Maverick Mastery®

One of the tragedies of modern training and development programmes is that not everyone in the senior management team is given the equal opportunity to enhance their skills. In the age of equality it is often the case that HR professionals aren’t considered equally for training opportunities – however, this isn’t solely the fault of ‘unenlightened’ companies but HR professionals themselves.

Often with reducing budgets HR professionals choose to spend the diminishing training resources on other members of the team sometimes due to altruism or sometimes due to the misguided belief that they would never be able to justify the spend on themselves.

This can be a factor of HR not being seen as credible or serious by the organisation, even if the company funds the CIPD (seeing it similar to other basic skills training like CIMA), negotiation skills or conflict resolution training may be harder to source. Sometimes the senior team expect HR to somehow just ‘have’ the knowledge to succeed in their role without any significant training. In this, senior HR professionals are similar to CEOs (competency assumed, further training not required!), which although flattering can be disadvantageous to your career but even worse damaging to the organisation.

Almost all companies where the CEO or MD voice dissatisfaction with HR a common sentiment is that the HR professional is competent and good at their job, just that somehow they just don’t add value or are able to ‘step up’. What they are struggling to articulate is that they want more from HR than just transactional duties or ‘best practice’, they want to see HR as equal partners in the business – in the same way as Finance or Marketing.

No one expects the Finance Director to just put together the management accounts so why should the HR Director just ensure that employees are paid correctly?

There is more to running the company that just ensuring that the basics are done, and there is nothing wrong in seeking help to enable you and the company to succeed. If it’s acceptable that key individuals (like the CEO or the Marketing Director) are mentored to make them more effective and productive then my challenge to senior HR professionals to consider whether mentoring is an effective solution for them achieving the personal and/or organisational goals.

Senior HR professionals and a need for a HR Mentor

There are a number of reasons why a senior HR professional would consider mentoring rather than hiring an interim or consultant to come into the organisation and facilitate change for them. One of the reasons is that the task in hand requires the HR professional’s input and not a ‘stranger’ to the organisation. This could be due to credibility, culture or trust.

Another is professional development or a need to rapidly learn the key skill being transferred by the mentor whilst you are working on the project in hand. Finally executive coaching is not appropriate for the task in hand. Mentoring works well for more senior professionals who have the core competencies but just don’t have the specific knowledge for the task in hand.

Here are some examples of where HR mentoring has enabled HR professionals:

• Taking HR from a transactional, administrative department to an embedded, added value one

• Supporting HR become more credible to the business

• Embedding the HR Business Partner model into the business

• Enabling the HR professional to ‘step up’ and be seen as an equal partner in the business

• Having an objective person outside the organisation to discuss things with and if necessary seek guidance

Senior HR professionals that require an external mentor is best suited by someone who has a strong HR and operational background who is able to facilitate the transfer of knowledge with credibility and efficiency. It is important that this expert has knowledge outside of the HR arena.

Your mentor enables you to have the ability to confide in someone outside of the company, who is an objective sounding board. Often it’s lonely at the top! If you are the most senior HR professional in your organisation there is often no one to confide in. You are unable to share your concerns or frustrations fully with your team – whether that’s your own HR team or the senior management team.

You face many important strategic decisions and it can be beneficial to work with someone who has been in your position and knows the path that you need to take to secure success. Enabling your department or your team to ‘add value’ can sometimes benefit from an external mentor or consultant who not only has the ability to make this change happen, but can guide and advise you if you wish to facilitate this change yourself.

In the same way that training spend is invested in the professional development of the CEO and the other members of the senior team, HR professionals need to ask for the investment that they believe they need. It is perfectly acceptable for senior HR professionals to use external mentors to enable them to complete either specific tasks or enable them to facilitate big changes such as increasing the skill of the HR team or enabling the HR department to become more credible to the business.

After all, the future of the organisation is at stake

There are a number of research projects that show that the more engaged employees are the bigger the productivity increase. Research also shows that there is around 20% of the workforce out performing their peers. So it can seem to be good economic sense to have the 20% as engaged as possible. Often this is the focus of succession plans and internal mentoring schemes. Many readers will have heard of the need to concentrate on ‘high potentials’ or ‘key talent’.

