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Create a Mentoring Culture

This document discusses why and how to create a mentoring and coaching culture within a non-profit organization.

What is Culture?

Culture is the social behavior and norms found in businesses, non-profits and societies.

What is Mentoring?

Mentoring is a value-adding relationship process where a person supports another’s growth. Mentors build people up and pull them toward their own dreams rather than push them. Relationships are not based on expectations, instead mentors seek to understand and support the mentee’s life purpose and goals. While coaching and sharing of personal experience is important, it is more about listening, reflecting and guiding.

Mentoring vs Coaching

Mentoring is a relationship-based process, pulled to goals set by the individual. Characteristics include inspiration, motivation, and information. Coaching is push-based and skill-driven based on external needs. Characteristics include performance, capability, and training. A typical 1:1 meeting might include both.

Why a Coaching and Mentoring Culture? From an Inc.com article: 3 Reasons Your Company Needs a Mentoring Program

It shows the organization cares.
It creates a more engaged workforce.
It leads to higher job satisfaction.

Why Mentor? From a LinkedIn article: 10 Concrete Reasons Why Everyone Needs a Mentor at Work

Take you under their wing and help you to stay motivated and discover the path that you may need to take.
Understand what it takes to get to the top and be a valuable resource by answering your career or work -related questions and providing good advice.
Provide you with a wealth of knowledge and resources and help you to connect with various Subject Matter Experts (SMEs).
Be your own personal cheerleader and help you discover new opportunities.
Be an advocate of your achievements and will be there for you every step of your career.
Let you shadow them at work or exchange career tips with you and alert you to new opportunities.
Praise your accomplishments and provide you with constructive feedback.
Help you to be passionate about your success and brand.
Push you to hone and learn new skills that are needed for future roles.
Provide a life-long career advice and friendship.

Two Broad Options:

Instill coaching and mentoring skills in all staff.
Above plus everyone is encouraged to have a personal mentor.

Design for a Mentoring Culture, Key Elements:

Mentorship is encouraged (even expected) from the top.
Mentor relationships are formalized. Consider tracking “% employees with a mentor”.
Mentors and mentees are trained in the key skills. Skills are assessed and feedback is two-way.
Mentee goals are accomplished, e.g. a career plan is in place or new skills are being learned.
A Process Owner (with enough rank) is in place.
Pay and promotion considers mentoring and coaching effectiveness.
People are learning from mistakes rather than getting “punished” for them.

Getting Started:

Engage the organization’s top people.
Train the organization on key mentoring skills.
Follow the GROW Model and use the GROW worksheet.

Further Discussion:

Mentoring is one of the most powerful skill sets in life. It will benefit you at home and work and the skills can be used in many life roles.
Individuals need coaching too, but this should generally be directed by subject matter experts.
Mentors can be inside or outside the organization.
Goals can be in many areas, here are some examples: what does it take to get promoted, what new skill would be most valuable to me, what does my career plan look like?
Mentoring relationships are two-way. They are based on mutual respect and trust. There is more emphasis on learning and development.

Download this doc here:

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GROW Model

This page discusses and shares the GROW Model tool for mentors and mentor program leaders.

The GROW acronym stands for Goal, Reality. Obstacles or Options, Will or Way Forward. It is a framework for guiding the conversation in a mentoring session based on using open-ended questions.

The following worksheet can be a helpful tool. Pick a few questions to ask in each section.

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Mentor Development Planning

This document discusses a process to develop mentors, from orientation to initial training to ongoing development. It links the LSN Toolbox to the process. Note that green text highlights resources that are not currently on-line but freely available upon request.

Background: Volunteer mentors have various starting points. It could be as basic as never mentoring or some experience as a mentor in a corporate setting or being a very experienced but informal mentor of a teen child. Moving from this variable starting point to being an impactful mentor requires guidance and structure.

