Employers Value Mentoring Experts

Experts who can help others learn more are very valuable to technology companies. As computers improve our ability to forecast and companies learn from past mistakes, the gem of a teaching or mentoring expert is becoming more obvious. Companies value teamwork and some even reward their engineering teams based on their ability to improve as a team, not as individuals. There are four main reasons why this is truer now than ever:

• There is more technology. This may seem obvious. The rate at which technology expands is difficult to process. Universities and technical colleges can’t keep up with the regular changes. Many have resorted to hiring professors who are experts in their fields while giving little or no care about the quality of education those professors are able to impart.
• Technologies are changing faster. This is related to the statement above and is part of the reason why there is more technology available today than ever before. However, this relates specifically to existing technologies that become obsolete due to changes. These changes may be made in attempts to catch up with the competition or in efforts to stay ahead of them. Either way, change happens and it happens fast.
• Products and technologies are more proprietary. Most companies plan on investing a significant amount of time and training in new technical hires. While the universities provide the basics and the foundation for their learning, even the most experienced hires have to learn proprietary technologies and methodologies—and there are a lot more of them. As products become more complex, so do the number of patents that make them unique.
• Some things are better caught than taught. Technical differences are not relegated to things that can be patented. Material designs, applications, manufacturing techniques, software differences, and any number of innovative differences may be insignificant when compared with the culture or philosophies of a company. Sometimes those things are learned best when a new employee, working alongside a senior technician, sees them put into action on a daily basis.

Of course, each of those reasons has a potentially negative downside:

• More technology to learn means that companies take a greater risk when hiring new employees. Degrees or even past experience does not always mean an aptitude to learn a different technology.
• Changing technologies means that experience more quickly becomes outdated.
• Proprietary technology makes employees harder to retain when the competition wants their knowledge.
• The fact that some things are better caught than taught can be downright frightening! I’m sure you can relate to the following real example:

When you consider the positive reasons for mentoring, it seems that these four things combined would compel any ambitious company to require their senior experts to mentor new employees. When you consider the negative reasons, you understand why many do not!

The truth is that mentoring is most helpful when it is seen as a partnership. Senior employees need to learn from new employees almost as much as the vice versa. What they learn may be very different, but the healthiest companies create opportunities for the learning to happen in both directions.

Successful Experts Are Teaching Experts

Success is more than just completing a task or obtaining financial security. True success includes a sense of fulfillment and investment in what matters most—people. By this definition, the most successful experts are those who freely share the knowledge they’ve been lucky enough to gain. Their success comes because they are trusted, both by the company and by their fellow employees. Said differently, trusted experts are teaching experts.

Of course, there are experts who will not mentor or share their knowledge. They hoard information as if they have done something superhuman to deserve and own it. They may do fine in their job. They may make a decent living. They may even force the company to pay them more for the knowledge they won’t share. But one thing they will never be is trusted.

Trusted experts are more likely to survive product failures and economic downturns. In fact, they are the ones companies turn to as an advisor when difficulties arrive. Good salespeople know that to be successful they must be able to gain the trust of their clients. While their focus is on external customers, the same is true of internal relationships. Only those who are willing to share the knowledge they have gained that has contributed to their success and that of the business will be able to influence other people. If you want to leave behind a legacy, it is best to leave it in people, not a product.

Mentored Employees Have Real Input Sooner

One of the goals of talent development specialists is to help employees take ownership and satisfaction in the value of their given job. Everyone wants their job to be meaningful. Employees who feel like their input is minimal or nonexistent are less likely to get engaged. One of the fastest ways to get their input is through a mentoring relationship.

Allowing a new or junior employee to work alongside an experienced expert to accomplish tasks that they otherwise would not be able to undertake is one of the quickest ways to advance an employee from entry level to peak performance. The tasks must be well defined and appropriate, but the experience is invaluable.

More Meaningful Experience Sooner

Mentored employees have the opportunity to gain more experience sooner and that experience will be more meaningful. In a well‐designed mentoring program, all employees have at least four distinct types of tasks they could face on the job:

• Accomplish: Tasks they are responsible to complete. All employees, even those on their first day of the job, have certain tasks they are responsible to complete. These tasks grow over time and vary from day to day, but they make up the bulk of a typical employee’s day. I refer to these as level 1 tasks, since they are generally what the employee was hired to do.
• Augment: Tasks they are seeking to develop. All employees should have at least some tasks or skills that they are seeking to improve or develop. These are what I refer to as level 2 tasks. This may include a few tasks that are part of their daily requirements but should also include some tasks beyond their immediate responsibility. These are duties that are within reach and do not require a significant amount of extra experience to perform. Level 2 tasks can also refer to responsibilities they could perform but don’t, either because it is not part of their job or because they would simply need more information to complete it.
• Assist: Tasks they can help an expert to complete. This is the heart of a mentorship program. When all employees have at least one task they are working with someone else to complete, the learning will multiply. Similar to a stretch goal, these tasks are beyond the everyday reach of the employee but within their capability to provide meaningful assistance. These are level 3 tasks.
• Advise: Tasks they can teach others to do. Even new employees can benefit from the opportunity to coach others. Everyone is an expert in something. Finding that opportunity and allowing them to mentor others not only makes the employee feel valuable, but it also helps to support the philosophy that mentoring is for everyone. These are level 4 tasks.

