PAPER making! FROM THE PUBLISHERS OF PAPER TECHNOLOGY INTERNATIONAL FROM THE PUBLISHERS OF PAPER TE Volume 7, Number 3, 2021
How to Use Coaching and Mentoring Programs to Develop New Leaders If you’re like most HR professionals, you’re familiar with this common workplace scenario: A first -time manager feels overwhelmed and frustrated. The skills and talents that led to his or her success as an individual contributor now feel insufficient. They’re not sure how to make the leap from “friend” to “boss,” and seem to be drowning in work they don’t know how to del egate. When employees are first-time or mid-level managers, they often face problems like this that could benefit from leadership experience. In most cases, your organization will have a number of more seasoned leaders who have dealt with similar challenges and can offer their help. By equipping more experienced leaders with the skillset to support new leaders, you can employ coaching and mentoring to cultivate a culture that develops a pipeline of Coaching and mentoring are related and sometimes overlap. However, while both may be performed by the same leader, coaches and mentors serve different roles. It’s important for both the coach and the mentor, as w ell as the people they’re helping develop, to know the difference. Coaching typically focuses on enhancing current job performance by helping someone resolve a here-and- now issue or blockage for themselves. HR leaders often prioritize executive coaching because it helps senior leaders hone self-awareness, provides challenge and support, and drives organization-wide transformational change. But coaching skills can be employed at every level of the organization through critical coaching conversations, and all leader levels can develop these skills. professionals who are resilient, agile, and engaged. Coa ching and Mentoring: What’s the Difference? Mentoring at work, on the other hand, focuses on career path. Rather than helping someone resolve a current challenge, a mentor helps their mentee to become more capable in the near future. Mentors take time to guide and advise their mentees on issues that will likely arise, but may not have yet. Mentors can also leverage their positions to sponsor mentees for developmental experiences, advocate on their behalf for promotions, and survey the environment for threatening forces and opportunities. They can leverage their expertise to transfer knowledge and help expand networks for their “mentee.” It’s important for leaders to develop both coaching and mentoring skills in order to increase employee engagement and develop a robust talent pipeline. Recommendations for HR Leaders Implementing Coaching and Mentoring Programs Learning to lead is an intensely personal experience, we note in our recent emerging leaders research insights report. As a result, it’s importan t for emerging leaders to have access to coaches and mentors who can provide context for their personal development journey. Coaching and mentoring programs can be a formal part of an organization-wide initiative, or they can be an
informal process agreed to by both parties. How to Create a Culture of Coaching
When an organization has a “culture of coaching,” it has a culture that encourages giving feedback and honest conversations across functions and leader levels that amplify collaboration, agreement, and alignment.
Article 11 – Leadership
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