Mentoring for long term

By ADAM GIFFORD

Mentoring, says Australian expert Linda MacGregor, is getting more informal and widespread as people try to make sense of modern workplaces and practices.

"Most big organisations in government or private enterprise have mentoring programmes," she says.

"There's also strong growth in other areas, such as mentors for small business, or programmes the Salvation Army runs [in Australia] for the long-term unemployed."

Ms McGregor's mentoring workshops attract people who are considering mentoring programmes or have programmes which are not working and want to see what they should do to fix it.

"A lot of people find it is not as simple as it sounds, so to be effective they need help," she says.

Mentoring is a long-term relationship in which a more experienced person works with someone to share their knowledge, skills and information on agreed areas.

"The classic place to start is to offer every new employee a mentor, whose job is to guide and help them. The focus is not on-the-job training but showing them how the organisation works, what the subcultures are, what it is appropriate to do and not do.

"The trick is to give structure. A lot of unsuccessful programmes say 'Hi, here's your mentor. Go to them if you have a problem.'

"We make sure people who do the mentoring have preparation and know what their role is."

Ms MacGregor says the sort of mentors people are offered should depend on what the programme aims to achieve.

"If it's for career and succession, you use respected senor managers. If it's in the IT department at a lower level, you get a peer mentor. They may not have power but they know how things work and are respected."

In her consultancy work, she sets up a short-term pilot with a limited number of employees, to gauge if what works in other organisations can be adapted.

"It's not a science. While I can point to some organisations and say the 14 or 15 mentorees rated highly for career planning, it's dangerous to tie success down to dollars or retention rates."

Ms MacGregor spent a decade running a generalist training company in her home state of Tasmania, before an assignment seven years ago led her to specialise.

She says people in this part of the world go for less formality than in the United States, where mentoring has become a very formal part of corporate culture.

"People here just want the personal support aspect - listen to me, advise me, help me."

The push in Australia is for informal programmes anyone can tap into - the idea of mentoring just being about identifying future executives goes against the egalitarian grain.

However there are areas where targeted programmes can be justified and one of the most successful programmes in Australia is a women-only programme in the Tasmanian justice department.

"There was a business reason for it - a survey of government departments on the number of women in management, found the department at the bottom of the pile. Women were just not putting their hands up for middle management."

So the head of the department said "give women mentors."

The workshops will be held in Wellington on June 5 and Auckland on June 7. Information is available from Jill Moor at pics@bigpond.com or fax 0061 3 9853 0699.