TOPICS
TOPICS
Flash Mentoring
Well-intentioned mentoring programs aimed at connecting federal executives with promising up-and-comers in government sometimes have trouble getting off the ground.
Executives are busy people who struggle to make the lengthy time commitments that formal programs demand. Formal mentoring programs often require both potential mentors and learners to fill out lengthy applications, complete training and pledge regular meetings with each other over the course of many months.
Many executives decline to participate. They don't want to make a time commitment they can't meet, they worry that they will end up with a bad match, or they don't like the way the program is structured.
Scott Derrick, a founding member of 13L, a group of mid-career federal employees who explore leadership issues, pondered that problem. If the goal of mentoring programs is to provide employees with an opportunity to learn from executives, one-on-one, what is another way to make that happen?
Derrick came up with a concept he calls "flash mentoring." The idea is informal, one-time meetings between successful executives and mid-career workers. They meet for an hour, perhaps over coffee or lunch, to confidentially discuss career development and personal growth. The participants can get a lot out of such sessions without all the bureaucracy and hard-to-meet commitments of more formal programs.
"Developing options that provide for short-term commitments to mentoring might indeed increase the participation of those individuals who feel that they generally do not have sufficient time to devote to traditional mentoring programs," Derrick explains. "Flash mentoring allows senior managers to participate in giving advice and passing along valuable knowledge and experience without having to make a long-term commitment. For some of those managers, participating in a flash mentoring session can also hopefully show them that serving as a mentor doesn't have to be burdensome."
An hour is enough time for participants to learn at least one thing they can apply to their careers. And the relaxed settings encourage executives to share their real-world experiences. The mentors and mentees focus on particular topics, such as identifying worthwhile learning experiences, building trust and respect with colleagues and bosses, balancing work and personal life, discussing time-saving tips, taking personal responsibility for job satisfaction, and exploring career development strategies.
A mid-level worker can set up a flash mentoring session on his or her own by identifying an executive and asking for a meeting. People who run more formal mentoring programs in federal agencies can create a second informal option. Executives also can volunteer to meet with rising stars through organizations such as federal executive boards.
Derrick doesn't imagine that flash mentoring will replace longer-term mentoring relationships. "To be sure, most people would probably agree that traditional long-term mentoring arrangements have advantages and disadvantages compared to this flash mentoring approach," he says. But the approach does provide another way for executives to share the lessons of their professional lives with workers moving up in the federal government.
You can learn a lot in an hour.
COMMENTS
- It appears that there is continued confirmation that the lack of time to devote to traditional mentoring programs is indeed a critical barrier to successful mentoring efforts. That problem is exactly what flash mentoring is trying to address. To clarify, coaching is not always a short-term occurrence. Many individuals have had executive coaches for long-term relationships. The primary difference between mentoring and coaching is not the time commitment but rather the differing approaches that are usually employed. A mentor TELLS, advises, instructs, suggests, gives strong opinions, and shares direct knowledge and experience that the mentee wants to acquire. A mentor is typically someone who is or has been where the mentee wants to go, and a mentor is often in the same organization, profession, or industry. A coach ASKS open-ended questions to raise awareness and help the individual identify values and passions and align them with personal and professional goals. A coach works with an individual to discover the answers from within. A coach is often external to the organization and doesn’t need to share the same profession, industry, or career path. Although the definitions of mentoring and coaching can sometimes blur, the goal of both is clear: to help individuals learn and grow to achieve their full potential. S. Derrick Posted August 20, 2007 2:37 AM
- "Flash mentoring" is not mentoring. It's just a form of "coaching" which is a short- term occurrence. Mentoring takes more than an hour and happens over a long period of time. I've also established mentoring programs for executives and senior managers and the critical barriers to successful mentoring relationships are time and mentor/mentoree match-ups. The primary essence of mentoring should be centered around the people who are involved in the relationship. The best approach would be to allow potential mentorees to serve as staff assistants to the executives or serve on special projects initiated by the exec where both will have numerous opportunities to interact with one another. Just walking to meetings together, or going to lunch together, or traveling to a meeting while sitting in the airport together provides numerous opportunities to interact with one another over a period of time. The problem with mentoring programs are that they are managed like clinical lab experiments rather than providing meaningful opportunities for folks to interact with one another. You can't dictate or legislate mentoring relationships. Instead of making the executives and senior managers fit into a nice neat little mentoring program designed by the HR folks, create opportunities for natural forming mentor relationships to occur. D. Jordan Posted August 8, 2007 8:43 AM
- THere's a third option - a compromise between the two. We have a strong formal mentoring program in our avionics software development group. We pair senior engineers with new engineers coming into the group. But instead of mandating that we will meet regardless of need (typical bureaucraticism) we meet at need, when the mentored has a question, when the mentor is helping the the mentored get started on a new project, ... bill Posted August 2, 2007 10:52 AM
Brian Friel covered management and human resources at Government Executive for six years and is now a National Journal staff correspondent.
