Your Mentoring Program Needs to Be Less Formal

Too much formality can destroy your mentoring program

Source: Unsplash/Gabrielle Henderson

The research on mentorship is abundantly clear. Those who are mentored outperform those who are not. Mentored individuals have higher salaries, career growth, and productivity. They also show greater loyalty to the organization.

Many organizations see mentorship as a win-win for employees and a powerful recruitment tool. But unfortunately, many organizations over-formalize the mentoring process. It impedes connections with mentors on a human level and makes it a business arrangement void of empathy and humanity. It becomes synthetic and something you have to do in lieu of something you looking forward to doing.

Random partnering

Formal mentoring programs often start with random partnering. Mentors are often paired based on their area of interest or alma mater. Unfortunately, it might be serving more harm than good. There is no foundation to the relationship, so there is nothing to hold it together during tough times. Not everyone who attended the same school or come from the same state is the same, so assuming similarities based on geography or something else random makes little sense. If the mentoring relationship fails, the mentee might be turned off to mentoring for good.

Mentoring contracts

Who wants to start a relationship with a contract? It sounds like a business arrangement. What if it does not meet expectations or there is a breach of contract? Who is there to enforce the agreement? Who would push back on the agreement? If it is the junior mentee getting the short end of the stick, it might not be psychologically safe or politically astute to challenge the mentoring contract.

Lack of mentor training

Most mentors do not go through any training on how to be a mentor. Mentoring does not come with an instruction manual. Instead, they utilize a trial and error process, which can be frustrating for both the mentor and mentee. The mentor is likely emulating the mentoring approach they received decades earlier. They either do precisely the same or the polar opposite. Either way, it is anecdotal and does not adhere to best practices.

One size does not fit all

There is a great deal to be learned from mentoring courses and workshops, and they are incredibly useful. But a one size fits all mentality will never work. People are too different, come with different experiences, and need different approaches.

Recently, Dr. Robert Lefkowitz, the 2012 Nobel Prize winner in Chemistry and author of A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to Stockholm, received an interesting email. If he were to continue having graduate students in his laboratory, the email read, he would be required to take a mentoring course. Dr. Lefkowitz looked at the email in disbelief, as he has already successfully mentored over 250 mentees over his five decades of running his laboratory. His mentees have gone on to great achievements, which he is exceedingly proud of, including top roles in academia and the biotechnology industry. The co-recipient of the Nobel was none other than Dr. Lefkowitz’s former mentee, Dr. Brain Kobilka. Dr. Lefkowitz can teach a mentoring course at this point (in fact, an entire chapter in his aforementioned autobiography is dedicated to his 10 commandments of mentoring).

Not everyone will benefit from such a mentoring course, especially if they have enough experience to be the instructor. Asking someone who has mentored many people successfully to take the same course as a first-time mentor is counterproductive and can backfire. Instead, leverage their vast experience, consider organic mentor pairings based on something special the mentor and mentee see in each other. They might meet each other in random places such as a conference, workplace cafeteria, or Zoom meeting chat room. They can each learn from the other and find ways to help one another.

If you are a mentor, consider educating yourself on best practices, recognizing that what works for you may not be the right approach for others. In addition to courses and workshops, there are books (consider Athena Rising and The Mentoring Guide), articles (look at "Mentorship Malpractice" and a piece on mentoring teams), and for ideas on how to be a better mentor, look at some of the courses on LinkedIn Learning (I have one on becoming an inspiring mentor). Also, reach out to someone who has shown incredible success in mentoring others.

We are human, and our mentoring relationships should be as well. However, the moment we put power dynamics into the equation, the water becomes murky, can be filled with bias, and can make difficult conversations extremely contentious. There is a better way.