Three Reasons Your Managers Need To Mentor

One of the great benefits of mentoring is having access to an objective sounding board for your ideas. A mentor is someone with whom you can have a confidential conversation about your aspirations, share your dreams and your challenges, plan the next steps in your career development, or just vent your frustration before figuring out a practical solution to problems. That’s why we choose mentors who are “off-line”, not the manager, or someone in a direct line of authority above the mentoree in most programs.

I don’t think managers should be an employee’s only mentor; people need that independent, objective person with no other agenda or responsibility and where authority doesn’t get in the way. But I do think there’s a very real case for managers having and using mentoring skills.

The three key reasons why your managers need to mentor are:

1. Productivity
2. Retention
3. Learning and Development

Managers have immediate responsibility for these and mentoring can produce better outcomes all three. Here are some statistics that knocked my socks off when I first came across them.

Productivity

The Corporate Leadership Council, Learning and Development Roundtable Employee Development Survey, found that managers who are focused and effective at developing their people have teams that out-perform those that are not by around 25%.

Retention

The BlessingsWhite Inc. Global Engagement Report of 2011, found that less than two thirds of respondents plan to remain with their organisation.

The American Society of Training and Development research tells us that 33% of employees who do not receive regular mentoring will look for another job.

Then there’s Gallup’s world-wide research into what makes great managers, reported in Buckingham & Coffman (1999) First, Break All The Rules. They found the critical questions that link to retention include: “Does my supervisor, or someone at work, seem to care about me as a person?

Learning & Development.

We know that of the learning and development that people use on the job, only 10% comes from formal education and training courses; 20% comes from exposure - observing people and 70% comes from experience (Lombardo, Michael M. and Robert W. Eichinger (1996) The Career Architect Development Planner. Lominger Limited). That means that managers need to be leading the learning experience of their subordinates and mentoring conversations are ideal for that.

We also know that when you send people to training only 16% of participants transfer their learning in a way that improves performance (Wick, Jefferson & Pollock (2008) How To Get Your Money’s Worth Out Of Training). Which means that mentors must be skilled in facilitating conversations before and after people go to training so that the learning transfer happens.

I think these statistics are staggering. What do you think? More importantly, what will you do help managers mentor their staff?

How Do You Develop Managers’ Mentoring Skills?

I have three suggestions:

1. Provide managers with my book Mentoring Mindset, Skills and Tools is a very practical book with guides, checklists and templates;
2. Enrol managers in our online Learning Portal where I’ve just added a mentoring masterclass Managers and Mentoring; or
3. Email me or phone (02) 4342 2610 (in Australia) to discuss what you need.