Mentorship - Panel Discussion (Part 2)

Music. Welcome to the Manager Lab, where we delve into the increasingly dynamic world of talent management.

In each episode, we will unravel key insights, break down the most relevant books and articles, and provide actionable tips to optimize your approach in developing and retaining top talent. Stay tuned for a deep dive into the art, science, and strategy of unlocking your team's full potential. Let's enter the Manager Lab. Welcome to the lab. And today we're going to pick up where we left off last time with part two of a discussion around a panel that I was on last week talking about mentorship.

One of our state associations invited me to talk on this whole concept around mentorship. I did a lot of homework. I did a lot of reflection. And I thought, you know what? It'd be probably valuable for some of you to hear these thoughts that I spent this time on. So I'll pick up where I kind of left off last time. The next question is, as a mentee, what should your expectations be of a mentor? So I think there's basically three things here. Number one, you should expect

support. Number two, guidance. And number three, feedback. And let's go into each of those just really quickly. So from the support level, obviously, there should be high trust, confidentiality, should be a part of this relationship. They should be available to the mentee. So broadly speaking, a trusting, supporting, available relationship should ensue over time.

As far as guidance goes, helping the mentee problem solve, helping them with not only tactical issues that they're having in their work, but maybe even more importantly, strategic issues. Implications of their work. I would say that the mentor's role here is really to challenge the mentee.

I mean, they're coming to this relationship, the mentee is coming to this relationship for a particular reason, hopefully, and that mentor should challenge them in different ways and really, you know, push the envelope here, helping that mentee with this particular skill, whatever it may be. And then finally, feedback. Giving them feedback should be an expectation. Honest, transparent feedback. You know, there's really, there's no one wins when we're not honest with each other.

And so this type of relationship will spur high accountability. And I think that's That's a good thing. So support, guidance, and feedback is all, they're all expectations that a mentee should expect from their mentor. Okay. What are the responsibilities of the mentee in the mentoring relationship? Well, number one, this is a big one, even though it sounds simple, but they're accountable for scheduling the meetings. So I never want to hang that on the mentor.

It's really the mentees ask to have this relationship. And so they should be responsible for driving the logistics, for making sure they schedule the meetings and are accountable for that. Number two, they should be really prepared for these meetings. You should never go, a mentee should never walk into a meeting with their mentor and say, okay, what do you want to talk about today.

You know, that should never happen. In my mentor experiences, I have spent hours prepping for my mentor relationship because I've got X, Y, and Z and A, B, and C that I want to have input on some guidance on. And so I'm going to be really, really efficient with my time. And so I'm going to be ultimately prepared with very planned areas of focus for my mentoring sessions. And then third, confidentiality. That goes both ways.

Both mentor and mentee should hold a really high degree of confidentiality, and hopefully that won't be an issue with things. Because if you're not sharing things openly and honestly and transparently without the prospect of confidentiality, it's just not going to work. And so that's a given.

Okay, next question. How has mentorship shaped your career trajectory in this industry, and what was the most valuable lesson you learned from a mentor? Well, this one will be really short because, again, I didn't have requisite human resources experience coming into my career. I kind of fell into the human resources space. I had a lot of experience in the talent side of human resources, but not formally. So I immediately sought out a mentor when I got into this space.

And this person was unbelievably helpful to me, giving me a lot of guidance up front. But then as I was learning, I would eventually begin to make my own decisions, and then I would run them by this person. And it just worked so, so well. And the most important advice was usually a situation is never as bad as the facts will bear it out to be. So stay calm, get the facts, work, you know, work slowly, but methodically and just get to the answers. And that was, again, a brilliant piece of advice.

OK, what unique challenges do mentees face in this particular industry and how can mentors help them navigate? Well, so my formative management role was in the pharmaceutical industry where when you moved into a management position, you no longer did the work that you were managing. So you were truly managing people. You were managing their workloads. You were managing their schedules. You were managing their goals and expectations and things like that.

In the industry that I'm in, and this is true in a lot of industries. Managers don't have that luxury. They have to also get in the trenches and do a lot of the work that their people are doing, so-called working managers. And when that happens, you get less and less time for strategic input like this.

So if you are a manager who's who's a working manager and you want to be a mentor, that's going to provide that's going to, you know, make it a little bit more difficult for you to do that because you're going to have to figure out how to carve time out to really invest. And I hope you do that. It's worth it.

But again, if you're a working manager, your challenges are going to be a little bit different. Next question, how can mentorship programs help address the aging workforce challenge while ensuring knowledge transfer to the next generation? Well, that's the number one, you know, what's called cross-generational mentoring, where you have someone in either the boomer or the X generation that's mentoring a millennial or a Gen Z. And this knowledge transfer, both ways, right?

So obviously, the mentor in this situation probably has a lot more experience in this industry and a lot more experience, period, because they're probably older. Not always, but probably. And so that tremendous experience can be transferred down. And then from the mentee, if we really approach these relationships in the right way, you have what's called reverse mentoring, where the mentor is learning also from the mentee. And in the perfect relationship, that's happening a lot.

So mentors are not just providing their time and expertise, but they're also looking for specific ways that they can grow as well. We also talk about in cross-generational mentoring, skill diversification. So the way that one generation does something could be totally different than a way another generation approaches it. And you have that skill diversification that, again, can happen on both sides of the equation. And then I just think adaptability and innovation always occurs when you have

new ideas. You're putting people who are not necessarily always on the same page. They don't start the day on the same page, and they don't end it on the same page. And so at work, they're not going to be on the same page either. But I think there's some really good leverage that we can extract out of those mentoring relationships if we are intentional about it.

All right. Let's see. The only other one that I would point to here is, what strategies have you found successful for mentoring diverse talent in what has traditionally been a homogeneous industry? Interesting question. I just went back to the basics there. You know, for anyone really, this is true, but certainly for people who may be coming into a situation that they're not quite used to, but that it would be to ensure that they're developing relationships.

To me, that's the right side of the brain. That's the strategic part of the brain that they can begin to form relationships because at the end of the day, it's all about forming relationships. And the second thing is what organizations ask of all of us, and that is to get results. Understand your business, understand your role, get results. And that's the left part of the brain. That's the tactical piece that's true.

So if you balance your brain and do the strategic things right, build relationships, and then you do the tactical things, you get results, you will be very successful. All right. Well, that was it. Had a great time at the panel. Really appreciate the opportunity to speak on one of my passions, mentorship, and I hope that was helpful to you, whether you're interested in being a mentee or a mentor. And managers, until the next time we meet in the Manager Lab, do good work. Music.