Why mentorship programs fail (and how to make them better)
Have you ever participated in (or helped design!) a mentorship program that just...didn't work out? I have! Tell me if this sounds familiar:
Someone has the brilliant idea to start a mentorship program
There are meetings to devise a structure, schedule, goals, and guidelines for participants
A call for signups is released
People are matched up based on some criteria (job level, aspirations, career path, area of expertise, etc.)
Pairs schedule their meetups
The meetups get rescheduled or canceled because of calendar conflicts
Pairs finally meet
The mentee lays out their issues and the mentor imparts their brilliant advice
They schedule a follow-up conversation
That gets moved or canceled (cue possible guilt, resentment, and a feeling of time and effort wasted by all involved)
If they do happen to meet up again, the same cycle of giving/taking advice occurs until the meetups fizzle out
If you’ve ever been part of a mentorship program that didn’t quite work out, this might ring a bell. If you’re thinking, Not my program! We’re great! congrats—you’ve cracked the code. You also probably spend a lot of time and energy making sure the program works and that things run smoothly, because engagement, community management, and relationship-building are valuable, time-consuming talents that not everyone possesses (also, get in touch, because I’d love to hear more about your incredibly successful program).
Don’t get me wrong—mentorship relationships are vital. People who have strong mentors accrue a host of professional benefits including more rapid advancement, higher salaries, greater organizational commitment, stronger professional identity, and higher satisfaction with both job and career. But marginal or mediocre mentoring plagues organizations.
When it comes to building effective employee programs, lots of organizations just don’t have the resources to develop and implement a robust mentorship program.
So what are some of the most frequent pitfalls mentorship programs face—and how can organizations build more effective and engaging employee programs to nurture careers, cultivate networking opportunities, and create a culture of learning?
First, mentorship programs tend to have too many mentees and not enough mentors
Simply because of what a mentorship program offers (usually free advice and insight from successful people) and the schedules and time constraints of those successful people, there tend to be more mentees than mentors in mentorship programs, especially in the workplace.
I was once part of a program where one SVP signed up to be a mentor and when we tried to organize matching pairs based on seniority, she would have been matched up with the dozen or so directors beneath her. That simply doesn’t work.
Or, the mentors who sign up are hellbent on giving everyone who will listen (and some people who won’t) their advice—regardless of whether that advice is valuable or not (more on advice later). Unfortunately, evidence indicates that poor mentoring can be worse for employees than no mentoring at all. Ill-prepared and marginally competent mentors not only give mentoring a bad name in an organization. They also sabotage retention, commitment, and employee development—the very objectives that drive mentoring initiatives in the first place.
Second, people don’t always have time to participate in mentoring matchups
Everyone is busy all the time. We know that. And yet, we want to participate in mentorship programs! We dive in with the best intentions. But if participating in a mentoring program is strictly charitable work, a mentor is likely to drop their commitment as soon as they seek to recover time in their busy schedule.
I see tons of programs say, "We'll meet bi-weekly for six months!" and everyone means well and then the "I'm super slammed this week—can we postpone?" messages start flying and suddenly the program is over and pairs have only met once or twice—or not at all! Often, there are just too many scheduling conflicts for these programs to gain momentum.
Finally, once mentors and mentees meet up, they don’t know how to effectively communicate with one another
A bigger—and much more complicated—problem is that the conversations don’t add value for the participants. Why? Because the mentoring pairs don’t know what to talk about or how to talk about it.
The standard process is for the mentee to present a problem or area of growth and the mentor to impart sage wisdom upon the mentee. But how are they supposed to know the right advice to give—and what do they get out of the relationship in return? What seemed like a good idea at the start might not in time with competing priorities and without an understanding of what motivated them to participate in the first place.
And while it seems like mentees should be grateful for any “good” advice, here’s a secret: most advice sucks. Why? Because the very nature of advice centers the giver and not the person asking.
So how can I make sure a mentorship program succeeds? Adopt a peer coaching model
Peer coaching is a way to foster deep interpersonal connections, encouraging networking and collaboration in an organic way that centers the business while forging bonds between employees, regardless of team or timezone. How?