Whilst the intent is laudable often the implementation is not, with only a few exceptionable companies getting the results that they expected or receiving a good return on their investment. The consequence of getting this wrong is not just financial; it can also result in a lack of trust towards the company and the departure of the very people that the company wants to keep.

What is mentoring and does it differ from coaching?

Coaching begins with the premise that the answers are within the person being coached. The coach’s role is to help the individual understand that and via the use of encouraging and questioning techniques, helps elicit the solution. A coach is generally non directional and does not provide advice. Good companies with a strong empowerment culture tend to encourage its managers to have a coaching style and may even employ executive coaches for its top performers. Aspiring companies prefer to have internal coaches to improve the performance of its employees.

By contrast a mentor is an expert who provides guidance and advice within a more developmental relationship. Mentoring requires flexibility of the mentor and their ability to use a wide range of techniques to guide the mentee. Good mentors will apply coaching techniques where applicable and will be unafraid to provide detailed advice on what the mentees next steps are. Mentoring works best for senior executives and Directors – for these individuals coaching is less relevant and useful. This is especially true where it is specific ‘how to’ knowledge that is required rather than a reflective sounding board.

A lot of internal mentoring schemes subscribe to the myth that mentoring needs to be provided by an older more senior employee. This is no longer a truism, mentoring should be provided by a person that is able to provide knowledge and direction in an area that they are experts in. (Not withstanding having the right knowledge, skills, character and behavioural traits).

Often the mentor is a senior manager chosen not because of his skills or the fact that he is a role model but because he is in a senior position. This is problematic for a number of reasons:

• The senior manager does not wish to be a mentor

• The senior manager is very busy and cannot see the value of being a part of the Internal Mentoring Scheme

• The senior manager is a poor role mode

• The senior manager is not credible

Having the wrong mentor for the scheme can have a very adverse effect on the entire mentoring programme. Setting up an internal mentoring scheme without clearly defining and communicating the purpose can also be problematic. I was hired to run a workshop for a group of employees around how they felt they were treated and perceived by their managers and a discussion around why they felt they were being held back in their career. Most of the group felt that they needed an external mentor to help them learn the behaviours and skills that they needed to progress in their careers. I understood that there was an internal mentoring scheme so I queried why they were not using it. The message that came out loud and clear was that they did not trust the scheme. The perception was that it was being used to discover information to be used against them. Many employees quoted examples that they believed reinforced this idea.

The perception that internal mentoring schemes are set up for ill is more common for schemes that are devolved to all employees rather than schemes that are more ‘traditional’. This perception is however one of the reasons that corporate internal mentoring schemes or programmes does not work. There is a lack of trust in the system, especially when the organisational culture does not support the level of openness that a mentoring scheme needs to encourage.

Ill equipped mentors who have not been trained properly and who are unable to deal with the conflicts that will ensue from their role as a mentor, has the capacity not just to destroy the scheme but to irrevocably impact the trust in the organisation. It is important that mentors of internal schemes have an external supervising mentor who can provide guidance as and when appropriate.

Sometimes organisations send out mix messages about their mentoring scheme. For example not allowing the mentor and mentee sufficient time to meet to discuss issues, or by having appraisal systems that actually discourage the use of a mentor. Peer pressure can also discourage their usage as other employees see time spent with the mentor as ‘time off’ and dissuade their colleague for utilising the scheme.

Mentoring schemes are often appropriate ways to develop talented employees who need to understand the key activities that they require to achieve to complete a task, change behaviour or enhance their career. Companies need to understand the environment in which the schemes operate and ensure that there is sufficient trust engendered.

For centuries successful leaders have utilised the services of a mentor, who they see as their trusted advisor and sounding board. When there are important decisions to be made or opportunities to assess or realise they often turn to their mentor for guidance, support and expert knowledge.

When others are struggling, accomplished leaders seize the opportunity to access the resources of their mentor. The ability to seek advice is a key strength and differentiator from their competition and is often the real secret of their success.