Get Appropriate Endorsement and Approvals

Some individuals may choose to incorporate mentoring into their individual development as well. Any plan may require approval from the supervisors of both the mentor and the mentoree. But authorization to proceed will not guarantee success. You need more than that. You need to get the endorsement and support from senior management in your organization in order for your program to have continued success.

Before you seek the support of management, get as much input as possible regarding how much time you can and should allocate to both mentoring and being mentored. List the experts you or your team can learn from and then solicit their help. List specific tasks that can be completed by a mentoree. Find examples that provide the exposure you want. The more organized and deliberate the information you provide is, the more likely you are to get the full backing of management. The more input and feedback program designers get, the more effective the program will be.

Set Realistic Goals

Define what success looks like for the program in general. Start simple. Set realistic expectations for how much time must be invested by both parties. Document how you will measure success and how often you will reevaluate the program. Don’t force mentoring for the sake of having a program. Start with a few champions and, as much as possible, let the program grow voluntarily.

The goal is to create regular interactions that are long enough to be meaningful and short enough that they don’t significantly interfere with either employee’s level 1 tasks. New employees may have higher mentoree goals than veteran employees. Even more senior‐level employees can benefit from a program like this, though you may choose to call it something different to eliminate seniority or hierarchy concerns.

Create Individual Objectives

There are generally two different approaches to creating mentoring objectives. One is to seek out specific tasks to learn and assign partnerships accordingly. The other is to allow the tasks to come naturally in a job‐shadowing environment. Both are important. Either way, each mentoring partnership should have some clearly defined objectives for the individuals involved.

When the objective is specific, pair less qualified individuals with more experienced individuals who will be involved in that particular competency in a real environment. Define the product experience the new talent should obtain. List the types of experience or knowledge you want the senior talent to demonstrate. Ask the mentor to act as a guide to develop the new talent. They should also provide feedback on progress and be the final word on whether the new employee can accomplish the task.

When the objective is to gain broader knowledge of the industry, a customer, or your own company, it may be appropriate to allow a new employee to shadow an experienced employee in their daily job. This is also a good technique when the tasks cannot be dictated, as in, for example, a technical support environment. In these cases, the objective may be an amount of time, or until a senior expert deems the learning to be sufficient.

Aptitude

The fact that any person becoming a mentor must be proficient at the task they are expected to teach may seem obvious. Too often it is assumed. Never pair a junior employee with a senior one without first taking into consideration the specific skills that need to be transferred. Not all senior employees are good at everything, and not all junior ones need to improve everything. All employees have something they are adept at. The challenge may be to determine what it is.

Aptitude, however, goes beyond the technical, product, or soft skill abilities of an individual. Good mentors must also be good at mentoring. In order to become a good mentor, subject matter experts need to have their role clearly defined. Product experts must understand that showing a mentoree how to do something is not enough. Effective mentoring is similar to coaching. It becomes a two‐way dialog. Mentors must encourage and provide candid but constructive feedback in the same way a sports coach might help an athlete perfect a particular skill. To do so on the job with your product, expert mentors must allow the learner to perform specific tasks. In this way, the learning will become real and practical.

They also need to learn the tendencies experts have when conveying technical facts. They need to understand that they likely operate in the fourth level of competency and will need to remember what it was like to learn the material and go back to the third level of competency in order to teach. Refer to Chapter 3 for more information.

Mentors should also understand how the four principles of learner‐readiness apply to mentoring (see Chapter 4). If necessary, the mentor must help the new employee understand the value of the learning they are going to get (recognize the need). They must help the student take ownership and responsibility of their learning. A good mentor will relate the present learning to any experiences their mentoree may have had, and they will look for opportunities for the pupil to apply it as soon as possible.

A program leader could use the first part of this book to help mentors get a better understanding of how adults learn. Whatever you use, set the expectations and give the appropriate help to ensure success.

Attitude

It is almost always a bad idea to force a subject matter expert into becoming a mentor. Most successful programs are volunteer programs. If the desire to be a mentor isn’t there, the likelihood of success is minimal.

Lack of desire may be due to several reasons. Some employees may feel threatened by such a program. Others may have had negative experiences that have created a bias against mentoring. Still others may simply see it as a waste of time, forgetting the importance of experience in their own learning history.

Because these adverse attitudes may exist, it is important to address them before launching a program. If necessary, create incentives and reward good examples. Remove obstacles and reduce the workload of potential mentors, so that mentoring is not an extra burden they are not prepared to bear. Employees will change their attitudes if they understand the true value of the program for the mentor and if it is feasible for them to do so without feeling overworked.