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Interested in more ways to make mentoring effective in your organization? These ideas will help. Take a look at additional mentoring ideas, too.
Share mentoring results. Study after study in which mentors and mentees are asked how satisfied they are with the relationship report that the mentors are more satisfied. It just feels good to help someone else. Says one mentor; “It has been rewarding to be able to help people at critical stages of their career by helping them analyze where they are in their careers. Mentoring gets people in the right groove for long term career success.”
Encourage mentors to pass on their life lessons. A key component of domestic saving in the United States in future decades will be the personal saving rate.
That rate will depend on a number of factors, especially the behavior of baby boomers. As a mentee commented, “My mentor has helped me think about the future and gave me advice like start saving for your retirement today. The two percent on the personal side is really powerful.”
Continue mentoring past retirement. The trait most attributed to baby boomers is the willingness to give maximum effort. Baby boomers are also rated as highly results-driven, very likely to retain what they learn; and low on their need for supervision. Many baby boomers plan to work at least part-time past the traditional retirement age. These characteristics show baby boomers to be eager workers who may be well suited to be brought back as consultants and mentors after their retirement.
Mentoring is a process that is compatible with baby boomers’ values and work style. Mentoring involves being collegial, talking, sharing (not telling), and developing solutions together. It is also optimistic, which is typical of most baby boomers’ outlook on the world. We’ve found that when generations work together in strategic, business-related activities such as mentoring, everyone benefits. The mentee builds new business knowledge, and the mentor often gets reenergized and reengaged in business opportunities. We find unique satisfaction in nurturing these synergistic relationships.
One last point: The business knowledge of 20-year-olds and that of 50-year-olds is profoundly different. The technology facility and ability to multi-task among 20-somethings is unparalleled and impressive. But the knowledge, experience, creativity, and business acumen of 50-somethings is also unparalleled and equally impressive in a very different way. Cross-generational mentoring provides one of the most significant ways for integrating these diverse abilities.
As author Studs Terkel, now more than 90 years old, said, “Think of what's stored in an 80- or a 90-year-old mind. Just marvel at it. You've got to get out this information, this knowledge, because you've got something to pass on. There'll be nobody like you ever again. Make the most of every molecule you've got as long as you've got a second to go."
Understand and make the case for mentoring. See Why Mentor? Mentoring Is a Strategic Business Imperative.
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