics about the impact of mentoring. A politician would perhaps find a way to remould the question, telling us how mentors can decrease crime levels and create jobs.

A mentor themselves would tell you that they pass on their insight and experience to others. I call mentoring the gift of growth. Mentoring means saying to someone:

I was once where you are and you can be where I am and I will help and support you.

 

The benefits of mentoring

For mentoring to be really useful, it needs to have objectives. If you had a mentor, what would you want to happen as a result? Would you want:

• To be in the top 10 leaders in your industry?
• To be more influential with stakeholders in your organisation?
• To improve your communication style at board level?

The process of defining goals can be extremely valuable, as it forces you to define your ambition. A good mentor will be able to give their mentoree the support they need to try new things, increased confidence, new connections, insight, perspective and improved performance.

And what of the mentor? Mentoring is very much a two-way relationship, benefitting the mentor as much as the mentoree. The mentor develops listening and leadership skills, a fresh perspective, a renewed direction and greater confidence.

Successful mentoring promotes the growth of people and in turn, their organisation. Leaders are developed, skills gaps are closed and people feel valued and invested in. The organisation becomes more connected.

Sounds good, doesn’t it? And while the organic, informal kind of mentoring will always go on, for mentoring to be really valuable to your organisation, it may not happen in the way you want or expect. That doesn’t mean that all mentoring must be formalised, but that the process of introducing a mentoring culture into an organisation should be given objectives, just as individual mentoring relationships are.

 

Organic v formal mentoring

We know that informal mentoring happens all the time, but is that always enough? Or, if we are to meet business and personal goals, do we need a more focussed approach?

Ideally, we need both. Organic mentoring can be a fantastic thing. People naturally seek out those who will give them the support they need to achieve their goals and where that support is freely given. The individuals involved learn and grow and they set an example to others, encouraging a mentoring culture to develop.

But, as productive as this informal mentoring can be, it doesn’t always happen in the ways we expect or meet the objectives we want it to. This is where a formal mentoring programme comes in, giving you the opportunity to make sure that everyone receives the mentoring they need, everyone who wants to mentor can do so and that mentoring happens with business objectives in mind.

The challenge is to make sure that an organisation-wide mentoring programme is owned by its participants, as informal mentoring is. The danger is that a mentoring programme becomes just another HR initiative rather than a way of further encouraging a mentoring culture.

 

How do I bring mentoring into my organisation?

Look around you, and think about the informal mentoring that happens. What is it that people value most about their mentoring relationships? Who gets the most out of mentoring and why? And how could a formal mentoring programme improve on it?

Retaining the benefits of informal mentoring when you introduce a mentoring programme can be tricky, but it can be done. Think about the different forms mentoring could take. Group mentoring could allow a greater breadth of connections and information sharing than one-to-one mentoring. Reverse mentoring, in which the junior mentors the senior, can boost confidence, instil digital skills and encourage reflection. Whatever you do, you should be constantly encouraging a mentoring culture in which staff seize opportunities for mentoring wherever they find them. Look upon these as ‘mentoring moments’ and encourage people to be ready to soak up wisdom and advice wherever it appears.

 

An exercise in mentoring

Identify up to three mentors in your life. Go as far back in time as you like. They might be teachers in school or college, colleagues or friends.

Ask yourself these questions:

• What gift or insight did they give you or share with you?
• How did they help you?
• How has that helped you today?
• Is there a pattern amongst the mentors in what you learned, gained and received?
• In what way does this information help you?
• How can you go about helping someone else? How will you become a mentor?

Often we read articles and absorb them, but don’t take action. We’re on a mission to change that!

Now you’ve read this article, capture just one thing you’ll do as result.

Let us know what it is – we’d love to hear your ideas and plans.

 

Photo Credit: Luciano 95