The Life Solutions Network can support you in mentor development. It starts with a choice to make quality (skills and effectiveness) an important goal as well as quantity (more mentor relationships).

Recommended Process:

Provide orientation to the organizations mission and mentor role.
- Expectations. A clear role description guides the needs.
Provide initial training.
- Mentoring skills. Review and align on the essential skills and then offer the Mentor for Purpose Overview
- Contextual skills. These include mental health, trauma, abuse, recovery and poverty.
Establish an expectation for ongoing development.
- Offer ongoing workshops. See the Mentor for Purpose Workshop series.
- Encourage self-learning. Explore the Life Skills Wiki, subscribe to internet newsletters or just read a book or short article.
- Offer individualized coaching. Consider assigning an experienced mentor as a “sponsor” to a new mentor.
- Consider assigning a lead volunteer. Coordination of training and development requires “capacity”.
Establish tracking and communication systems.
- Self-assess skills once or twice per year. Use the Principles and Skills Assessment Tool.
- Attendance at required 2-4 development sessions per year. Bringing your volunteers together as a group can include social, informational and development agenda topics.
- Implement Best Practices. See the Mentoring.org web site.
- Testing. Consider a Mentor Resource Page to insure awareness of available resources. Follow-up with an initial and then annual on-line quiz of content and policies.

Further Discussion:

Guiding mentor development requires resources and the focus of a Volunteer Coordinator or Mentor Program Leader. It requires the structure of a good Process Design and tools, e.g. a Volunteer Dashboard or Mentor Development Tracking tool.
Leadership must insist on mentor development; make it a priority.

Mentoring Solutions

The Mentoring Solutions toolbox is intended to share ideas and tools for individual mentors and mentor program leaders.

Background: Much of this toolbox resulted from the Mentor for Purpose initiative from 2017-18. We worked with mentor program leaders from Cincinnati and NKY to document the skills and training for mentor development. The training materials and tools are freely available to GCMLA Members. Just contact us.

Objective: The general goals are to:

Develop new mentors as quickly as possible (more focus on quality than quantity).
Support and grow volunteer mentors and service professionals (energized, purposeful, serving to potential).
Introduce deeper Purpose to mentor programming. This is about helping people know themselves deeply, developing a life plan and living to their potential.

Click the image above to open the full toolbox.

Mentoring Solutions Examples: The LSN toolbox already contains many items. Many of these “solutions” are not on-line; contact us for more information. Here is a partial list:

- Mentor Development Planning process including Mentor Development Roadmap, Mentor Skill Assessment Tool and Process Summary Example for Orient, Train and Develop Volunteers.

- Process documentation…process design & improvement for topics such as recruiting, training and retention.

- Mentor for Purpose workshops.

- Coaching Roadmaps. A “coaching roadmap” provides guidance to volunteer mentors (and mentees) to better deliver the skill-related goals of the organization.

- Mentor Program Metrics & Dashboards. This document outlines possible metrics for mentoring programs to enable organizations to measure overall quantity, quality and impact. We believe that “you get what you measure” and that metrics selection is an important leadership task. Funders, in particular want to see specific measurable impact.

- Mentor program startup support…we are working with a number of local organizations to startup or expand mentor programming.

- Best Practices…our best practices tool integrates volunteer management and mentoring practices.

- Role descriptions…Mentor Leader, Programming Leader, Volunteer Leader, Mentor, Lead Volunteer and Executive Director starter role descriptions are available.

- Mentor recruiting and mentor retention ideas.

- Benchmarking…sharing of local best practices.

National Mentoring.org Web Site

The Mentoring.org web site has a wealth of information for starting up and operating an effective mentoring program. Be sure to integrate this into the way you manage and lead. Here are some of my favorite links:

- Elements of Effective Practice for Mentoring™. MENTOR’s cornerstone publication, the Elements of Effective Practice for Mentoring™, details research-informed and practitioner-approved Standards for creating and sustaining quality youth mentoring programs and consequently, impactful mentoring relationships. The Fourth Edition, released in September 2015, reflects the most up-to-date research, practice, and thinking in the mentoring field.

