Accountability: Measuring Mentoring and Its Bottom Line Impact.

Mentoring is a valuable tool for developing leadership talent, and it can have a bottom-line impact. To evaluate a mentoring program, a five-step process is recommended: 1) establish baseline numbers, 2) monitor the program, 3) measure mentoring (using the Alleman Mentoring Activities Questionnaire), 4) evaluate results and 5) calculate "return on investment. "Planned mentoring leverages a firm's succession planning efforts.

Introduction

Mentors have developed proteges since ancient times. The original Mentor in Homer's Odyssey trained his protege for national leadership and then helped him outmaneuver the ancient Greek equivalent of corporate raiders in a hostile takeover attempt.

Managing kingdoms or companies in turbulent times is a challenge. Using mentors, while not a panacea for resolving problems in the organization, can help companies deal with a variety of problematic situations. Managing effects on productivity of massive job shifts during reorganizations, developing a cohesive corporate culture in a merger, developing the potential of all employees including minorities, and reducing turnover are a few examples. While the benefits of mentoring have been recognized for years, this potent force operates entirely unmanaged in most companies.

Mentoring can be managed. Research on mentoring has shown us what a mentoring relationship is like [1,6,7,8,9,11] and has made it possible to understand, measure, manage and evaluate the relationship.

Mentors teach, guide, help, counsel, and inspire their proteges. They have a big impact not only on their proteges but also on their organizations. Many benefits (and a few potential risks) of mentoring relationships were clearly established by the early research on these relationships, and these benefits have been spelled out in a number of publications [5,8].

Early research has also looked at the nature of the relationship as described by the mentors and proteges involved. Mentoring was found to be active. Specific mentoring practices were identified which happened more often in mentoring relationships than in non-mentoring relationships [1]. Mentoring is also dynamic. It changes and evolves over time, moving through a series of stages or phases as it develops [9,11].

Alleman [4] identified specific behaviors that mentors used and variations in the patterns of mentoring practices as relationships developed. Managing behavior is a common organizational practice. Mentor behaviors can be taught, learned, managed, and evaluated, so this powerful force can be harnessed to accomplish organizational goals. Benefits can be maximized and potential problems managed. Ignoring these relationships allows them to operate uncontrolled within the organization, producing unpredictable and unmeasured results.

Benefits of a Mentoring Program

Mentors have an important impact on organizations and individuals. Research provides evidence of the benefits including higher productivity, better performance ratings, development of leaders, advancement of minorities and reduced turnover. In addition, participants acquire greater knowledge of the business, its politics, policies, products and customers. [2,3,5,12,13].

The first step in developing a mentoring program is to answer the following three questions: 1) What business issues are you trying to address (e.g., turnover, recruitment cost, productivity or some other problem)? 2) Why is addressing this issue important? Companies address issues that have a financial impact or affect the quality of the products and/or services. 3) How will the organization be different as a result of the program? For example, a more stable work force or more internal promotions may occur.

When business issues involving the effectiveness of employees have been identified, the next two questions arise: 4) Who do you want to change or develop? (i.e. who will be the proteges?), and 5) How will those people be different? Answering these questions establishes program objectives. These objectives must be specific, measurable, and realistic, and they must have an appropriate time frame.

To illustrate the process of evaluating a mentoring program, the experience of a Fortune 500 manufacturing company with unsatisfactory turnover in one division will be described. The division typically hired 18 to 20 new engineers a year; they experienced a 50% turnover rate for those new hires. Thus success of the program was defined by a turnover decrease from 50% to 20%. The objective was to increase the retention of newly hired engineers during the first three years of work. Their plan answers specifically who will be affected, the change desired, and how it will be measured. The results of the measurement (discussed later in the article) demonstrate that the program exceeded its goals.

Components of a Successful Mentoring Program

Sports analogies are often used in business. What it takes to win the game is similar to what it takes for a successful mentoring program. The coach's goal is a winning score. Success is easy to measure. Does the team have enough points to win? The team needs adequate resources, which include trainers, protective gear, practice facilities, and the true commitment of those in charge to provide what is needed for the full season despite occasional losses. They must have enough pre-season time to develop the players, teach them the plays and game plans, and develop their individual skills at the sport.

The coaches must have full knowledge of the game, the latest techniques and equipment, what has and hasn't worked in the past, and how to get out of tight spots and recover from setbacks. Most of all, the coaches must be able to teach what they know to the players, because it is the players, not the coaches, who score the points.

The same components are required for a mentoring program. The business objective of the program must be spelled out in clear, specific, measurable terms. What is the company trying to do? How will the company managers know if you "win?" What is the specific business objective of the program? How will success be measured?

Adequate budget, time, facilities, and true commitment of business leaders and participants (including the proteges bosses) are essential. Lip service is not enough. Appropriate length of a program varies with the program objective, but it must belong enough for mentoring to occur, for the lessons to sink in, and for the proteges to demonstrate the results. Mentoring practices are many and complex, and opportunities to apply them do not necessarily arise daily.

One investigation of spontaneous mentoring was conducted because people promoted out of a particular department were so successful later in the company. The managers in the department reported on their usual mentoring practices toward employees. Their reported behavior showed that all were acting as typical mentors. Both former and current employees reported on their experiences in the department as proteges. The longer the proteges had been in the department the more closely their reports matched those of their mentors. Those with three or more years reported the full array of mentoring experience. Those with less time in the department reported varying degrees of mentoring behavior depending on their time in the role. This finding conforms to research that shows that spontaneous mentoring relationships last three to five years and that the relationship and mentoring practices change over time as the protege develops [9, 11].

Those designing a mentoring program must have two sets of knowledge. First, they need to have a thorough background in mentoring. Reading a few articles or a book is not enough. This expertise involves the mentoring practices, their variations, and how to adapt them to different situations, but also what things can go wrong and how to avoid or minimize them. Second, they need to be familiar with the business setting in which the program will exist so that the program can be tailored to its particular needs. Since most businesses do not have in-house expertise in mentoring, a program design team usually consists of in-house staff familiar with the business and its people and a consultant with expertise in mentoring.

Finally, just as with sports teams, training-training-training and supervised practice-practice-practice are keys to developing the mentors and proteges and those (such as bosses) who will be working with them. Exhibit 1 summarizes the essential elements of a successful mentoring program.

Why Some Programs Fail

Designing an appropriate planned mentoring program to meet organization objectives is not easy and some programs fail. Research has documented the reasons for failure (see Exhibit 2) [3,5]. A failed program can have a severe impact on the company in addition to wasted resources. For example, a consultant called in to "fix" a badly floundering program was able to diagnose what went wrong (failure to train participants and unrealistic expectations) and was able to assess the damage that had been done (extreme frustration and anger), but was unable to save the program. The recommendation was to abandon the program and ... "never mention the word 'mentor' again." The department (Human Resources) and the managers promoting the program had lost so much credibility and had generated so much hostility as a result of the failed program that not only was the mentoring program lost, but other sound programs were also undermined.