A mentoring relationship is a win-win for all parties: the team member (mentee) who seeks a mentor, the mentor, and for council. It gives less experienced team members valuable feedback, insight and support, while passing down wisdom and institutional knowledge.

Here is a brief look at seven key tasks for the mentor to perform:

Develop and manage the mentoring relationship. Initially, getting to know each other and assessing the team member’s strengths, weaknesses and the best pathways for development. It involves regular meetings, setting objectives and making sure the relationship is a comfortable and productive one. Over time, it means working to build trust, setting goals and keeping the mentoring relationship on track.

Sponsor. Opening doors and advocating for the mentee allowing her/him to develop new skills and gain meaningful visibility. You can create and seek new opportunities for her/him and connect her/him with people in your network.

Survey the environment. Mentors keep a watchful eye on the horizon, looking for both threatening organisational forces and positive opportunities. They help those they are mentoring manage their way through organisational politics and any people taking an adversarial position, finding shortcuts through the system, avoiding low-visibility or no-win assignments and finding high-visibility or win-win assignments.

Guide and counsel. The mentor may serve as a confidant, sounding-board and personal advisor, especially as the relationship grows deeper over time. They may help their mentee understand conflict or explore ways to deal with problems. They can also warn about behaviour that is a poor fit with organisational culture.

Teach. Many mentors enjoy the teaching aspects of mentoring, which mean not only imparting their knowledge but also sharing their experiences and recommending assignments.

Model. Just while observing their mentor, mentees pick up many things: ethics, values and standards; style, beliefs and attitudes; methods and procedures. They are likely to follow your lead, adapt your approach to their own style, and build confidence through their affiliation with you. Mentors need to be keenly aware of their own behaviour.

Motivate and inspire. Mentors support, validate and encourage their mentees. When they help those they are mentoring link their own goals, values and emotions to our agenda, they become more engaged in their work and in their own development.

Each mentoring situation is different, and mentors need to shift their role depending on the person and their goals. For example, if the mentor is mentoring an up-and-coming project manager who will be moving on to another assignment soon, their focus may stay on near-term challenges and preparation for the next step. Another mentee may be need help navigating the organisation and building his career, so sponsoring and protecting may be your focus.

Mentoring is a shared job. The mentor is not solely responsible for creating a successful mentoring relationship. The mentee needs to be flexible, honest, open and receptive to feedback and insight. He or she needs to be willing and able to take action in pursuit of goals, to invest in learning and to take steps toward needed change. They also need to have the courage to give you feedback and talk about what is or isn’t working well in the relationship.

In addition to the above, the FAQs for mentors, may assist with completing the mentoring agreement to establish “rules of engagement” at the outset of the mentoring relationship – the agreement can be customised to meet the specific requirements of the mentor and mentee.  A FAQs for mentees  is also available.

If you’re looking for a way to develop your team that involves small group learning from an appropriate ‘expert’ such as an external consultant, or internal manager/team member, internal job training is an effective way to offer training and build the team at the same time.

Team member development, offered in brief sessions, internally and on a regular basis, allows you to do job training with a consultant or internal provider who knows your goals, language, culture, and workplace norms. These job training sessions also build the team and help team members develop conversations about improvement, growth, and change.

You as a Manager, in conjunction with your staff identify individual development opportunities during monthly Performance Conversations and are met from your cost centre learning & development budget.  The Organisational Development & Capability team identify organisational wide learning and development opportunities for staff which are funded from the corporate learning and development budget.  Development opportunities are available to view and book in the Course Library in the Learning & Development module in PeopleStreme.

Looking for an easy way to share information for team member development at work? Identify some topics the team would benefit from developing their knowledge around. Form a special topic discussion group in which team members voluntarily research a subject or read the same educational material (report, analysis, book or article etc). Scheduled a discussion meeting to double the impact of the material and agree its implications for the way you do things including action points.Ask one team member who you particularly want to develop to lead the discussion. Ask a second team member to lead the discussion about the relevance of the book’s teachings to your organisation. You will magnify team member development with these groups.

When a team member attends an external seminar, training session, or conference, establish a standard requirement that the team member is expected to magnify the experience for the organisation by training other team members. This is effective team development because it grows the person doing the presentation and introduces new ideas to your organisation in a cost efficient way.

It is cost-effective in that the attending team member provides team member development for other team members. These presentations promote team member development, the sharing of new ideas, and extend job training knowledge.

The requirement also develops the skills of the team member who attended the external event. Not only does it require that they distill the learning and think about its application in the workplace but also he or she practices sharing ideas and presenting – both significant skills for team member development.

Lunch and Learns, as they are frequently called, are another form of team member development, available internally. For example, if there is a new development in the area of Health and Safety legislation or other relevant legislation or a new organisational initiative, invite everyone to a ‘lunch and learn’ where an expert in this area will make a short presentation followed by a general discussion. These types of sessions are particularly good where your team needs to develop an agreed plan for reacting to some change or where you are implementing new systems and processes. You can also use lunch and learns to spotlight projects and initiatives within the organisation or to enhance team member knowledge of your field, your industry or your customers.

Job shadowing allows a team member to learn about a job through short periods of observing or participating in the work of another team member. It is also an excellent approach to preparing a team member to act as back up for a job or to step into a new job. Job shadowing opportunities often arise as a temporary assignment where you have a temporary vacancy resulting from a resignation.

Job shadowing allows the shadow to gain comprehensive knowledge about what is required in the job and what an ‘expert’ who holds a particular job does every day. It provides a far richer experience than reading a position description or interviewing the person concerned. It allows the observer to see and understand the nuances of a particular job.

Who participates in job shadowing?

Job shadowing is effective where you are onboarding a new team member and when longer term team members want to learn about different jobs. It is also effective for high potential team members aspiring to step into a larger role because it allows them to find out what happens in a particular job day-by-day.

Job shadowing is effective for any job in which the “seeing” is more graphic than the “telling,” or when the seeing is an important component of the learning. When job shadowing, the individual sees the actual performance of the job in action. However, in job shadowing, the participant also experiences the nuances of how the service is provided or the job performed. The participant experiences the person they are shadowing’s approach, the interpersonal interaction required, the steps and actions necessary, and the components needed to effectively perform the job that they might not otherwise learn.

Benefits of job shadowing

• Allows a team member to see and then, demonstrate and practice job skills in action;
• Helps a team member develop relationships with current job holders customers and vendors;
• Allows current team members to gain broader and deeper knowledge about a variety of jobs and functions in the organisation.
• Provides an alternative when lateral moves, transfers and promotions are not currently available to assist in development.
• Serves as a trial when a team member is unsure about whether to accept a transfer or promotion.
• Gives a team member insight into the challenges offered by different jobs. This insight and knowledge helps them explore potential career paths within our organisation.

A myriad of internet resources, on just about any job training topic that you can imagine, are available online. From webinars to podcasts to YouTube and courses presented via telephone there is a large amount of good quality training material available online.  The Organisational Development & Capability team are continually sourcing resources and these are available to view and book from the Course Library in the Learning & Development module in PeopleStreme. A great resource is the Gartner Manager Success Workshop Series and is not only for you as a manager but for any staff who have an interest in any of the workshops – these workshops can either be accessed via the Manager Success Portal or you will be invited via the Learning & Development module in PeopleStreme to attend these workshops as they are also run in-house.If you find any content, that you think would be of use to other areas of council, please contact the Organisational Development & Capability team so these can be communicated to the rest of the organisation as part of our ongoing commitment to organisational learning and development.