Discussion on:

How mentoring produces benefits across the board

I have been involved in a formal mentoring program at an area high school for a few years now and the results I get from this experience are amazing! I really, really enjoy being a mentor. I am fortunate enough to have a position and employer that allow me to have aspiring technologists physically in the office here so that they can learn in a real world environment. The benefits for them are numerous and the rewards for the mentor are as well. I highly recommend it!

Scott Burkey
sab@magner.net

I am currently being asked by my manager to teach others in my orginization my skill set. I am currently the go to guy for several things that I do exclusively. I have tried in the past to teach classes but that was canceled due to a slow down in bussiness. It is a very stressfull situation for me because I feel that I am not trusted and that my manager just wants to have someone else know what I know so he does not have to rely so much on me. The person that he has suggested that I mentor is a guy who's attitude is not the greatest and he will have problems with the relationship. I have worked with this person before and he is riddled with personal problems which make him very moody.

I cannot see the benifit in this plan for me. It will slow me down and make life more stressfull for me. I would like to Mentor someone who is fresh and has a good attitude and above all is interested in what I have to offer, that is not the case with my manager's proposed plan.

Mentoring CAN be an uplifting experience.. not only for the Mentor, but for the Mentee as well. You may find that working directly with this guy in a Mentor situation will change his attitude and your own as well. This isn't your company distrusting you, it's your company showing they trust you to train others. Do you take vacations? Have you ever had to cover someone else's job when they've been sick? They just want to be sure there is someone to back you up, they're not necessarily replacing you.

Don't give up on the guy...or yourself either for that matter!

This does not sound like a fun situation!

I don't know why you think that your manager doesn't trust you if he has given you a difficult person to mentor or train. Seems illogical. What else might be going on? (One that comes to mind is that yourmanager believes you are good with people.)

I'm not sure if you're training or mentoring. Training is usually delivery of specific facts with no special relationship between the teacher and student assumed. Mentoring on the other hand is usually relationship dependent and the mentor "teaches" by iteratively providing challenges and directions to resources that suit the prot?g?'s.

For both training and mentoring achievable goals are essential - scope control, right? In this case 'achievable' is very important. You, your manager and the prot?g? need to agree to what is realistic. Be very specific. You may need to meet several times over the course of this training/mentoring project to keep these goals realistic and attainable.

Have you had a frank conversation with your manager about this employee's attitude? Please do. People can and do change, but as you pointed out it is highly preferable to work with motivated. Get suggestions and credit for dealing with the challenge that this situation is.

Your concern about time is also important. I suggest that you try to come up with time limits that will work for you. Right now it sounds all too open-ended. Another plus on the time-limit front is that it will help keep the responsibility for learning in the lap of your prot?g?.

What might be in it for you? By working with your manager and your "prot?g?" to manage this assignment you are likely to develop consensus building and negotiations skills that you will use throughout your career. (I'm always seeing how I can get better at these skills, proud when I use them and annoyed when I once again find the need to improve.)

I hope this helps.

It would be great if every Mentee were fresh, eager and responsive!
However, reality is most mentees, in a corporate situation at least, feel a bit put-upon by the efforts of a mentor. Usually, they react as though they were being used as slave labor, by being expected to perform some portion of the job for which they were hired. Because they are not expert in the field, they tend to see any attempt to smooth their path as a patronizing attitude, at best, or a belittling one in the worst case. At the same time, they bemoan the fact that they don't understand what they're being expected to do, even though the mentor has just spent a good deal of time trying to connect with the mentee, and comes away feeling they might as well explain things to the nearest doorknob.
If eager, willing mentees are your idea of the ideal, I suggest you work with high-school-age kids. They are eager to know what is available, and usually will benefit from a non-parental/educator adult in their life.

I come from the opposite side of your observations and experiences. Though I'll be the first to say the type of folks you describe are abundant. I have been and seen the other side. The benefit of being teachable, of having the attitude that learning new things, however trivial they may seem at the time, somehow comes back at the rigth time as a creative tool or solution.

While I believe that some people can and do change, I have seen by far that this is a slow, painful and sometimes agonizing process. If someone has to mentor a "troubled" or "moody" protege it can be difficult, but the change can be breathtaking to observe.

This is humbly offered from a two-time mentor and a five-time protege.