Want to enhance your HR department’s status, save on budget and simultaneously create happy staff? The answer may lie in one concept: Mentoring.

With the advent of new software technologies as well as a philosophical shift in how employees can be valued for their long-term contributions, the idea of mentoring is gaining traction in both the for-profit and nonprofit worlds.

It’s an idea whose time may have come, in a big way.

Follow the leader

James Temple, director of corporate responsibility at auditing giant Price Waterhouse Cooper (PwC) and head of the PwC Canada Foundation, thinks mentoring is essential for organizations across sectors.

“Part of PWCs business objectives look for ways to enhance the skills of our staff via coaching and goal achievement. Everyone at our firm has a coach whether a new front-line worker or new executive. It’s quite exciting. We always encourage ongoing feedback and help people ask good questions and strengthen their own abilities; to make sure they’re always comfortable with their own development,” he said.

This involves the use of what are termed “Employee Resource Circles” or ERCs, which are more informal mechanisms wherein mentors and mentees gather together to talk and share stories and experiences in a more social format.

“ERCs take coaching to the next level,” Temple noted. “These are done in a safe space, conducted in a way that provides peers and mentors to come together and share common experiences, discuss professional opportunities and challenges, and in a way that goes beyond business. For example, we have one that looks at how to empower women in business; one for black professionals and one around our LGBT staff. It’s not to say that these are niche circles, but we are here to say we can empower people in a different way.”

According to Monica C. Banting, senior manager with PwC’s audit and assurance group, employees and mentors are matched depending on the area of practice and with at least a couple of years more experience than the mentee. There is no set time frame for how long mentors and mentees stay together at PwC, but the goal is to constantly match mentees, as they move up the ranks, with more senior mentors to keep a steady learning curve and to refresh relationships, she said.

Temple noted it’s up to the mentee to say what it is they’re looking for in a mentor.

“For myself, I have an internal coach at PwC, but I also have a coach in the nonprofit sector, so that I understand how to strengthen relationships outside of the [for-profit] world and keep our ear to the ground and remain relevant in our work,” he said. “We teach mentees to ask bold questions and be skeptical of the work that we do; to challenge us. This helps people develop in ways that they can put themselves in other people’s shoes.”

In terms of how much time is necessary or productive in a mentor-mentee relationship, Temple said that a good range to shoot for is between 20 and 40 hours of coaching time per year. “But depending on the nature of the work you’re doing and how passionate you are with going to your coach for information, those numbers can easily increase substantially. But at the end of the day, it’s about what it’s going to take to get the best experience from the relationship. So we try to de-emphasize the amount of time spent and refocus it on outcomes.”

“We work a lot with national nonprofit organizations like Imagine Canada and the former Human Resource Council to understand what the key learnings are for the sector and how we can create a shared language for developing cross-sector HR opportunities so that it’s not a [for-profit] telling a nonprofit how to work; it’s saying ‘how can we help each other,” Temple said.

And mentoring practices are part of those discussions.

“One of the examples is our not-for-profit apprentice program, where we work with a nonprofit partner to help an executive team have a ‘eureka’ moment. We actually pair up our ERC’s with organizations that have shared experience,” he said.

PwC employees have volunteered with nonprofits to lead strategic planning initiatives in order to help “grow” the nonprofit business and share their business acumen, Banting added.

Finding the advantage

Over in Vancouver, Maria Turnbull, interim executive director of Vantage Point, said her organization runs a mentoring leadership lab that can help executives leverage their experience within their own organizations and help build capacity.

“The mentoring we engage in is related specifically as a component of our executive lab, which is an advanced learning opportunity for executive directors. They participate in full-day training sessions once a month, for seven months,” she said. “Execs look at their personal leadership in [terms of] leading the organization, and leading teams and individuals. So there’s a range of topics. They’re getting core content expertise from the sessions.”

Her organization wanted a way to ensure the learning was brought back by the executive participants to their own organizations. “So they could reflect on it themselves and also put it into practice at their various institutions,” Turnbull said.

The Vantage mentoring lab pairs executives with seasons directors “who serve as mentors. That mentor-mentee relationship…is given quite a bit of autonomy to nurture and navigate that relationship, with some minimal support from us to keep them on task and make sure they’re using their time as productively as possible.”

The program has received a lot of positive feedback from participants, Turnbull said.

A case in point is Bruce Passmore, executive director at Leave Out Violence (LOVE) BC, who participated in the Vantage Point mentoring lab and returned with a new appreciation of the benefits of mentoring, and also with a new mentor.

“Building new connections across sectors – arts, youth, aboriginal, and many other different areas – brought a lot of creativity, colour and perspective to the conversations. I loved to hear how other sectors work through same struggles and challenges and we still check in and support each other in that way,” Passmore said of his experience.

And he’s not alone.

