Definition of Mentoring

Mentoring is a developmental partnership through which one person shares knowledge, skills, information and perspective to foster the personal and professional growth of someone else. We all have a need for insight that is outside of our normal life and educational experience. The power of mentoring is that it creates a one-of-a-kind opportunity for collaboration, goal achievement and problem-solving. Mentoring is a brain to pick, an ear to listen, and a push in the right direction. Mentoring is an ongoing relationship that is developed between a senior and junior employee. Mentoring provides guidance and clear understanding of how the organization goes to achieve its vision and mission to the junior employee. The meetings are not as structured and regular than in coaching. Executive mentoring is generally done by someone inside the company. The executive can learn a lot from mentoring. By dealing with diverse mentees, the executive is given the chance to grow professionally by developing management skills and learning how to work with people with diverse background, culture, and language and personality types. Executives also have mentors. In cases where the executive is new to the organization, a senior executive could be assigned as a mentor to assist the new executive settled into his role. Mentoring is one of the important methods for preparing them to be future executives. This method allows the mentor to determine what is required to improve mentees performance. Once the mentor identifies the problem, weakness, and the area that needs to be worked upon, the mentor can advise relevant training. The mentor can also provide opportunities to work on special processes and projects that require use of proficiency.

Some key points on Mentoring

Mentoring focus on attitude development Conducted for management-level employees Mentoring is done by someone inside the company It is one-to-one interaction It helps in identifying weaknesses and focus on the area that needs improvement

Mentoring techniques
The focus of mentoring is to develop the whole person and so the techniques are broad and require wisdom in order to be used appropriately A 1995 study of mentoring techniques most commonly used in business found that the five most commonly used techniques among mentors were:
1.

Accompanying:

making a commitment in a caring way, which involves taking part in the learning process side-by-side with the learner.

2.

Sowing: mentors are often confronted with the difficulty of preparing the
learner before he or she is ready to change. Sowing is necessary when you know that what you say may not be understood or even acceptable to learners at first but will make sense and have value to the mentee when the situation requires it.

3.

Catalyzing: when change reaches a critical level of pressure, learning can

jump. Here the mentor chooses to plunge the learner right into change, provoking a different way of thinking, a change in identity or a re-ordering of values.

4.

Showing:

this is making something understandable, or using your own example to demonstrate a skill or activity. You show what you are talking about, you show by your own behavior.

5.

Harvesting:

here the mentor focuses on "picking the ripe fruit": it is usually used to create awareness of what was learned by experience and to

draw conclusions. The key questions here are: "What have you learned?", "How useful is it?".

New-hire mentorship.
These mentoring relationships provide substance for career growth, and benefit both the mentor and the mentee. For example, the mentor gets to show leadership by giving back and perhaps being refreshed about their own work. The organization receives an employee that is being gradually introduced and shaped by the organization's culture and operation because they have been under the mentorship of an experienced member. The person being mentored networks, becomes integrated easier in an organization, gets experience and advice along the way. It has been said that "joining a mentor's network and developing one's own is central to advancement" and this is possibly why those mentored tend to do well in their organizations. In the organizational setting mentoring usually "requires unequal knowledge".but the process of mentorship can differ.

High-potential mentorship
High-potential mentoring is to place the employee in a series of jobs in disparate areas of an organization, all for small periods of time, in anticipation of learning the organization's structure, culture, and methods. A mentor does not have to be a manager or supervisor to facilitate the process.

Mentorship in education
In many secondary and post-secondary schools, mentorship programs are offered to support students in program completion, confidence building and transitioning to further education or the workforce. There are also many peer mentoring programs designed specifically to bring under-represented populations into science and engineering.

Blended mentoring
The blended mentoring is a mix of on-site and online events, projected to give to career counselling and development services the opportunity to adopt mentoring in their ordinary practice.

Reverse mentoring
In the reverse mentoring situation, the mentee has more overall experience (typically as a result of age) than the mentor (who is typically younger), but the mentor has more knowledge in a particular area, and as such, reverses the typical constellation..

Business mentoring
The concept of mentoring has entered the business domain as well. This is different from being an apprentice, a business mentor provides guidance to a business owner or an entrepreneur on the entrepreneur's business. An apprentice learns a trade by working on the job with the "employer".

A Proven Process for Successful Mentoring

_ Building the relationship _ Negotiating agreements _ Developing the mentee _ Ending the relationship

Step 1:Building the relationship

Spending time getting to know my mentor was one of the most important things I did, according to a mentee who recently participated in a successful mentoring relationship. Because my mentor and I took time to build a trusting relationship, we really felt comfortable sharing our goals and discussing our challenges.

Step 2:Negotiating agreements

My mentor and I were careful to clearly define our expectations, clarify logistics, and discuss working preferences, a mentee noted. We knew exactly how often wed meet, when and where our meetings would be held, and how to best approach the task at hand. Negotiating these things from the beginning made my mentoring experience a success.

Step 3:Developing the mentee

I had a long list of goals at first, a mentee wrote. However, I quickly realized that I needed to be more realistic about my expectations since my time already was so consumed with work and outside activities.

Step 4:Ending the relationship

During the final month of our mentoring partnership, my mentor and I evaluated the accomplishment of my goal and had a little party to celebrate, a mentee noted. We ended our formal relationship, but we still like to keep in touch to share interesting experiences, concerns, and successes. Mentoring partners who follow the process find that they can quickly build a good working relationship and successfully achieve the mentees goal.

Mentoring At Workplace Results In Increasing Employees Efficiency Independent variable: Dependent variables:
efficiency

Mentoring

At workplace results in increasing employees

Method:

Survey with the help of questionnaire

Sample size:

Twenty Five

Source of Sample:

1) Deutsche Bank, Kodak house branch. Fort 2) LIC divisional office, Vileparle (West)

3) Bajaj Allianz General Insurance Company Limited (Andheri)

Objectives of the Research Conducted 1) To study employee behavior at organization

2)

To find relationship between mentoring and increase in the employees efficiency .

Data Analysis

1)

Is mentoring the only way to increase the efficiency of the employees ?

AGREE DISAGREE

10 15

Interpretation : 60% agree that mentoring is the only way to increase the efficiency but 40% disagree with it.
2)

Are there anyother way to increase the efficiency ? If yes comment

YES NO

11 14

Interpretation : out of 25 people 11 people has said yes and 14 have said no when they were asked that there is anyother way to improve efficiency .

3)

How strongly you feel mentoring at workplace results in increasing employees efficiency ?

Interpretation : Most of the people strongly agreed with the fact that mentoring helps to achieve the target of increasing the employees efficiency at workplace.

4)

Do your mentor motivate you for achieving the efficiency in productivity ?

YES NO

20 5

Interpretation : 20 people agree with the fact that mentorer s motivation helps to achieve the efficiency but 5 people disagree with it .

Observation and Discussion

According to the research conducted following observation was made Most of the employees agreed that mentoring in their organization helped to increase the efficiency refer to question no 4 which means mentoring could be an effective stratergy to increase the employee productivity