Business leaders seek a mentor for the following reasons:

• Having the ability to confide in someone outside of the company

• Having an objective sounding board

• Receiving support and advice on team dynamics

• Staying ahead of the game by receiving knowledge from other industries

• Continuous CEO development

• A more successful and sustainable company

Seeking and learning from your mentor

There are a number of ways to seek a mentor; first you could approach a leadership company like Dynamic Transitions, you could ask for recommendations or you could search on the internet. Whichever method you choose it is important that the following criteria are considered as an absolute minimum:

• Your proposed mentor has the expertise that you need

• You like and trust your proposed mentor

• Your mentor ‘walks their talk’

• There is mutual respect

• Your mentor is appropriate to your style and can provide the right advice for you

• They are inspirational and motivational

Choosing the right mentor can be key to your success, which is why finding that special person is imperative. Often business owners can be seduced into picking a mentor based on superficial measures such as a good flashy website, a brochure with great pictures and flowing words and a great marketing sales page. I believe that it is vital that you spend time talking to your potential mentor, understanding their background and where their expertise and credibility lies. An appreciation of their style and preferred ways of working is essential. When choosing your mentor it’s important that you consider someone who will role model change for you. Someone that you can rely on to demonstrate the correct paths for you to take.

Mentors must be able to challenge you especially if you have a strong personality. They should be unafraid to hold you to account and question your decisions or thought process. They should compliment your skills and be able to help you strengthen your weaknesses. A business mentor should understand how to utilise social media especially if you have a service business. They should be able to help you demonstrate your reputation and expertise both online and offline. In service related businesses people buy from experts not generalists, therefore you need to ensure that your mentor can help you demonstrate your expertise.

If your marketing strategy includes networking as an important component then it’s essential that not only does your mentor understand how to help you build an effective networking strategy, but that they can demonstrate how they use their networking expertise. You will be spending significant amounts of time with your mentor so it’s important that you are compatible and that you respect and trust them. A mentoring relationship is a developmental one and it is key that your mentor can flex their own style to suit your preferred method of learning. To be able to learn from your mentor in addition to the above criteria needing to take place, you need to be:

• open to the guidance of your mentor

• willing to take risk

• prepared to be accountable

• open to change

• willing to change the status quo

When you are good at what you do it can be very difficult to take advice from someone else. When you are working with your mentor it is important to remember that you are NOT handing over executive decision making. No mentor would advocate that their mentee abdicates decision making responsibility, but that they listen to advice and base their decisions on all the available facts. We have found that a significant proportion of business owners are impulsive and therefore do not consider all their options when making major decisions for their business. This can have an adverse effect unless this impulsiveness is harnessed and utilised effectively.

Main models of mentoring

There are a number of different ways that business leaders can access mentoring from their mentors. We have found that the most effective methods are either a) Mentoring on a one to one basis or b) Peer Mentoring.

Mentoring on a one to one basis allows a developmental relationship which is quite focused and structured. The mentor can enable their mentee to achieve their objectives, be challenged in a safe environment and be held accountable. This type of mentorship facilitates a direct knowledge transfer and can significantly reduce the learning curve of the mentee.

Peer Mentoring suits business leaders that prefer to be surrounded by their peers to share learning and experiences. The advantage of this method of mentoring is that whilst the mentor facilitates interaction within the group, the mentee has access to a group of likeminded individuals with differing levels of experience and wisdom. The mentee can leverage the wisdom of this confidential group.

Should a business leader have more than one mentor?

A resourceful and ambitious business leader will ensure that he surrounds himself with the right people to develop and support him through his own growth and the success of the company. It can be beneficial to have more than one mentor as long as it is clear exactly what it is that they are mentoring you in. It is important that for one subject you only have one expert providing you with advice. This ensures that you are not overloaded or being provided with conflicting information. For example a business leader may be mentored on how he gets on with his team and improving team dynamics as well as being mentored on how to deliver a successful business strategy.

Mentoring should continue for as long as the task that the mentor was hired to help the leader achieve is incomplete. This could mean the mentoring may last from one month to a number of years. The frequency of interaction may alter depending on the task.

Does mentoring always work?

There are only two main reasons why mentoring doesn’t work. If there is a bad fit between the mentor and mentee or if the business leader is not ready to be open and honest with his mentor and be willing to move out of his comfort zone.

