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  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
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  "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
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  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
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  Flash mentoring sounds like a great approach for all. Additionally, it serves as an opportunity to form a long term mentoring relationship should the participants be compatible.

  Tom G Posted August 1, 2007 1:27 PM
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  You need only to trek over to NIH to understand mentoring at its finest. Derrick gave a name to what has been going on at NIH for probably 50 years. "Informal Mentoring" - its too easy. As a Management Intern ("MI") in 1993, I had the privilege of having access to almost every executive at NIH, including Institute Directors and the then Deputy Director of NIH - Ruth Kirstein. Interns received high priority when they wanted/needed to schedule meetings and we were able to work on high level/high profile projects. Mentoring was particularly important to Executive Officers, but the other Administration/Program staff also opened their doors to Interns (and the Presidential Mgmt Interns - or PMIs - as they were once called). They set aside time - whatever that meant. I even had the privilege of doing a "shadow" rotation for a week with Dr. Kirstein (which included her scientist husband Al) during this time. I just followed her around and got to ask lots of questions. Confidentiality was the name of the game. As an aside: Mentors should never be assigned - as they are in many agency programs. I will never understand this practice and feel it is detrimental to both parties involved.

  Pam Posted August 1, 2007 1:23 PM
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  Better to remain silent and allow people to think you're an idiot than to speak and remove all doubt.

  Robert M. Posted August 1, 2007 1:18 PM