Your company is only as good as its leaders, so it pays to invest in leadership growth. Sure, you can recruit good leaders — with the attendant recruitment costs, onboarding time, cultural fit issues, and risk of bad hires along the way. However, growing leaders from within can yield many benefits. You can foster leadership growth among your existing team through a mentorship program.
LandCare, for instance, helps develop leadership among women employees. The idea grew from an employee resource group (ERG) formed in 2020, Women’s Initiative Network. Recognizing that women face barriers to attaining leadership positions in a male-dominated industry, the ERG spearheaded development of the company’s mentorship program for women. The aim was to identify and address the barriers female employees encounter by helping individuals reach personal and professional goals.
The program pairs leaders within the organization with women who are in support or low-level roles for 12 months of mentorship.
“We’re basically matchmaking, so the more we know about what they’re trying to get out of it, the better the match will be,” explains Jennifer Burnett, LandCare’s chief people officer.
To that end, women requesting mentorship complete a form asking what their goals are, what they hope to get out of the mentoring, and whether they prefer a male or female mentor, if they have a preference. A steering committee provides the mentee with two or three leaders and suggests introductory calls with each so the mentee can find the best fit.
Mentoring discussions are all done virtually. Each mentor/mentee pair determines when to meet, usually once or twice a month.
“The discussions revolve around leadership skills, interpersonal communication, business acumen – the types of things women need to grow into leadership roles in the organization,” Burnett says.
The proof is in the pudding. Burnett notes that LandCare’s mentee graduates have attained such goals as promotions and a graduate degree. While the mentorship program can’t be completely credited with those achievements, there’s no doubt that it contributed to them.
7 Benefits for Employers
Mentorship programs make sense for companies. Consider the wealth of benefits:
Succession planning: By helping promising individuals attain professional development goals, you are helping your company ensure the next generation of leaders. These emerging leaders are already familiar with your company and are likely to be invested in it.
Enhanced professionalism: After being mentored, your company’s up-and-comers will be better positioned to know when and how to seek assistance with unexpected issues, make informed decisions, and communicate effectively with coworkers, managers and, when appropriate, direct reports. LandCare mentees report that the added support has broadened their perspective, according to Burnett. But mentees aren’t the only ones whose professionalism benefits from the program. Mentors, too, can become better leaders through their participation. “We deliberately pair them with people in different geographic locations or who they would not see normally in their roles,” Burnett says. “That gives them a different perspective, and some mentors feel they are better able to lead their own teams with this additional perspective.”
Cultural strength: Improving the communication skills of mentees and mentors makes your entire team more effective. Fifty-seven percent of organizations with formal mentorship programs credit the program with strengthening company culture, according to a study last year by the Association for Talent Development (ATD).
Diversity in leadership: Many organizations are turning to mentorship programs to help them reach diversity goals by giving historically disadvantaged individuals an opportunity to be mentored. Women and racial and ethnic minority employees are more likely than white men to be mentored, a 2019 CNBC/SurveyMonkey Workplace Happiness Survey revealed.
Employee satisfaction: A whopping 91 percent of individuals who have a career mentor are happy at work, including 57 percent who are “very satisfied.” By contrast, those figures fall by double digits for those without mentors, according to the Workplace Happiness Survey. The researchers note, “The differences are greatest for those at the lower rungs, but the margins for more experienced workers are still substantial. … Mentorship makes a difference no matter someone’s age, race or gender. For example, 88% of white men ages 18 to 34 who have a mentor say they’re satisfied with their job, compared with 66% who don’t have a mentor. Similarly, 95% of non-white women ages 45 to 54 who have a mentor say they’re satisfied with their job, compared with 82% who don’t have a mentor.”
Reasons for mentees to be more satisfied are obvious: Being mentored increases their self-confidence and helps them achieve professional goals. Mentors also find the mentoring process satisfying. Mentors in LandCare’s program appreciated the added visibility and the sense of giving back. “Mentors have said it was rewarding seeing their mentee reach their goals,” Burnett says.
Retention: As you might expect, happier team members tend to stay with your company longer. Improved retention also makes sense, considering the ability of mentored team members to move up the ladder. More than 40 percent of employees who lack mentors say they’ve considered quitting their job in the past three months, compared with 25 percent of mentees, the Workplace Happiness Survey found. This coincides with an earlier study by LinkedIn in which an astounding 94 percent of employees said they’d stay at their jobs longer if their employers invested in their career development in ways such as mentorship.
Recruitment: If you have a formal mentorship program, you might consider listing it on your job postings. The vast majority of job seekers (85 percent per a recent Harris Poll) will find your company more attractive if you have a mentorship program. This is particularly true for applicants in the early stages of their careers, who tend to be more interested in career paths.
Tips for Developing A Program
If you don’t have a formal mentorship program, it’s important to consider how the program will work before jumping in.
“Start with the end in mind,” Burnett says. “Know what your team members are looking for before you start a program. Program goals might include nurturing leadership traits or improving productivity, for instance.”
Next, establish a structure for the program: how mentors and mentees will be paired, how and when they’ll meet, who’s responsible for what, and whether the program will entail any particular activities such as job shadowing.
Experts advise pairing participants with mentors’ skills and expertise with mentees’ career goals and interests. Personality traits and communication styles also may affect the success of a match, so pairs should be given an opportunity to connect before a relationship is formalized. You also might want to consider “bridge mentoring” – pairing disadvantaged employees with those who aren’t, suggested Christopher Gross, CEO of workplace cultural consulting firm Ascension Worldwide, in a Harvard Business Review report.
Mentees can sometimes perceive mentors as “ghosting” them. To avoid such perceptions, program managers can set expectations from the start. In addition to suggesting meetings once or twice a month to maintain momentum, Burnett’s team performs 90-day check-ins with each pair.
LandCare mentors and mentees are also given guidelines on how to start the relationship. Mentors are fully apprised of what mentorship means.
“We explain that you’re not teaching them skills; you’re providing guidance they would not otherwise have access to,” Burnett says.
For mentees, LandCare guidelines help ensure commitment. Mentees are told that it’s important to attend meetings on time and to communicate what they want to get out of it.
The most common challenges, according to ATD, are difficulty finding potential mentors and a lack of metrics to track the programs’ success. To encourage volunteers, experts advise cultivating an atmosphere in which mentorship is valued. Mentees can be solicited via promotional efforts.
“We promote the program throughout the company and to new team members,” Burnett says.
While there are no completely definitive metrics, some methods for getting a sense of the program’s success include mentees’ career progression, the retention rates of mentees vs. non-mentees, and employee feedback from surveys or interviews.
For LandCare, anecdotal evidence also signals employee appreciation for the program.
“Some mentees have signed up for the program a second year with new goals and another leader to add to their broadened perspective,” Burnett says. “And many mentors continue to keep in touch with their mentees after the program ends.”
This article was published in the Sept/Oct issue of the magazine. To read more stories from The Edge magazine, click here to subscribe to the digital edition.
