Congratulations. Your mentoring program received high marks this year. Training sessions were packed. Website usage tripled. The degree of satisfaction with mentoring matches surpassed last year. You’ve received a ton of accolades. But are these high marks enough to declare your mentoring program a success?
We don’t think so. The bottom line is if mentoring is making a real difference to program participants, mentoring partnerships and the organization. Are mentees using and leveraging what they’ve learned to make a difference in their personal performance and results? Are mentors fully engaged and invigorated? Are they learning? Are they applying the lessons they learn interacting with their mentee in their own leadership teams? Has mentoring made a significant difference in the productivity of your organization?
Gathering different perspectives can help you develop higher-level strategies and take your mentoring program to a whole new level.
1. Get the mentee manager’s perspective. What changes have they seen in their employees who are engaged in mentoring? How has mentoring impacted their job performance? Relationships with colleagues? Results?
2. Assess mentoring from a program management perspective. In what ways, directly or indirectly, has the level of mentoring support and service improved over the past year? In what specific ways, has your mentoring program evolved and grown? What innovative practices have you implemented? What new approaches did you try? How did they work? What would you do differently next time? Have your mentoring managers developed in their roles? What new capabilities did they develop?
3. Evaluate mentoring from an organizational perspective. What impact did mentoring have on your organization this past year? What has changed? Improved? What strides did participants make that are attributable, in whole or part, to their mentoring experience? To what extent and how have the attitudes and beliefs of participants, support staff and leaders changed as a result of mentoring experience?
