Why Your Firm Needs a Mentoring Program

Source: Solutions for CPA Firm Leaders

The following includes excerpts, reproduced with permission, from a blog post by Rita Keller.

Inside accounting firms, there are a lot of things that leaders think about, talk about, and research, and then take NO action.

These are things that you will probably be thinking about after April 17th:

• Do our performance evaluations stink? Maybe they need an update.
• Should we do an after-busy-season team survey (and then take action on some items)?
• Maybe we should redesign our cubicle space. Do we need fewer offices and more areas for collaboration?
• How should we tell our poor performers what our expectations are?
• How should we tell our top performers what our expectations are?
• We've been talking about a mentoring system for years; what are we going to do about it?

Today, I want to urge you to focus on the last bullet – mentoring. If your program sucks, or if you have never introduced a formal mentoring program – please take action this summer.

I do a lot of mentoring/coaching of people working in public accounting. I found that these Ten Good Reasons to Get a Mentor from Rajesh Setty's blog are right on target:

1. The structure provides automatic accountability.
2. They may ask you questions that you may never ask yourself.
3. You can learn to reflect.
4. Discover the “real” problem and get help to solve it.
5. You may escape from “short-term thinking.”
6. Get a “responsible” alternate perspective.
7. Get into the “thinking” habit.
8. Get ready to welcome new possibilities.
9. Learn to be in balance.
10. Get help to distinguish yourself in the marketplace.

For the complete blog entry, read “Take Action – How's Your Mentoring Program?”

From Solutions for CPA Firm Leaders, the blog of Rita Keller, April 9, 2012. Visit http://ritakeller.com/blog/.