Peer coaching doesn’t require endless meetings—you can meet once and benefit
With the right framework to guide the conversation, you can identify a problem or area for growth, explore the issue, and create an actionable goal to move forward in about thirty minutes. Really?! Yes. And if you meet for an hour, that means each person in a pair gets an opportunity to coach and be coached.
Instead of fishing around for topics to talk about, spending tons of time on backstory, or using valuable mentorship conversations as a place to vent, using a framework like Commcoterie’s peer coaching framework guides the conversation to get more done in less time.
Here’s what it looks like:
What did you want to talk about today (what’s the subject)?
Is there anything else (what’s the real/deeper subject)?
What seems to be the real problem or barrier/what do you want to focus on?
In an ideal world, what is the solution/what does success look like?
What’s an action you can take to get there?
The framework isn't a script—it's a guideline of the conversation arc. And the coachee should always leave with an action they can take to start to make their ideal their reality. They'll come up with this action or step on their own—they are the expert of their own experience!
Peer coaching will always add value to the participants, because they learn how to use coaching techniques in the conversations
Because coaching is a partnership with another person that inspires them to maximize their potential by asking thought-provoking questions and guiding them on a path of self-exploration, it’s kind of impossible for the conversation to not add value. As a mentee, you’re not asking for and receiving advice that doesn’t apply to your situation. As a mentor, you’re not dictating plans of action that will be impossible for your mentee to implement.
In our peer coaching program, we cover a number of coaching techniques that anyone can integrate into their daily conversations to make everyday communication more like a coaching conversation.
Here are three coaching communication techniques anyone can start using today:
Ask good questions
Open-ended questions are better and “what” and “how” questions are best (see how this works in the example conversation further down!).
Actively listen
Staying mindful, withholding judgment, paying attention to nonverbal cues when possible, welcoming silence as a space to process, and using techniques like paraphrasing, reflecting, and validating are all parts of active listening.
Withhold your advice
And avoid the word “should”—it’s rarely helpful. Empower your coachee without attempting to influence and share advice and recommendations last, if at all (and always ask if they are welcome).
Peer coaching eliminates hierarchy—an intern could coach your CEO with the right communication tools
Because coaching is about asking good questions, listening, and helping someone develop their own solutions to problems and not about providing your advice or expert opinion on a topic, anyone can coach anyone else with the right communication tools.
For example, if a mentee said, “I’m having trouble advocating for myself in team meetings,” a mentor could say things like:
You should just speak up!
I remember feeling that way. Try to X,Y,Z.
Join Toastmasters, read a book, hire a communication coach, or take a workshop.
The problem is that the mentor has no idea if any of this would help. They’re centering their experience and beliefs instead of the mentee’s. They’re coming from a good place, it’s just not going to be as effective as asking a question to get to the root of the problem and then guiding the mentee to formulate their own solution. For example:
Mentee: I’m having trouble advocating for myself in team meetings.
Mentor: What seems to be making it difficult for you?
Mentee: Well, there are two people on the team who speak 80% of the time and it makes it harder for anyone else to speak up.
Mentor: I know you’ve been thinking about asking for a promotion this quarter. What impact do you think the way these meetings are going might have on that?
Mentee: Hm. If I don’t advocate for myself, I won’t look like management material. I know my boss knows I do a good job, but I would seem like more of an expert if I could just share.
Mentor: It sounds like your boss is on your side and you’re also really eager to share your expertise with the team. What’s something you could do before the next team meeting to influence a shift in your team’s meeting culture?
Mentee: That’s a good question. I have my 1:1 coming up with my boss this week. I could say something to her then.
Mentor: That sounds like a good opportunity. Would it be helpful to spend some time right now strategizing for that conversation?
Do you see how a coaching conversation is a million times better than some one-size-fits-all advice to “just speak up”?
Learning how to coach allows folks to ask good questions, stop giving well-meaning advice that just misses the mark, and help others create actionable goals. And because coaching communication techniques make conversations more effective, making progress in your mentorship matchups will take less time and have more of an impact.
Additionally, if the peer coaching pair realizes that a mentorship relationship would benefit them, it’s even better that it happened in a more organic way, and they can choose to continue a mentorship relationship on their own timeline while continuing to utilize and develop the peer coaching skills they have learned. It’s a win for everyone.