Coaching, Mentoring
Mentoring programs intend to twin start-up-, less experienced or less competent entrepreneurs with experienced businesspeople. An entrepreneur often has a strong demand to discuss business issues with a competent person of his/her trust. This person may be a relative or a friend with extensive business experience. But often an entrepreneur has neither of them available. Moreover, business consultants or advisors of SME support organizations cannot play precisely the role expected from a mentor. A mentor is supposed to bounce off ideas, not to give specific, detailed advice on how to deal with a specific business problem.
Starting and running a mentoring program involves a number of distinctive steps, each of which gives raise to a number of issues:
Preparation
Preparation
Let us assume that you are an official in a business promotion agency or a business chamber / association, and you want to launch a mentoring program. The first question is: What exactly is your motivation, and what do you want to achieve? It is important to start a program without raising unrealistic expectations. A mentoring program cannot substitute for a basic training program in business skills. It also cannot substitute for specialized business and technical consultancy. Therefore, it is essential to clearly state the objective and the target group.
A second question involves the time horizon. For how long do you expect the program to run? In fact, there are two different issues. Once you have launched the program successfully, you may have it running for many years. But this does not mean that each mentor/mentee couple stays together for many years. It is rather useful to establish a fixed term for the mentor/mentee relationship, such as one year. If after that year the two persons decide to continue their relationship - fine. But it is important to establish a deadline as otherwise ending the relationship may become awkward, and mentors or mentees may hesitate to get involved in a relationship for exactly that reason. It is also useful to define a number of mentor-mentee relationships you want to create in a given time period.
Identification of mentors and mentees
In terms of identifying mentors and mentees, different issues are involved with respect to either group.
Regarding mentors, a key issue regards their personal interest in getting involved in the scheme. The motives of the mentors for engaging with the program will typically fall into four main categories:
Towards the end of working life and seeking to "put something back"
Testing the waters for eventual late career in non-executive directorships
Seeking potential investment opportunities
Consultants seeking to promote their services
It is important for the program to define which motives are acceptable, and which are not. The fourth motive should be unacceptable, and the screening process must be designed appropriately. The third motive may be controversial, but it must not disqualify a potential mentor.
Regarding mentees, it is important to organize the screening process in such a way that persons a identified for which coaching adds critical value. Some candidates may display vast gaps in terms of basic business skills which they hope to fill via the coaching effort, which would be an unrealistic expectation. Mentees must be reasonably skilled businesspeople which a viable business.
Moreover, the program needs to be explicit with respect to whom it is providing a mentoring service: the individual or the business. At first glance, the distinction may appear to be a moot point. But it may happen that personal mentee development is being judged by a set of business-type indicators (build stronger, high growth, more sustainable businesses). Clarity on this point will help identify performance indicators for evaluation.
Matching of mentors and mentees
The purpose of the matching process is not only to identify the objective skills and interests, and to match people with compatible interests and experience. It is also about person issues: you want the chemistry between mentor and mentee to be as positive as possible. When it comes to organize the matching of mentors and mentees, you have basically two options.
One option is to do this in a scientific way, employing methods such as psychological profiling. However, experience seems to indicate that this approach may have an unfavorable cost-benefit-ratio. It involves a very substantial effort, and the results are not necessarily good. Another problem is that the mentors and mentees may not appreciate an effort which they may perceive as being to bureaucratic and overorganized.
The other option is to leave the matching process to people. Obvious candidates are very experience, highly skilled human relations professionals who have the touch and feel for people. They will use a certain set of objective criteria, but when it comes to chemistry they will rely on their experience and gut feeling. As long as you are dealing with no more than a few dozen mentors and mentees, this is probably the most efficient approach.
Kick-off conference or workshop
The kick-off event may be the place where the effective matching is done. In any case, it is important as an occasion to officially start the relationship. It is also very important in terms of discussing the variations in expectations and objectives, and the character of the relationship between mentor and mentee. Some important issues are the following:
Mentors should not be the "captain of the ship" or white knight; nor should they give instructions; should be discussive and development of options around a mutual respect.
Mentees often want instructions to act upon; others do not want advice at all but a confidant or friend in a lonely time; it is a strategy for coping and making own decisions in stressful or uncertain situations.
Some mentees want regular contact, others want hardly any but knowledge that it is a phone call away.
During the execution of the program, a number of points have to be taken care of, and issues may come up.
It is important to keep in touch with mentor and mentee. They should be called at least once per month. This is to make sure that the relationship works, to assess the support given by the executing organization, and to be able to respond quickly if things go wrong. Moreover, if the executing organization is offering a variety of business development services, this may be a good opportunity to advertise other offers.
As mentees develop, and as their company matures, the nature of the relationship is bound to change in light of the mentee's changed circumstance. Not all relationships will be able to last the putative 12 months and prolonging the issue may lead to some disaffection with the program. A new phase in the mentee's life may need the skills of a new mentor and this provides BMS with an opportunity to grow with the mentee through the provision of a dynamic service.
Mentees may seek to deepen the relationship with their mentor and there may be a drift towards seeking business advice. There needs to be a recognition of the potential for such a drift towards a business advisory role for some relationships. For an organization running the coaching scheme, it may be important to have appropriate liability insurance in case a deepened and extended mentor-mentee relationship runs foul.
It may be useful to organize meetings, not just for the whole group but also for the persons on either side. In particular, it is unrealistic to expect that, based on the acquaintances made during the kick-off event, spontaneous networking between mentors occurs. Since it is desirable to have exchange between mentors, the organization which manages the program is well-advised to organize this in an explicit way, for instance via a quarterly dinner. This is even more relevant as experience shows that mentors and mentees are too busy to use new but not very efficient tools such as chat rooms or interactive websites.
An evaluation of an existing coaching program found that it contributes to the mentees' businesses in the following ways:
Providing a "sounding board"
Providing "a different perspective"
Adding weight to the business
Appraising business plans
Specific assistance resulting in improved company efficiency
Appraising the contribution of a coaching program according to these aspects, addressing the satisfaction of mentees, adds an important dimension to simple quantitative criteria such as growth of turnover and employment.
The same evaluation found that many mentees were open to the suggestion that, once the program had proved is efficacy, the executing organization might charge for participation in the program.
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