Role of the mentoring Programme Manager
A good mentoring programme manager is integral to the success of your programme. It is their energy and enthusiasm for mentoring specifically and for developing others more generally that will drive the programme and keep momentum within it.
It is also worth noting that setting up, running and properly supporting a mentoring programme takes a great deal of time. For a pilot programme aimed at around 15 pairs you can expect to spend:
- 8 -15 days preparing the scheme and the organisation
- 1 -2 days’ training and initial hand-holding for each group of mentees and mentors
- 3 -5 days of review and on-going measurement
- 2 -4 days of general troubleshooting
- 3 days’ full review and programme redesign after 12 months
Following that, maintenance of the scheme is likely to require 2-3 days per month, with a greater load during the preparation and launch stages. For a more complex, larger programme aimed at an audience needing greater support, the time investment will be higher and more consistently spread across the programme. So it is clear that a highly skilled and enthusiastic programme manager is essential
The role and responsibilities of the programme manager are to:
- Promote the concept of mentoring and ensure commitment from the business – making sure that senior management understands what mentoring will be and that it is supportive of mentoring is essential. They identify where mentoring will add most value to the organisation by showing how it can solve real business issues and they will bring a strong argument explaining how this will work.
- Define and implement the process – this will include defining the objectives and success criteria for the programme; supporting the planning for recruitment, matching and training of potential participants, how the programme will be measured and maintaining the momentum in the programme
- Provide and maintain confidentiality – ensuring information gathered as part of the mentoring programme is secure and to provide support to participants around the issue of confidentiality
- Give honest and constructive feedback to mentees and mentors – this may be at the recruitment stage, during the matching or if relationships are struggling and you need to intervene
- Managing expectations of all stakeholders – this will involve ensuring that all participants have sufficient initial understanding of their roles and responsibilities before starting their role as a mentee/mentor but also that line managers and any steering group are also aware of what is expected of them
- Provide appropriate resources for support – these will need to be identified during the programme design, but the programme manager will be the one who ensures that it is easy to get involved, that the understand any matching process, receive the training they need for their role, that pairs have access to suitable resources, further development and the opportunity to reflect with their peers
- Evaluate the scheme – it will be their responsibility to ensure that not only does measurement take place but that the data is analysed, shared and responded to. A great programme manager is constantly assessing the status of their programme and making adjustments to it based on both the firm and anecdotal evidence they see. This will also need to be done upon completion of the programme
- Keep all stakeholders well informed – this involves sharing all evaluation data and detailing any challenges that they’ve encountered. Keeping any steering group or senior management close to the programme will give you more scope to enhance the programme and develop it and keep them motivated to support it.
- Maintain financial control over the programme
- Set up and maintain administrative records for the programme – there is a great deal of data that needs to be gathered during the course of a programme and much of it is important to log so that you can refer back to it at a later stage. For example:
- Mentee and mentor details
- Training attended
- Matching details
- Date of first meeting
- Waiting list of participants
- Relationship and programme outcomes
A programme manger will ensure appropriate systems are put in place to track this data and will store and share this data safely.
A great Programme Manager will also ideally have the following skills:
- Good interpersonal skills and insights
- Political astuteness
- Knowledge of the organisation and culture
- Clarity around business priorities and politics of the organisation
- Good communication skills (both verbal and written)
- Access to top management
- Time to listen and become involved
- Facilitation skills
- Project management skills
- Working knowledge of mentoring theory and practice
- Experience of being a mentee and/or mentor
Some hints and tips from previous programme managers are:
- Do not take this on if you already have a heavy workload it takes a lot of time and energy as you get constant queries
- Do not underestimate the need for good administrative support – there is a lot of admin in getting things set up and tracking relationships without interfering in them
- Set realistic timescales – getting stakeholders on board, recruiting participants and getting training in place and participants booked onto to that takes time
- Managing expectations: do not underestimate both mentee and mentor expectations of the programme and be prepared to handle difficult conversations:
- Directors or Chief Executives not being happy with their mentee
- Mentees who are not given the mentor they wanted
- Not everyone will get paired up, if they do it may not work out
- I cannot stop your mentor or mentee moving on
- Your requirements may not all be met and in some cases not at all, so keep an open mind
- Just because a mentor or mentee is part of the programme it does not mean they cannot use their own initiative to get a mentor or mentee
- A guide that can go out to line managers is very helpful; lots of mentees request this
- Giving feedback once pairings are set up is very important
- Accept that not everyone will be happy
- Do not rely on just one mechanism of communication to advertise the scheme
- If you use matching forms, double check what information you need in them – the more data you collect the more challenging it is to match
- Do not miss out on Chief Executive and Director-level mentors just because they cannot attend training: most have done mentoring already and are very good at it
- Ensure you have support and a source of advice to keep you sane
© David Clutterbuck, 2014
Prof David Clutterbuck
Coaching and Mentoring International Ltd
Woodlands, Tollgate,
Maidenhead,
Berks, UK. SL6 4LJ
www.coachingandmentoringinternational.org
e-mail: info@coachingandmentoringinternational.org
Company registration number : 08158710