For example, I was working with an established business leader who had recently moved to a new company. The company was very dysfunctional; his top team was inefficient beset with personality and competency issues, poor morale issues amongst the employees and severe union issues. To add to his problems they were losing key customers, haemorrhaging money and the shareholders were not happy. They gave him a very tight timescale in which to achieve turnaround results.

The business leader was unable to confide in his team and was unclear as to where the true starting point was and whether there was a common root to the company’s issued.

By working closely together he was able to see clearly the issues that were faced by the company. To segregate the problems caused by his top team and the consequences of devalued and de-motivated employees. By tackling these key areas, he understood that these were the causes of customer dissatisfaction and poor bottom line results.

He learnt that his own leadership style was adding to the problem and how best to interact with others to ensure that he got the results that he wanted. He understood how to get the best out of his team and how to implement the best processes to deal with the technical deficiencies.

Under his tenure the company improved its fortunes, his team increased their competence and the union difficulties improved as they saw the employees being better treated. This had a positive effect on the bottom line. The business leader benefited from having a trusted advisor who was removed from the company, who could provide objective guidance and advice.

Mentoring is often much more beneficial to business leaders than traditional coaching practices as it provides senior management with an external sounding bound, someone who can practically assess and advise on the problematic issues within the organisation as a whole, and will not just sit back and wait for the answers to ‘come from within’. Mentoring works when the mentee understands the needs to be challenged and to continue his personal development to realise his achievements and to ensure the likelihood of his company’s success.

Dynamic Transitions Ltd enables mavericks to develop mastery in how they interact with others and how they put their creativity in motion. Mavericks – the wilfully independent, are lateral thinkers and are talented individuals who are determined to succeed by influencing others.

Maverickism is a continuum between being a conformist to an extreme maverick that cannot be influenced. Neither of the continuum ends are ideal, causing poor performance and personality flaws, the ideal is a socialised maverick.

Judith Germain defines a socialised maverick as one that can be ‘brought into polite company!’ Seriously though, mavericks that are socialised understand why people behave the way that they do and have learnt to curb their natural tendencies to be blunt and hurtful towards others. Whilst these tendencies are often not planned or even noticed they need to be harnessed so that the maverick can achieve what they desire.

Recognition and success is the watch words for mavericks, socialised mavericks are well on the way to achieving these things in an acceptable way.

Are you a maverick? If so you …

• think laterally and move in unexpected ways
• believe in tough love and brutal honesty
• are blunt and impatient of others incompetence
• love ‘why’ questions and honest debate
• need to succeed and do things your own way
• refuse to compromise your own standards

You must succeed no matter what …

Mavericks already have a level of success, our role is to enable you to improve your level of success faster and more appropriately. We work with you to support you in interacting with others better and more consistently. By understanding yours and others behaviour you will become more influential therefore achieving what you want in the shortest time possible.

We will support you by:

• enabling you to interact better and raising your social intelligence
• to challenge yourselves and others appropriately and effectively
• showing you how to achieve the success you desire

Maverick Mastery® is essential for the maverick persona to enhance their creative mind.

For more information contact us here.

Many organisations are considering the best cost effective way to continuously develop their employees and establishing a peer to peer mentoring programme is an increasingly sought after solution for some companies. Mentoring specialist Judith Germain provides a step by step guide on how to embed a peer to peer mentoring programme within an internal comms department.

What is peer mentoring and does it differ from coaching?

Coaching and mentoring are quite different although a lot of practioners use the terms interchangeably. Coaching begins with the premise that the answers are within the person being coached. The coach’s role is to help the individual understand that and via the use of encouraging and questioning techniques, helps elicit the solution. A coach is non directional and never provides advice.

By contrast a mentor is an expert who provides guidance and advice within a more developmental relationship. Mentoring requires flexibility of the mentor and their ability to use a wide range of techniques to guide the mentee.

Peer mentoring takes place when the mentor is not in a position of authority over the mentee. For example an employee in an internal comunication dept might have a colleague within the same department as their mentor. The mentor will guide their colleague based on the life experience that they have gained and their professional expertise within the communication arena.

