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Performance Management System

Notes mentor to take a long-term view and a broader approach to the mentee in his/her working life.
The mentor is free to be objective, challenging or supporting as necessary, and is able to help
mentees think through their overall career development, while their immediate manager or
coach may quite properly bring in the more immediate or short-term focus.
Mentors are often used to help individuals manage the process of transition: graduates entering
a large organization; someone moving to increased responsibility; a person moving to a level in
which they may be seen as unusual (such as women promoted to a level where there are very
few women).
Many organizations now have a well-established system of mentor selection and training,
induction for mentees and monitoring of the process.

Example: GKN has a mentoring system for employees of high potential on a self-managed
learning programmes; at supermarket chain ASDA, a senior store manager from a different area
will be a mentor for people who are being prepared to be store mangers; at a division of the
Prudential Corporation mentoring is used for women returning to work after maternity leave;
and the UK Stock Exchange has a system of external mentors to support senior management
through a major change scheme.
Although widespread mentoring is a fairly recent development in Europe, it is more notably
acknowledged as an essential developmental experience in Japan. Research carried out by
Warwick and Stirling Universities, compared the ‘factors in growing as a manager’ reported in
paired British and Japanese companies. The emphasis on the effect of role models and mentors
was cited most frequently by the Japanese, while the British emphasized education and wider
experience of life.
The process of mentoring, when mentors come from within an organization, can have an
organizational impact. Senior managers come into contact with, for instance, recent recruits, and
this can give the mentor a fresh view on the organization and on the new generation of thinking.
At the same time, the mentor who is working at a strategic level can be in a position to convey
the corporate direction to the mentee in a way that is direct and immediate. In this way, the
mentoring relationship can strengthen organizational cohesion.

8.4.1 Skills and Activities of Mentoring

What is required of a mentor? The most favoured attributes appear to be acting as a sounding
board for ideas; being a source of organizational knowledge; and helping people to see themselves
more clearly. Interesting, few potential mentors choose a role model; someone who exemplifi es
good practice although this is frequently the reason a mentor is chosen by a mentee.
Each variant of the mentor role requires different skills, but a core might include some familiar
and well developed techniques, to be used during a mentoring meeting:
1. Listening openly without making judgments;
2. Asking open-ended questions;

3. Summarizing;
4. Clarifying;
5. Refl ecting back;
6. Being aware of differences between verbal and non-verbal behavior;

7. Helping the mentee explore potential options and their outcomes.

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