Leadership Development Through Mentoring

When I was in the military, we worked closely with our team leaders, always functioning as a unit and ensuring commands were executed to a tee. This synergistic working arrangement with my mentors impacted me so much that I fully embraced most of their leadership strategies. This is why, to this day, I believe mentoring is one of the most effective ways to develop proficient, reliable leaders. 

Leadership development through mentoring is an effective way to support your best people in their journey toward self-improvement and career development. They become more efficient, productive, and loyal to your company when you value them. Mentoring can bring out the best in your workforce. 

Let’s talk more about why you should consider launching a mentoring program for your business and how it could benefit mentors, mentees, and the entire organization. We’ll also discuss some of the most common misconceptions about mentoring and how these could significantly damage your workforce’s morale. I’ll then offer some tips on mentoring, including goal plotting, result monitoring, and feedback gathering. 

What Leadership Mentoring Is All About

Mentorship plays a crucial role in developing proficient, reliable leaders. Good mentors provide support, guidance, and motivation. Moreover, they help their mentees steer their own career paths by sharing relevant, helpful information and acting as role models worth emulating. 

The Biggest Mistakes in Mentoring

The concept of mentoring is pretty simple, but many leaders find it challenging and tricky to carry it through until the set goals are realized successfully. If implemented incorrectly, leadership development through mentoring can do more harm than good. 

Here are some common blunders involved with mentoring:

• Mentoring aims to make the mentee a “clone” of the mentor. Mentors should focus on helping their mentees develop and evolve into better leaders without disregarding their unique personalities, leadership styles, distinctive objectives, and career paths that may be different from theirs. Creating their replicas through mentoring may make mentees feel unmotivated and uninspired.
• Mentors are supposed to tell their mentees precisely what to say and how to act. Remember, mentors are meant to guide, support, and motivate — never to dictate. If mentors expect their mentees to do exactly as they say, they’re snuffing out the flames and keeping them from achieving their individual goals and full potential. 

Benefits of Leadership Development Through Mentoring

The benefits of mentoring are multifaceted — the mentor, mentee, and the organization can use this experience to their advantage. 

Here are some of the key benefits you can expect:

Benefits to the Mentee

• Boosted confidence on the job (87% of mentees and mentors say they feel empowered and more confident about themselves because of mentorship)
• Increased knowledge of how the different areas of the company functions
• Increased awareness of how co-workers get things done
• Expanded understanding of various approaches to work
• Opportunity to widen their network
• Availability of a reliable adviser who they can turn to for various work-related situations
• Increased likelihood of getting promoted 

Benefits to the Mentor

• Increased self-confidence and sense of accomplishment 
• Enhanced communication skills
• Improved mental health (a Harvard Business Review study revealed that mentors experienced less anxiety because interactions with their mentees were therapeutic and fulfilling, allowing them to find more meaning in their work)
• Opportunity to widen their network
• Opportunity to develop and practice competencies necessary for effective leadership
• Opportunity to influence positive changes in the organization

Benefits to the Organization

• Opportunity to develop high-potential leaders
• Opportunity to earn the loyalty of top-tier employees and leaders through the commitment to continuous learning and leadership development (93% of businesses grapple with employee retention, and one way of addressing this is through a mentorship program)
• Fosters inclusivity, unity, trust, diversity, engagement, and collaboration 
• Promotes employee empowerment and a positive work culture
• Establishes a company culture of mentorship and continuous learning
• More goals are achieved (studies show that there is a 70% increase in the likelihood of achieving goals if these are shared with someone to promote accountability)

Leadership Development Through Mentoring

Successful businesses continually seek ways to support, develop, and retain their best people. It’s not an easy feat, but fortunately, the best people also constantly search for ways to improve themselves and advance in their careers. 

This paves the way for leadership development programs, such as mentorship, where mentors, mentees, and the organization all profit from a synergistic learning and development opportunity. 

Let’s dive right into leadership development through mentoring:

1. Be Clear on Your Desired Outcomes

The first step is identifying your purpose and goals for developing a mentorship program. Make sure these are aligned with the organization’s thrusts and visions. Here are some questions that might help you out:

• Have you already lost some of your best leaders and employees?
• Is team motivation low?
• Is there a need to develop and nurture new leaders?
• Is your business growing and expanding?
• Is there a need to develop your leaders’ skills?

Establish key metrics that will help you track progress and determine the rate of success (or failure) of your mentorship program. Here are some of the most crucial KPIs (Key Performance Indicators) to take into account:

• Employee engagement
  • Number of signups
  • Number of mentoring sessions (daily, weekly, or monthly)
• Employee satisfaction 
• Promotion rate
• Employee retention rate
• Team productivity 

2. Determine the Parameters

Once you’ve figured out the rationale behind your business’ mentorship program, it’s time to decide on some vital details, such as

• Number of slots available (for both mentors and mentees)
• Duration of the mentorship program
• How to launch the mentorship program and make it enticing to your team
• How monitoring will be implemented

Also, you need to decide how to recruit employees and leaders to join. Will you choose the participants, or would they need to apply for the role? How will you match the mentors and the mentees? This is a great way to expand the organization’s leadership pool, share organizational know-how, and recognize untapped potential in the workplace. 

3. Monitor Results

Regularly check in with your mentors and mentees to ask for feedback and monitor their progress. If you need to make adjustments in the program, do so quickly so issues are nipped in the bud before they could snowball beyond your control. 

Here are some vital factors you need to keep in mind:

• Utilize surveys, feedback reports, or polls to get the participants’ pulse
• Track the number of objectives set vs. objectives realized
• Keep tabs on sales, number of new clients, or any other benchmark applicable to your business that the mentorship program may have influenced

Utilize monitoring tools, such as bars, charts, and other project management instruments, to track your determined metrics, quickly identify problems in the system, and resolve critical issues promptly. 

Final Thoughts

Leadership development through mentoring is a great way to expand your leadership pool, discover new talents, and provide support for your best people. It can help enhance team engagement and productivity, and improve your business’ employee retention rate. 
At Sancus Leadership, we can help you develop strategies and programs to assist your workforce, especially your leaders, in improving their critical skills with the help of leadership development programs, including mentoring. Book us a free leadership call when you’re ready to take this step toward helping your workforce reach their full potential.