Making Mentoring Matter

Source: AICPA CPA Insider

Excerpts reprinted with permission from the AICPA.

The key to mentoring is to implement a well-structured and well-supported program from day one. Here are eight critical steps you should implement in the first 14 weeks:

1. Help your mentors understand that mentoring is more than just an obligation to meet occasionally and discuss goals and aspirations followed by a bit of fatherly (or motherly) advice. They should follow a process that ensures its short-term impact and long-term viability.
2. Pair your people well. Interview mentors and mentees, use readily available performance information and assessment results, and incorporate low-cost, effective assessment tools.
3. Help participants understand their specific roles. Start with an orientation session that provides an overview of the mentoring process. Then give participants a timeline they can follow with specific benchmarks and milestones along the way, as well as training on listening, asking questions and delivering feedback.
4. Encourage a structured approach, including discussion guidelines to jump-start initial and later mentoring conversations.
5. Support the learning process by providing support services—such as classroom training, webinars, or podcasts—that help train and develop mentees with minimal time commitment from the mentor.
6. Seek regular feedback about the program through individual and group discussions with mentors and mentees.
7. Incorporate these ideas into the program and support materials and involve participants in making the changes.
8. Track the program’s impact using measures such as the low-cost of training; improved employee satisfaction ratings; improved employee retention ratings; better and more frequent internal communications; greater diversity in leadership-ready positions. Share your success stories throughout the organization.

For the complete article, click here and read “CPA Mentoring: You Can Munch, But It’s More Than Lunch,” in the April 6, 2009, issue.

From AICPA CPA Insider, April 6, 2009, www.CPA2biz.com.