Tag Archives: Employee

Reverse the Mentoring Stereotype

In its most common context, mentoring is understood as someone with experience (and a few grey hairs!) showing someone younger how to perform key job functions. Yet, one of the hottest trends in human resources is termed “reverse mentoring.” Whether due to job loss and the need for new training, or “Second Act” entrepreneurship, or simply the precipitous amount of change being introduced in organizations trying to compete globally, there has arisen a need for this practice where younger workers are now showing the older ones “the ropes.”

While the concept is that exposure to those outside the corporate suite may be good for staying in touch with the values held by newer workers, there are several other benefits. Higher employee retention rates among younger workers are cited as an unexpected, but welcome outcome. Exposure to management issues and how decisions are made are additional upsides.

When Jack Welch was the CEO of General Electric, he  was mentored on how to use the internet by a young employee in her 20s. He saw such promise from the process that he mandated that 500 of his top executives reach out to younger employees to do likewise. These days, mentees are learning how to use social media effectively from their younger mentors. Even at top ad agencies like Ogilvy & Mather, a worldwide managing director admitted that his more youthful mentors had shown him how to enhance his Twitter posts to be less boring. His eyes have been opened to new possibilities and he now plans to utilize Skype and videoconferencing to facilitate distance mentoring across the firm’s 450 offices. HP & Cisco also have reverse mentoring programs in place.

Michelle Rafter, in a blog post entitled “8 Ways to Make a Reverse Mentorship Work For You,” suggests the following guidelines:

1. Find a compatible partner –someone with skills in areas you’re lacking

2. Set expectations- create ground rules for what you want out of a partnership, such as how often you’ll meet and what both parties will get out of it

3. Get your boss’s OK- A lot of reciprocal mentoring can happen on an informal basis. But if you want or need to set up a formal program, you’ll need your manager’s or company’s approval.

4. Be open to suggestions and criticism- learn in days from someone else what one could take decades otherwise by having a thick skin

5. Make it more than just about tech- maybe a younger person could help you learn about sushi, Chinese, popular music, or even how to lead the next generation more effectively

6. Give as much as you get-the relationship should be mutually beneficial

7. Experiment with approaches– a single department, a program that crosses departments, and a multitude of variations

8. Don’t stereotype- not every 45-year-old has the same knowledge or expertise, so don’t assume every Gen Y worker does, either.

Using EQ to Plan Management Succession

How to go about preparing a privately owned business for management succession… 

GDF Professional Services had been a successful company for over 10 years in the business of providing organizational development consulting. Located in the Research Triangle area of North Carolina, the firm had capitalized on the local economic growth and availability of talented human capital. Over the past few years, the platform included leadership, change management & organizational psychology services for local companies. While most clients had 30-100 employees, some were smaller, and others were considered “middle market.”

The two primary owners, “G” & “D”, had determined that they desired to cut back on their hours at work and aimed to eventually hand the business over to a strong management team. However, management group members, while strong in their individual disciplines, had not coalesced into a cohesive team and were unprepared to succeed the founders in running the company on a daily basis.

The challenge was to help the managers prepare to take over and prepare the owners to begin to step aside. To do so would require innovation in the business model, systems, processes, and offerings of the Firm. In order to introduce innovation, a baseline needed to be established and performance measured. One of the best predictors of decision-making habits among managers is a behavioral assessment that measures one’s Emotional Quotient (EQ). Scheduling mentoring sessions to discuss competencies followed the administration of the EQ assessment.

     As the management team members began to share not just facts, but heartfelt emotions, dreams, and recommendations, it was necessary to have a process to capture and assimilate all the content. Each mentee meeting, each owner meeting, each team meeting was captured in detailed notes. Additionally, consultative questions in the individual sessions regarding assigned EQ worksheet exercises yielded additional insights. The information was culled weekly for follow-up items on the individual and team level, as well as combed for items to take up within strategy sessions with the owners. A rudimentary knowledge management system was put in place for this purpose.

