Do you want to develop a transformational mentoring program within your business?

Here we share Elevate’s top tips for success

You’ve probably heard mentoring is a good thing to do. You might have a mentor. You might want a mentor. You might even have a mentor without realising it! But creating purposeful mentoring relationships and running successful mentor programmes takes some thought. 

Our research has shown that there are some significant challenges in the events industry. 70% of those surveyed felt that they lacked the recognition and acknowledgement they deserved in their current workplace and over 75% of those surveyed felt that they lacked the skills needed in order to fulfil their current day to day role to its spec.

If that’s not scary enough, over 80% lacked confidence, both in themselves and their ability to excel at their job. 

With the stress of employment and discussions about mental wellbeing in the news, stats like these from over 400 current event professionals in the UK – there really never has been a better time to consider creating a mentoring programme to help tackle all of these issues.

At Elevate, the UKs largest mentoring programme for the events industry, we realised that there were many amazing mentoring programmes in existence (big shout out to them all!) but most were focussed on niche areas or development phases such as entering into the industry, breaking onto the board and self-employment. All important areas of development, but the truth is, we need mentors at every level and at every step of our careers to share insights and wisdom to benefit others and help them avoid potential mistakes and ultimately grow. 

As our table below shows, mentoring offers huge growth opportunities not just for the mentors and mentees themselves but also for the businesses and their end clients. From developing new skills, enhancing knowledge and leveraging your network to simply sharing new perspectives,the tangible benefits can be felt across the business and it really does work both ways. In fact, reverse mentoring is now almost as mainstream as more traditional mentoring where the mentor is more senior than the mentee. The reality is, we all have so much to learn and this never stops.  

As agency owners, team leads, managers or executives, we’ve all got personal growth ambitions or manage people with big aspirations. Personal development is recognised as being an integral factor in developing a high performing, fully engaged team. And whilst there is no doubt that training is important, spending thousands on generic programmes or consultants is not always the most effective route to creating a personalised learning experience. 

What is clear, is that Mentoring Programmes provide a powerful pathway to nurture and retain talent by ensuring individuals feel valued, supported and empowered to perform at their best and achieve their targets. 

So how do you go about building a mentoring scheme that actually works within your business and fulfils this potential? Here are a few Elevate tips.

1. Establish whether your mentoring programme is to be a voluntary or mandatory scheme.

The strength of mentoring is on the relationship. You’ll need to carefully consider the balance between supporting your staff and making the programme more of a tick box exercise.  

2.             Commit to confidentiality. It is the KEY to the program’s success

This needs no explanation other than in order to create a programme that works, the mentee must feel that they can share in complete confidentiality. Even if there is information shared that directly affects the business, it can’t be shared. 

3.             Set the programme up for success 

Think about the tools and support around the programme. Are you going to have a set series of steps that everyone follows or leave it freer? Are there key techniques and coaching tools needed to help mentors and mentees get the best out of one another and the programme? How will you measure success? What commitment and time investment is needed to manage the programme? 

4.             Don’t be afraid to fail 

Feedback and open dialogue is crucial to the success of the programme. Keeping in touch with the Mentoring journey, marking key milestones and implementing positive changes along the way is all part of the process. 

If this all sounds interesting why not get in touch with us. Elevate can help you create your own successful mentoring programme. 

(N.B) In addition to running the Elevate mentoring program, we also run specific practical training courses through our training arm called Elevate Evolve. As part of this we offer expert coaching and consulting to mentors and leadership teams to help you design, develop and implement your own successful internal mentoring and development programme in your business. If you would like more info on this, please get in touch. We’re at: [email protected]

We hope you found this insight beneficial and welcome your feedback and any questions you may have. Please connect with us here on LinkedIn, email us on [email protected] or go to www.elevateme.co and register your interest to join our official mentoring program which is currently now accepting expressions of interest for our fourth successful season of mentoring which will kick off in the New Year.