Mentoring Strategies for Leaders: What Works (and What Doesn’t)

Hi, I’m Max. Welcome to Montoria’s Mentoring Soundbites, where we answer some of the most common and important questions professionals just like you ask about starting, managing, and growing their mentoring programs. In this video, we have some hot tips for leaders who are serving as mentors. As a mentor, your role is to be inspirational and guide your mentees to success.  But doing so as an organizational leader can come with some complications.

For example, if you’re mentoring brand-new, junior-level employees, how do you avoid being too intimidating? And if you’re a leader in a reverse mentoring program, how do you show deference to someone who has a more junior-level position? While most mentors are leaders, not all leaders know how to mentor  effectively. Hopefully, the following strategies will help give you some perspective and ease  some of your stress over mentoring as a leader. We’ve all heard the phrase “stay in your lane”.

It usually means don’t do anything you’re not qualified to do.

We know what you’re thinking.  As a leader, you’re highly qualified. As simple as this may sound, however, knowing your role within the mentoring relationship is one of the most important strategies to take to heart. As a leader, your natural tendency may be to control every aspect of the relationship.

However, if you’re the mentor, your goal is to guide, not control. Ideally, mentees should have a lot of agency within that relationship.

As you mentor junior-level team members, remember to put aside some of that take-charge personality that makes you a good leader. Instead, encourage your mentees to be independent thinkers and doers, even as you provide actionable advice and insights. Traditionally, leaders have had to hold many of their emotional cards close to their chest.

Times are slowly changing, but this still remains true in many workplaces. Studies show it’s also still very true for women leaders. Still, one of the best ways to be a mentor is to show vulnerability. Your mentees need to know what you also struggle with at times. They also need to know when you don’t know something.

Be open, honest, and vulnerable with them. It will go a long way toward making that relationship more impactful for both of you. This one may be the hardest strategy of all discretion means more than just avoiding gossip.  In a mentoring relationship between a leader and a junior.

It’s important that you don’t use what you learn against the mentee.

Understand that your mentee is trying to learn and grow. Now, you may be surprised by the gap between where that team member needs to be and where they are presently. However, as a mentor, you’re in a great place to help them get there, especially when you  create a growth relationship that’s free of stress and not tied to quarterly or yearly evaluations. We get it.

As a leader, you’re busy.

High-stakes meetings are part of your day-to-day. Missing.

One can mean losing important contracts or angering investors. If you choose to take on a mentoring relationship, however, consider it just as important. Culture flows from the top.

If you constantly cancel on your mentees, that will demoralize them. Additionally, word will get around that you don’t value mentoring. We’ve talked about building a mentoring culture before, and you can find that video on our YouTube channel.  Part of the culture is showing that mentoring is important to leaders as well as participants. So if you do take on a mentee, be present, prioritize those meetings, find times that work for everyone so you can show that positive engagement, learning and development are a priority.

Leave you off with one last important strategy for mentoring as a leader.

Get training. Never assume that you’re fully prepared to be a mentor, especially if you’re mentoring.  Relationships involve crossing cultural boundaries.

Training will help you learn how to be a better mentor. Doing so will page huge dividends as you work with and guide your mentees.  The following video clip featuring a Fortune 500 company mentoring champion will underscore exactly why we save the best strategy for last. So, we have e-learnings, we have curated articles, and we are also leveraging Mentor Labs, um, a great product within, uh, your company. Many. Um, and both of those we’re curating that in a way where they, it’s not going to be like a 10-hour training, but it’s really going to allow them to build their path and listen to nuggets of information or advice, uh, from other mentors.

Um, and a lot of that core is centered around trust.

Again, it’s um, lot, lot of the videos, a lot of the articles for any relationship to be formed. You got to build it on trust. Um, so you know, that’s where we start. And, and that’s probably a prerequisite, um, for any mentor to join the program or any training that we provide to the mentor.

We mentioned in our video on building a mentoring culture that establishing a culture in your workplace is never easy. As a leader, you play a critical role in making sure mentoring works. That starts with using effective strategies that others can easily replicate for success. And that shows mentoring is important at your organization.  What strategies have you tried that worked or failed?

Let us know in the comments below. For even more mentoring tips, check out the links below the video or visit us at MentorcliQ.com.  And don’t forget to like and subscribe to get updated on mentoring best practices like these.

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