Nearing the six month mark, the group was becoming anxious as to what was to follow. Someone suggested that the EQ mentoring continue at the staff level so that staff members could benefit from the same body of knowledge and practice that the leadership team had. Simultaneously, the owners agreed to undergo EQ mentoring themselves in order to enhance credibility with their key reports.

The other signs of progress were:

  • The weekly management team meetings were supplemented with weekly departmental meetings that did not require the presence of the owners
  • The weekly individual mentoring sessions were replaced with monthly sessions, but weekly exercises continued
  • The weekly group educational sessions were replaced with bi-weekly ones
  • The owners agreed to hold a year-end retreat to discuss drafting a succession plan

More work needed to be done in terms of clarifying roles and responsibilities, the funding source for the succession plan, selecting a leader from within the management team or from the outside, and insisting that the owners go on record as to what they will hand off when and to whom. However, all were very encouraged at the likelihood of success based on the transformation of the culture experienced during the process.

Rainmakers Outperformed By Personal Marketing Plans

Fundamentally, successful business development occurs when a professional has superior understanding of what a target client needs. To arrive at such enlightenment, the service provider has honed time-tested skills. The most successful ones have been very deliberate and intentional about the emphasis placed on the soft skills that wonderfully complement the technical acumen. In times past, such requisite skills for success were imparted through mentoring. However, the pressure to generate greater billings and profits today distracts mentors from their charge.

                Why not outsource a mentor like other business functions have been outsourced? In fact, why not become very specific and outsource a business development mentoring service that teaches your staff how to become inspirational? If succession planning is about identifying capable replacements, preparing them to assume a more executive role and helping them earn the following of others, then organizations should pay more earnest heed to it! Within the preparation of staff for leadership, it would be argued that business development is not learned through osmosis (years on the job). The skillset that makes one inspirational/capable of developing business is definable.

Inspirational employees are respected, admired, and well-known. Let’s say that respect means that one is competent, as evidenced by subject matter knowledge, a displayed ability to lead others and self-controlled. Admiration may then be construed as being expressed towards those who are consistent, fair and care about the well-being of others. One cannot be inspirational if no one knows in what context, how often, in what ways and to what constituency the inspiration is directed.

Do your employees have a plan to become respected, admired, and well-known? To refute the counterargument that some do not aspire to become well-known, I simply posit that unknown service providers do not enjoy the opportunity to serve significant clients. As for the aforementioned plan, we have heard of personal development plans (PDP). If the PDP is meant to address one’s emotional intelligence, then what plans are in place to help staff:

  • Become a subject matter expert?
  • Learn how to discern client needs?
  • Become referable?
  • Network more effectively?
  • Promote their personal specialty?

Savvy service firms empower their key staff to become inspirational leaders by helping them to produce a Personal Marketing Plan (PMP) that includes the PDP and the items listed in the bullets above. The PMP becomes the backbone of a succession plan, onto which other ligaments, tendons, and muscles familiar to HR executives can be attached. It is probably best developed by an outside third party who has no emotional ties to anyone internal to the organization and can objectively help staff develop and implement the Plan.

Organizations that are serious about the PMP have multiple Rainmakers and a system to produce more. Performance objectives and compensation systems can then be tied into succession management as all share the responsibility to grow personally and corporately.

Let’s become inspirational!!!

Focus on EQ Rather Than IQ

While one may not be able to improve IQ, the ability to improve one’s Emotional Quotient has been shown effective in enhancing management decision-making.     EQ Mentoring is most successful when directed management team members who support an organization’s executives.

“Emotional intelligence isn’t a luxury tool you can dispense with in tough times. It’s a basic tool that, deployed with finesse, is the key to professional success.”

~Dan Goleman in The Harvard Business Review

What is Emotional Intelligence (EQ)?

