Mentoring has become a business imperative and a corporate responsibility. As a result, leaders are looking for a more strategic and sustainable approach to creating a mentoring culture that supports implementation and fully embeds mentoring into the bedrock of their organization.
By establishing a mentoring culture, an organization ensures that mentoring thrives and flourishes beyond any one specific mentoring program.
Here are some of the reasons why a mentoring culture is essential:
- It establishes ownership. People outside the immediate implementation group feel a sense of ownership and responsibility and hold others accountable.
- It promotes shared responsibility. The success of mentoring is explicitly linked to the organization’s wider strategic agenda.
- It maximizes resources. Duplication of time, effort and dollars are minimized because it is integrated with the organization’s infrastructure.
- It maintains integrity of practice by assuring that there’s always readiness, opportunity and support for mentoring.
- It facilitates knowledge utilization by enabling the organization to provide opportunities to integrate new learning and leverage knowledge gained as a direct result of mentoring.
- It supports integration of key processes. Competencies, such as feedback and goal setting, often improve performance based on insights and skills gained from mentoring training and practice.
What organizational benefits can you anticipate as a result of your time and effort?
- A mentoring culture promotes standards and consistency of good mentoring practice.
- A mentoring culture supports individual growth and organizational effectiveness.
- A mentoring culture enables an organization to enhance the learning, leverage its energy, better utilize and maximize its time, effort and resources.
- A mentoring culture enriches the vibrancy and productivity of an organization and the people within it.
- The relationship skills learned through mentoring strengthen relationships throughout the organization; as these relationships deepen, people feel more connected and committed to their organization.
So, what are you waiting for? Join Dr. Lois Zachary, author of Creating a Mentoring Culture: The Organization’s Guide, in Seattle on May 4, 2016. Her workshop will guide you through the process of creating a mentoring culture that will increase your organizational mentoring capability and take it to a whole new level. Early bird pricing ends March 30, so register online today!