Mentor: The friendmaker

Back in Toronto, a visionary entrepreneur has taken the concept and benefits of mentoring into the social media age.

Shawn Mintz, president of MentorCity, a new online mentoring tool, is riding a wave of business opportunity that is burgeoning across sectors. He believes mentoring will positively impact nonprofits’ budgets and capacity.

“A lot of nonprofits aren’t focusing resources on staff development for mentoring. Something I’m talking to a lot of nonprofits about is looking at mentoring as another method of professional development,” he said. “People can learn from one another and speeding up the process in becoming more successful in their role. It’s also a more cost-effective way of doing things.”

Mintz said the cost-effectiveness comes from saving the “thousands of dollars” it might cost to send employees on professional or leadership development training. While there is nothing inherently wrong with such activity, and good information is presented at those seminars, mentoring taps into pre-existing leaders at one’s organization who are freely available to instruct and advise employees.

“Your mentee will hear from their mentor how they became such great leaders; what skills they learned, what mistakes they’ve made…the neat thing is that it’s customized advice based on what the mentee’s needs are. This is a little different from attending non-customized courses.”

More importantly, mentoring at nonprofits can help serve as a spiritual salve. While nonprofit employees often are driven by a passion to serve their communities, they sometimes have less access to resources and can suffer burn out. Having a mentor can help “re-engage” that passion and create a sense of support for stressed staff.

At the executive executive level, Mintz said he’s been in discussions with senior level staff at various nonprofits “because it’s very lonely at the top.” He thinks they too could use the ear, support and advice of other, executive-level mentors to combat that sense of isolation.

He’s also floated the idea of board member mentoring as well, to much interest.

Mintz is billing MentorCity.com as a social media platform for mentoring needs, where mentees and mentors can get connected. The site is customizable and has different cost scales depending on organizations’ or individual needs.

“It’s an on-line mentoring matching solution that connects you to meaningful mentoring relationships,” according to the company’s website. “The premise is that throughout your life and career, there are times when you can benefit from the advice, guidance and support of a mentor. There are also times when you can share your expertise and experiences to guide mentees in the right direction. MentorCity creates a mentoring community that enables you to engage in a series of give-and-take relationships.”

All this inspiration didn’t happen overnight. Mintz himself comes from a nonprofit background, having worked for more than 13 years as a communications manager for ACCES Employment in Toronto, helping newcomers navigate the employment system and finding them jobs while they transitioned to their new country.

Spiritual profit

The mentoring principle is starting to receive traction.

Stacy Kelly, senior manager of alumni relations and annual giving at OCAD University in Toronto, told CharityVillage that he’s researched MentorCity and other mentoring resources and wants to take the concept and implement it at his own organization.

He said he stumbled on MentorCity.com while looking for software options to serve the university’s alumni population. While Mintz’s site was not what he needed from a software perspective, it nevertheless planted the idea of becoming a mentor in his own mind.

“I’ve been mentored for many years through my own alma mater, and I thought I’d give back to folks in the nonprofit world,” he said. To that end, he listed himself as a mentor on the new site and is eagerly looking forward to sharing his experiences with potential mentees.

At this point, OCAD is not engaged in mentoring activities, but Kelly said he hopes the university begins to do so. “I have some ideas of other campus partners who may be interested and there’s an ongoing discussion around mentoring at the university between students and alumni. And we’re investigating what we can do staff-wise as well.”

As to why it’s important to have these discussions about mentoring at his university, Kelly said there is just “a need.”

“I think what’s nice to see is that there are software products that have come along that can accelerate the [mentoring] process for people. One of the tricky parts about mentorship is you just can’t stick two people together and say ‘go for it.’ You have to have a guided, methodological process by which you maintain that relationship,” he said.

Asked what mentoring has meant to him, Kelly said as a mentee to a longtime mentor, he’s had the opportunity to problem solve, check his perspective, and have a resource to use as a “touch point” during tough situations. But it’s not just about dealing with difficult circumstances, he said.

“It should be two-way and also about celebration. I like to believe I offer my mentor value as well through the insights I’ve gained from my experiences. And we have a nice, open feedback loop,” he said.

Now that he’s become a mentor to others, Kelly said his ability to give back is spiritually fulfilling.

“I don’t just give advice, I try to get people to think thoughtfully about what their plans are, and illustrate the difference between a job and a career. Creating a career path is different than just going after a job,” Kelly said. “Of late, mentees have asked me to help them with nuts-and-bolts issues about crafting a resume. But there have also been more soul-searching questions about life direction.

“As to why I do it? It’s rewarding. It’s also really fun. I’ve benefited so tremendously from having my [mentor] in my life. To be able to do that for someone else is really rewarding. Being a mentee and now mentor to others has made all the difference in my life.”

Andy Levy-Ajzenkopf is president of WordLaunch professional writing services in Toronto. He can be reached at andy@wordlaunch.com.

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