Effective and timely decision-making is at the heart of good performance. To improve performance, we need to understand how to make better decisions. At the most basic level, our ability to make good decisions and, in turn, perform well is captured by our competencies. Competencies are the things we know how to do and what we are good at are capabilities. Most performance management processes are built on the concept that competencies are the direct antecedent or predecessor to good decision making and high performance. What determines our competencies?

Preceding our competencies are our behaviors. Behaviors include our day-to-day activities that determine where we focus our time and where we focus our energies. Cognition precedes behavior. Slightly oversimplifying this concept, cognition refers to one’s intellectual capacities, thoughts, knowledge, and memories. This is the rational part of our brain. What finally precedes cognition in this physiological sequence to high performance is one’s EQ—a body of personal characteristics and social abilities that are closely tied to success in both our professional and personal lives.

How is EQ Improved?

In order to establish a baseline, an EQ Assessment is taken at the inception of the competency improvement process by each team member individually. The mentoring process is explained to the group and some recurring group meetings are held (minimum of once/month) to reinforce concepts in a team environment. Primarily, however, the mentoring  occurs individually and the scheduling of weekly meetings with each team member (half hour ea.) creates an environment for concepts to “grow legs” and become implemented.

The mentoring is administered by a professional certified in the process and competent to interpret the assessment results into a personal development program. The five competencies (self-awareness, self-regulation, motivation, empathy and social skills) that constitute one’s EQ scores are evaluated and a plan created to improve the mentee’s lowest area(s) first.

During the weekly sessions, hypothetical scenarios are discussed between mentor and mentee to identify thought processes, offer alternatives, and learn better decision-making styles. After six to eight weeks, the hypothetical gives way to actual work examples and on-the-job learning occurs. Generally, it is at this point that executives can see early signs of improved management skills.

As the mentee becomes more enlightened, additional tools and assessments are introduced to keep the free flow of information positive, eye-opening, and stimulating. Generally, a follow-on assessment is administered at the six month point and a joint decision is made as to how to proceed.

NOTE: For EQ improvement to become part of the culture, it is generally advisable that the owner/CEO/etc also submit to the process and go through their own mentoring. After such, there is opportunity to learn new methods of interaction that reinforce principles and better habits learned.

Too Much? Technology Intrusion @SXSW

The Washington Post, reporting from Austin, provided coverage of South by Southwest 2012. While there were certainly gadgets galore, applications abounding, and technology that teased, today’s article brought up the premise that technology threatens the fabric of our relationships. The intrusion of interruptive “advances” can overwhelm the brain, says Amber Case, a cyborg anthropologist.

Avi Zev Weider offered a documentary for screening, “Welcome to the Machine,” that attempted to ask the question of how inter-human relationships are compromised. Similar to the Matrix film series, there was a strong undercurrent that the network is not always our friend and we need downtime, to unplug and be human and regenerate.

How does this vein of thought factor into our office environments? The tyranny of emails, interoffice communications, tweets, posts, etc can overwhelm even the most resolute worker. I’ve been in many businesses wherein the employees–even department heads–are afraid to walk away from their desks for fear that they may receive a communication to which they do not have the opportunity to respond in real time.

There is something inherently wrong with being captive to the powerful tools that were created–ostensibly–to make our lives better. In working with employees in a number of companies, I have given the employees permission to work strategically on projects, check their messages according to a predetermined schedule, and enjoy the resulting focus, clarity, and peace of mind.

In my own life, it can be harder to set the smartphone down when I know someone may try to communicate with me. The Tweets, email messages on my work email, emails on my home email, text messages from family & friends, alerts that I’ve set up to keep the day flowing, blog updates, LinkedIn updates, etc just keep rolling in and it can be soooo seductive to allow the flow to determine my pace and disposition.

What can we collectively do? Simple, purposeful choices can break the habitual “checking in” that can be so distracting. Determine when you will pick up your cell–make it less frequent than you’ve been observing. Schedule email reading and response time. Most importantly–schedule “think” and “rest” times. Without them, our collective quality of life, contentment on and off the job, and health–physical and emotional–will all suffer.