Many employers have a great deal of faith in their management teams and have entrusted them to appropriately oversee, direct and discipline their staff. However, ignoring the need for ongoing management training can be a risky proposition for any company.
Management is considered an extension of the business, and in many cases, companies are held directly responsible for the actions, or lack of action, of their leadership team. Claims against companies as a result of management discrimination, harassment, or retaliation have become increasingly common.
Regardless of whether an employer faces an actual lawsuit or not, poor management can lead to a host of other damaging conditions, such as:
What can a company do to raise the bar of management productivity and success, and to prevent unwanted lawsuits? They can employ one or more of the following effective techniques: Training, Coaching and Mentoring.
Training
There are many options available for training management personnel. The most common is in-house training classes, whereby a senior manager or human resources expert meets the staff live and in person, to conduct the training. These interactive sessions enable employee participation and typically promote a positive experience for all attendees.
For employers that lack the in-house training expertise, E-learning, webinars and out-of-office seminars are relatively inexpensive training alternatives. In order to ensure that supervisors are gaining from the sessions, however, employers should hold their managers accountable for the information they acquired. For example, an employer can request a summary report of the training sessions or printed tests or quizzes that accompany the training.
Some companies offer higher- or continuing- education reimbursements. While costly, companies looking for managers to be function at a higher performance level may find the investment worthwhile.
Coaching
Coaching refers to an individual educating and developing specific skills and abilities with a very small group of people, while holding the group accountable through testing and performance.
Coaching is time and participation intensive but can provide excellent ROI if handled well. Coaching requires the full commitment from both parties and may take several weeks or months before experiencing positive results.
Mentoring
Different to Coaching, in a Mentoring scenario, the manager is guided by the experience of the mentor, usually a senior level executive, to a state of self-awareness. The mentor serves as a sounding board, asking questions that require the participant to analyze, self-assess and develop conclusions. Essentially, the mentor takes an individual who has demonstrated a strong grasp of what leadership entails and guides them to a more sophisticated level of leadership and development.
Mentoring – Five Top Tips for Getting What You Want
Mentoring can be used to strengthen your talents, hone your skills and progress your career. It can provide relevant, personalised and interactive professional development. And, managed well, mentoring is a mutually rewarding experience.
Here are five top tips for getting what you want:
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Understand What Mentoring Is
A mentor does not tell you what to do, nor do they open doors for you. A mentor listens, asks questions and facilitates your goal setting and planning, decision making or problem solving process.
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Find A Mentor
You need to seek out potential mentors. Network and connect with people outside your immediate area. While it’s easy to develop rapport with people like yourself, there is more value from being mentored by someone different. If you are too alike you’ll have the same strengths and the same challenges.
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Develop Rapport
When you engage a person in conversation and ask questions you may fall into natural rapport. If you do it’s easy to build a relationship. You can also use non-verbal skills such as matching and mirroring to develop rapport. Once there is rapport, if you want more than a one-off conversation you’ll need to make mentoring a win-win proposition.
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Make Mentoring Mutually Rewarding
Mentors are generally altruistic about giving the gift of their time but they’re human, likely to be busy and have demanding schedules. You need make conversations with you enjoyable and satisfying for the mentor as well as beneficial to you. The keys to this are: business etiquette, positive feedback and appreciation. Good manners and politeness smooth the way. Let them know that you value and are using the information and insight that you gain.
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You Drive The Relationship
You should request and confirm meetings, set the agenda and identify goals. It is your responsibility to make decisions and take actions to achieve them. A mentor is a resource, a facilitator. Its up to you to be ready, open and keep up the connection if you are to get what you want from mentoring. Finally, understand that you attract what you project, you get what you give.
Is Good Mentoring the Key to Success?
Taking a look at the effects of good and proper mentoring has on the people looking up to you for answers and support is a vital exercise that should never be taken lightly especially if you intend to be successful at whatever it is that you do.
Whether it is to be a good teacher,coach or to have a successful business, Good Mentoring should always be at the forefront of your business plan. The more successful your entourage is the more successful you are. It’s a simple concept really. Take a sports coach for example,the more time he spends helping his players overcome their fears and weaknesses and teaches them values and techniques and encourages them along the way the better or more successful the team becomes therefore winning more games and maybe even winning the season which leads to the prestige of winning that certain trophy,which in turn leads to the coach feeling more pride, more confidence, which leads to better coaching opportunities,which leads to better money and brighter future.
Internet marketing has the same concept.
The more successful the people that joined your team are,the more successful you will become.
Unfortunately there is a lot of internet marketers out there that uses the word mentoring as a line,a sales pitch and when you join you are left to fend for yourself for the most part. In turn the new internet marketer slowly loses confidence,loses site of his goals and eventually drops out.
Lets think of it as a plant or a flower that you purchased. You plant it and then nothing,you don’t water,take care of it,nothing. The plant eventually dies and then you blame the plant for being weak or diseased or to hard to take care of and you throw it out. But you still want some colors in your house or your garden so you purchase another and another but the same thing keep happening until one day a friend comes over and shows you (mentors you on) how to take care of your flower,shows you how and when to water them and feed them and so,within a short time you have a colorful house or garden. So you see, same like the flower,people need attention and guidance in a market that can be very confusing especially for a newcomer,you can actually go through an information overload,consequently leading to giving up and eventually dropping out.
These few analogies or examples if you will,play an important role in underlining the importance of good mentoring. Mentoring can be a highly effective strategy to attract and retain key people in building your internet marketing business. It is instrumental to be a steady but constant source of advice while offering useful information and support in a non-threatening and encouraging manner. More so stands true for a newcomer to the world of internet,it is vital that the mentor shows compassion and patience while being respectful of the individual and of course inevitably you must teach them to be independent while in turn showing the importance of good mentoring and how vital it is to their success. It is almost a guarantee that by following these simple rules and providing them with the tools that will boost their confidence your success and theirs will highly improve.