- Becoming a Better Mentor. MENTOR’s Becoming a Better Mentor: Strategies to Be There for Young People is a free resource written by experts in the field to benefit any adult looking to support young people.

- Guide to Mentoring Boys and Young Men of Color. MENTOR and My Brother’s Keeper Alliance (MBKA) together sponsored the creation of a guidebook “Guide to Mentoring Boys and Young Men of Color.” The Guide serves as a supplement to the fourth edition of The Elements of Effective Practice for MentoringTM, and includes additional recommended practices focusing on boys and young men of color (BYMOC).

- E-Mentoring. MENTOR’s e-mentoring resource offers best practices for e-mentoring programs.

- Start a Mentoring Program. Whether you are exploring the idea of starting a program in your area, conducting a needs-assessment to see if there is a need for a mentoring program in your community or are already in the process of establishing a program, the following steps can help you find the resources and tools that you need to develop and implement a quality-based mentoring program.

Mentor for Purpose

This page outlines the Mentor for Purpose Workshop series. It is intended for anyone that wants to develop and grow their mentoring skills.

Capability-building has always been a focus for LSN and mentoring is one of the best ways to do that. LSN has combined our life skills toolbox and passion for Purpose to create a workshop series as a way to develop mentoring skills. We are working with social service professionals and volunteers to further develop and deliver this content. As always, it is free to members of the Greater Cincinnati Mentor Leadership Alliance.

Founder’s Vision:

We EQUIP people with PURPOSE. Mentoring and Life Planning/Purpose are two of the most powerful skill sets a human being can possess. The work we do touches the lives of people at risk (your clients) AND your mentors AND your staff. Let’s develop goals to impact their lives too as they too are in our care. Discovering our treasure is life changing. This includes purpose, vision, values, strengths, passions, beliefs and more. Imagine if we achieve this vision… empowering and inspiring so many people who choose to make the world a better place in their own unique way: living with purpose and living to their potential.

The Mentor for Purpose Workshop Series:

This is the presentation of an extensive toolbox of speaking events and workshops (see the Purpose Series Outline below). Individuals can create their own “dreambooks” and life plans. Each event presents a worksheet for personal use to find new ways to know themselves more deeply (a step toward Purpose) and live to their Potential.

How It Works:

Watch our Events Calendar and Newsletter for upcoming events. These events will be delivered virtually via Zoom.
You can pick the topics that are right for you and your organization.
Ideally, you start with the Live with Purpose event. Then add one or more modules. Most module can be conducted in 60 minutes, a few require 90 minutes. Each module contains a toolbox of lesson plan, slides, templates, reading and handouts.
The templates are part of the “dreambook” series. This is our concept to document a life plan.
Although it is primarily intended for mentors, the content can easily be used by staff or volunteers with direct service clients of an organization. Note that the Life Solutions Network does not directly serve clients; we engage staff and volunteers at local organizations to “serve to their purpose, passion and potential“.

Available Workshops:

Live with Purpose.
Mentoring 101.
Ask Powerful Questions.
Make Empathy a Habit.
Be Available Attentively.
Write Your Purpose Statement.
Discover Vision & Goals.
Uncover Beliefs.
GROW Model.
Live to Your Potential.

Objectives:

Allow all participants to deeply engage in the topic of PURPOSE in their own life (so that they in turn can support others).
EQUIP participants to be better mentors.
EQUIP organizations to offer this same programming within their organization by encouraging more mentor development.

Target Audiences:

Volunteer mentors
Staff at local non-profits that mentor.
Clients who are mentees age 16 or older (for some topics).
Parents/families of clients.

Further Reading:

Click here to view our wiki page on Mentoring. A number of blogs have been written about Mentor for Purpose on our 250 Words site, including:

Further Information: