Articles on Mentoring and Leader Development | The Leadership Effect

Three Keys to Mentoring Program Training

January 17, 2012

by Rik Nemanick, Ph.D. Over the last ten years, I have trained over 2,000 mentors in formal mentoring programs. In that time, I have tried to understand what keys mentors and protégés need to successfully initiate their partnerships. While there is a lot to cover to help mentoring pairs get off to a good start, there are three key points that need to be covered: Logistics: When I started working with mentoring programs, I interviewed dozens of participants in formal mentoring programs. The biggest predictor of whether an individual had a successful experience was whether they agreed on logistics up...

National Mentoring Month

January 4, 2012

The President has declared January as National Mentoring Month. While the mentoring we deal with at The Leadership Effect is more focused on workplace mentoring, it is worth noting that mentoring takes many forms, and is instrumental in the lives of many people. I encourage everyone who has benefited from mentoring in any form to consider becoming a mentor yourself. Look for opportunities around you and make yourself available to be a mentor. The National Mentoring Month website has resources for finding opportunities to be a mentor in your own community.

Exploring the Mentoring Triad

November 16, 2011

by Rik Nemanick, Ph.D. When most people think of the idea of mentoring, they usually think of a dyad working together: a more senior mentor and a more junior protégé. This formulation of the mentoring relationship is the most widely used and studied, but there is growing interest in other forms of mentoring. There is the concept of the “mentor network,” which envisions one protégé consulting with multiple mentors to gather different perspectives. You might also have heard about “reverse mentoring,” which is where the junior “mentor” teaches the more senior “protégé” about trends, technology, and the junior’s generation. While...

When Mentoring is not the Answer

October 3, 2011

by Rik Nemanick, Ph.D. Mentors are tremendous resources, both for individuals and organizations. Mentors help protégés make connections, think through difficult issues, and set long term goals. Mentors help organizations by guiding junior members, strengthening both knowledge and social capital, and creating commitment among protégés. With benefits like these, it is not uncommon for a manager to declare that “everyone should have a mentor”. While a good sentiment, there are many times when mentoring is not the answer. Good mentors are both precious and finite resources in most organizations: there are only so many to go around (for more on...

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