The Benefits of an Online Mentoring System

Mentoring has traditionally been done on an informal ‘in-person’ basis. However, in recent years, online developments mean you now have an infinitely wider pool of potential mentors to work with!

You could, for example, find a mentor with a completely different perspective and cultural background. In the past, it was much harder to find those individuals within a close enough proximity of where you lived or worked.

Let’s say you’re working with a mentor from a different country. The question I’ve been asking for 20 years is: how can I better help and support each party in the mentoring arrangement? What do they need that they’re currently not getting? I realised there wasn’t an offering out there that could reliably support valuable mentoring relationships. Most of the time, mentors and mentees were just left to ‘get on with it!’

A mentoring program within an organisation was traditionally implemented and managed by the HR department. Usually, there aren’t clear, high-quality systems to ensure that people got the most beneficial mentoring relationship as part of the program.

Imagine starting a new role at an organisation. You’re in luck because the organisation offers a mentoring program. The HR department links you up with an experienced leader within the business. After all, that’s the most obvious mentoring connection to make, right?

Sometimes this works a treat, and you get the mentoring benefits you’re looking for. But other times, the match simply doesn’t work. Perhaps it’s not the right match from an experience or skills perspective. Perhaps your aspirations are too far apart, or your personalities clash.

So, in this situation, where you’ve been paired with an experienced individual with a high reputation, what are you likely to do? Would you go back to your direct leader or to your HR department and say, “Unfortunately, this is not the right match for me. Can I please have another mentor?”?

That seems unlikely to me!

Initially, you and your mentor will be very nice to each other. You will still meet regularly to discuss aspirations. The relationship will look like it’s working. But in most cases, the relationship will slowly die out: neither party will see the benefits or traction they were hoping for.

So with SkillFlow, we're still working closely with organisations to implement their mentoring program. But we’re also ensuring that each individual mentoring relationship is the best possible match.

In any mentoring program, the benefit to the individual is central to the success of the overall program. On the SkillFlow platform, we also provide several prompts to ensure they get the most out of the relationship.

For the individual, everything is consolidated into a single system. They’re being reminded to follow up with their mentor and prompted on how best to do so. They’re also able to look for new mentors and maximise the chance of a productive match.

It's still the choice of the individual which mentor they would like to choose themselves, but the system provides guidance on how closely aligned they would be. Additionally, they can define their own goals within the system (these goals are visible to the mentor). As time passes, they can track progress toward those goals. They can easily schedule sessions with their mentors even if they're on the other side of the world.

I’ve seen firsthand how our clients have benefitted from using an online mentoring system. The people leading or overlooking the program benefit from more successful mentoring matches, which creates a positive feedback loop. The more mentoring is seen to benefit people individually, the more mentoring will become an integral part of your organisational culture. (See my last article on creating a purpose-built culture).

For a free assessment of your current mentoring setup, please take a few minutes now to complete my free corporate mentoring readiness quiz.

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Dave

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