Part 1 of a Two Part Series

During my career in the financial services industry, I experienced several mentoring relationships that contributed significantly to my professional success and happiness.  As much as I enjoyed being mentored, I derived even greater pleasure from being a mentor.  

As a mentor, I was able to share my understanding, knowledge, and ideas with others.  I regard mentoring as a life-enhancing opportunity to serve, and I believe mentoring is a duty and an honor for anyone who has been blessed with good fortune in their careers and in their lives. 

Leading corporations have long embraced the concept of mentoring, but not necessarily on a formal or widespread basis.  In recent years, mentoring has undergone subtle but profound changes.  Many industry leaders now regard mentoring as a key component of their overall success strategy.  They are leading a trend that aligns mentor programs with core business strategies.  I believe this trend marks the beginning of a new age in mentoring.  I call this phenomenon New Age Mentoring.

One of the distinguishing aspects of this New Age Mentoring is emphasis placed on developing the total individual rather than simply developing a skill set to satisfy a specific function within an organization.  One of the reported benefits of this more inclusive approach is that it leads to stronger and more meaningful relationships between the mentee, the mentor and the corporation.

In this edition of The Relationship Corner, I explore the evolution of mentoring relationships and offer steps that make New Age Mentoring an ideal process for individual and organizational development.

The Traditional Mentoring Model

The traditional mentoring relationship is one where an established individual, the mentor, serves as a sponsor and guardian of a less established individual, known as the mentee.  The word mentor, as we know and use it, comes from Homer’s The Odyssey.  

Mentor was a trusted friend of Odysseus, King of Ithaca.  Before Odysseus departed Ithaca to fight in the Trojan War, he asked Mentor to do everything necessary to prepare his son, Telemachus, to one day rule Ithaca .

Our modern society has adopted the process of mentoring as a way for less established individuals to develop skills and knowledge from more established individuals.  A mentor can also help in other areas.  When I asked my 13-year old daughter if she knew what a mentor was, she defined a mentor as “someone who helps someone else with their issues.”

Before mentoring relationships became popular in business, there were apprenticeships.  Mentoring relationships can mirror apprenticeships, but they are usually more broadly defined.  Up until the twentieth century, individuals who wished to master a trade would often move in with a skilled person and devote several years working with a skilled individual in exchange for the opportunity to learn the trade.  The individual with the skills benefited from the apprentice’s labor, which was usually free, except for room and board.  Today, the exchange of information remains rooted in the workplace, but most mentoring relationships involve social introductions and the imparting of social skills - two aspects that are often critical to career advancements.  A key distinction between a mentoring relationship and an apprenticeship is the mentoring relationship generally transcends technical and functional considerations.

In business, the traditional mentor model has been applied both formally and informally. Formal mentor relationships are usually assigned by an organization and have a written agreement that specifies the duration of the relationship, goals of the mentee, role of the mentor, meeting requirements, and specific action steps. 

By contrast, informal mentoring relationships usually function without a written agreement.  In an informal relationship, mentors and mentees are not matched in any formal way.  The relationship can be initiated by the mentor, the mentee, or a third party introduction.  Regardless of how the relationship was formed, in an informal mentoring relationship, the mentor serves as an “unofficial” advisor, teacher, and/or sponsor of the mentee. 

Traditional mentoring is usually effective, but it can have limitations as well.  Mentor relationships can produce unintended results when mentors use mentees for their own power and influence.  Traditional mentoring can be limiting when mentees focus solely on rising through the ranks of the organization.  Mentoring programs that focus exclusively on individuals that are viewed as “high performers” limit the scope of development within an organization. Mentoring relationships can be limiting whenever they focus only on members of a specific gender or ethnic groups.  Finally, traditional mentoring can be limiting when knowledge, experience, and wisdom flow in only direction - from the mentor to the mentee.

Mentoring and the New Economy

Studies show that mentees have benefited from traditional mentoring relationships.  Employees with mentors throughout their careers experienced better compensation, faster promotions, and more successful careers than those who do not have mentors.  In recent decades, however, three factors helped transform traditional mentoring into something new.

The first factor was the influx of people of color and women into the workforce during the 1980s and 1990s.  This influx caused many organizations to take a closer look at their mentoring practices.  Most companies had operated with informal mentoring processes.  But too often, mentoring was available to only an elite few.  Mentors tended to select individuals with similar backgrounds as their own; and preferred individuals that looked and acted like they did; thought as they thought; and shared the same organizational values.  Traditional mentors were often cited as contributors to corporate glass ceilings.  Over time, corporations recognized the need to establish a more inclusive process.

As the economy grew in the 1990s, organizations found that it increasingly difficult to fill a growing number of job openings.  Performance and retention issues became top priorities.  Corporations observed that mentoring programs not only improved mentee performance, but helped increased employee retention.  This observation persuaded many corporations to move away from informal process by implementing formal mentoring programs.

The third challenge to the traditional mentoring model came from the “new economy.”  Overnight successes in the tech industries turned many long standing traditions upside down.  Young people, many in their twenties and even younger, began displacing older and more experienced individuals who were less technology savvy.  In the new economy, young people were the innovators.  They were the ones designing new ways of doing business and generating enormous wealth.  For a while, it seemed as though older workers had nothing to offer younger workers, and in many cases, older workers were perceived as valueless by their younger employers. 

These three factors: a more culturally diverse workforce, the need to retain valued workers, and the new economy, helped to establish practices that ushered in a new age of mentoring. 

New Age Mentoring promotes relationships that are more balanced, diverse, individual and situational in focus than those relationships developed through traditional mentoring arrangements. 

People no longer want to be mentored solely for the purpose of learning how to climb the corporate ladder or becoming the prototype corporate man or woman.  In addition, organizations want mentoring programs that produce people who are better equipped for the more dynamic and diverse economy that now exists.

Click here for Part 2: Tapping into the Power of New Age Mentoring

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