Implementing a peer to peer mentoring programme

For any mentoring programme to succeed it needs to be embedded within the culture of the organisation and be supported by the senior management team. The process needs to be transparent and be an essential part of the company’s Talent Management programme. This ensures that the mentoring programme fulfils the company’s goals and objectives and isn’t an exercise that is seen by management to be time costly, inefficient and unproductive. Neither should it be seen by employees within the internal comms department as a programme where the mentors are not role models and the programme is flawed.

Step 1 – Senior management buy in

Ensure buy in from senior management and that the peer to peer mentoring programme is part of the company’s Talent Management programme.

Step 2 – Mentor recruitment

The success of the programme relies on the ability of the organisation to recruit appropriate mentors. Each potential mentor should be interviewed against a criteria of desired competencies and required skills, an essential part of the recruitment should include a self assessment from the potential mentor as this would indicate their level of self awareness and skill level. There are a number of things that need to be considered when chosing the right peer mentor including the following:

ü Is the proposed mentor already considered a role model within the department/organisation?

ü Is the proposed mentor able to accept constructive criticism and continually learns from the experiences that they gone through?

ü Does the proposed mentor have the ability to empower others?

ü Does the proposed mentor have a good work record or one that has improved over time?

Step 3 – Mentor training

All mentors should be trained before they begin this important role and should not have to rely soley on trail and area to succeed. They should be trained on essential skills like coaching techniques, how to transfer their knowledge, the need for confidentiality, how to deal with conflict and conflict of interests for example. They should also have their own mentor to ensure that they continue to develop and know how to deal with the issues that may arise. Most companies prefer an external mentor in this role.

Step 4 – Relationship building

There should be a good match between the mentor and the mentee and they should both agree to the relationship. Many companies fail when they enforce a particular mentor onto a mentee or when either of the party does not understand the nature of the relationship or the roles that they play. There should be activities that allow the two individuals to get to know each other so that they can build a trusted relationship.

The mentor will need to assess the needs of the mentee and explain to him how the mentor will help him achieve his objectives. They should agree a time that they will meet , and a format that they will work to. They will also discuss the level of confidentiality that they hold themselves to.

Step 5 – Ending the relationship

It is very important that the mentoring relationship does not fade into inactivity over time but has a formal ending. This allows a period of review between the mentor and the mentee, a time to celebrate successes and plan for the future.

When things don’t work out quite the way you hoped …

John had been mentoring Jane for three months now and he was aware that she was not performing as expected despite the additional support that he had been providing. She was also becoming despondent and was reluctant to take on board the suggestions that he was providing without explaining why.

John was perplexed and was concerned that his own reputation as a mentor would be affected as well as the way that Jane’s morale was spiralling. He had received little training and was unsure what to do next, he felt bound by his confidentiality agreement with Jane and didn’t feel like he had anyone to discuss his concerns with.

Fortunately the company had recognised that their peer mentors needed additional help. They had realised that they didn’t have the expertise in house to mentor the mentors or deal with their concerns around confidentiality.

John contacted his external mentor and discussed with her the concerns that he was having and explored the options that he had available to him. He realised in his mentoring session that there were a number of things that he had overlooked when he was working with Jane.

He had believed that because he was Jane’s mentor she should do exactly what he told her to do in the manner that he directed. This did not take into account Jane’s learning style or her motivations. John was getting frustrated by her lack of response which was making him more dictorial in his manner.

John didn’t recognise the pressures Jane was under in internal comms nor did their have a relationship that would support open disclosure on both sides. John worked with his external mentor on these issues and was over time able to become a better and more effective mentor. His mentor also advised the company to initiate mentor training for all peer mentors to ensure that this error was not duplicated. Jane was allocated a more suitable and experienced mentor and her performance steadily improved.

Peer to peer mentoring is an extremely valuable tool for organisations looking for ways to continuously develop their teams, however it is vital to ensure the both the mentor and the mentee receive the appropriate support and guidance if the organisation is to reap the long term benefits of this approach.

I was interviewed by Zhana Brooks from Black Success radio on her Success Strategies show about Economic Self-Empowerment for the Black Community. It aired at 8pm UK time. To hear the interview please click here.