Mentoring is one of the most powerful learning and change interventions our clients use within an organisational setting. Some organisations see it as an activity, which can take place within the line of command; other organisations see it as incompatible with the fundamental openness of the relationship. Similarly, some cultures see the exercise of authority and influence on the part of a protégé as appropriate; others see mentoring as primarily a developmental activity, with the emphasis on empowering and enabling people to do things for themselves. Some people view mentoring as synonymous with coaching, or teaching; others see it as a form of counselling. Certainly others view it as a kind of godfather relationship.
At Coach Mentoring Ltd we can help you understand the form you wish to use and how to set up a programme. We create both bespoke programmes and support with off-the-shelf products for our clients, such as Mentoring Mastery, a state-of-the-art product, which provides on-going support to develop your mentors.
So improve your organisation’s performance with a health check to optimise your mentoring. Get tips on setting up your mentoring programme like an expert. Or expand your knowledge with a Postgraduate Certificate.
In conclusion, contact us if you’d like to discuss your situation, we would love to hear from you!
Includes Best Practices, Insider Tips, and Additional Topics
Chronus Corporation, a leading provider of software for talent and career development, together with Lis Merrick of Coach Mentoring Ltd. will host a new webinar, “Developing Corporate Talent through Coaching and Mentoring,” on Wednesday, December 4, at 18:00 UK time. Continue reading
I have developed an eight-step approach to designing a mentoring programme with my clients. In this blog I am going to cover step 4, training participants in a mentoring programme.
Preparation can involve anything for a short face to face briefing to a two day training programme, with many organisations opting for short virtual training webinars these days which can ensure a global talent mentoring programme for instance can be run on a very cost effective basis.
Coach Mentoring Ltd now offers all David Clutterbuck’s CMI services across England, Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales. It also provides the central resource to CMI for managing large global corporate projects.
In my practice, I use an eight-step approach to designing a mentoring programme with my clients:
Designing a successful mentoring programme that delivers the results you are looking to achieve can be a difficult process, particularly if the organisational culture is at odds with the philosophy of mentoring or the senior management are paying lip service to the programme’s introduction.
Interestingly in the same week as David Clutterbuck and Kirsten Poulsen have published their new book, “Developing Successful Diversity Mentoring Programmes: An International Casebook”, I have been given an assignment to support a disability mentoring programme in Higher Education with a remit to look at exactly what is going on within the programme and work with the team of mentors to make it more effective for everyone involved. Continue reading
Whilst there have been considerable developments and expansion in the label “coaching”, there seems not to have been a corresponding development in mentoring. However, rather than seeking to work with the old debate around what the differences are between mentoring and coaching, Paul Stokes and I are planning to use our latest research findings on modern mentoring practice to develop our understanding of mentoring as a field of practice. Continue reading
Just returned from the Coaches Connect Conference in Leeds, which was a great event for local coach networking and good to see some old and new faces. Well done to Vera Woodhead for organising such an interesting day!
Paul Stokes and I shared our research and thoughts on Intimacy in Coaching and Mentoring in a keynote at the conference this morning, a topic we have only explored outside of the UK previously! (EMCC Conference in Dublin 2010) Continue reading
Mentoring has been around since the Odyssey. Most people are familiar with the tale of Odysseus returning from the Trojan Wars to find that his old friend Mentor had supported his son Telemachus, during his long absence. However, are you also aware than Mentor was actually the Goddess Aphrodite in the guise of Mentor? So the first mentor was actually female!
Formal mentoring became most visible with the Big Brothers/Big Sisters programme in New York in the 1920s and mentoring soon became an important part of the US corporate development scene. In the 1980s and 1990s it became more popular in the UK with the Labour Government using it extensively post 1997 as a tool to deal with “remedial” school children, unfortunately not a move which endeared it to all the parents at the time. Continue reading
The NWDA Business mentoring programme commenced in September 2009 and is seeking to support 3,000 SME leaders and managers in the North West of England over a three-year period. The aim of the programme is to establish an exemplary one–to–one mentoring programme demonstrating accredited quality standards. The focus of the mentoring is on small businesses with the potential to grow. This is a core objective of increasing the availability and standard of mentoring provision in the region and robust evaluation. Continue reading
