Chapter 12

Performance Management and Mentoring

Learning objectives

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1. Definitions and concepts of performance mentoring
2. Characteristics of mentoring ©

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3. Mentoring and Coaching
4. Benefits of mentoring
5. Types of mentoring
6. Foundations of a mentoring programme
7. Ethical guidelines for effective mentoring
8. Culture of mentoring
9. Executive mentoring

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 Introduction
Mentoring is defined as those activities, conducted by a mentor to help another person to successfully perform
the assigned job and also to develop, so that the person, who is being helped, can rise through the ladder. The
person who helps is known as the mentor and the person who receives the help is known as the mentee.

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Mentoring is the relationship through which employees of the organizations are exposed to practical
knowledge, guidance, support, and feedback from more experienced employees within a given setting. ©

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Employees of the organizations attach meaning to the work constructs. Hence they need guidance to learn
contextually in relations with others. Good mentors facilitate learning to help employees to understand the
ways and means of problem solving.

Mentoring offers primarily two types of benefits; vocational benefits and psychosocial benefits. Vocational
benefits are achieved in terms of acquisition of specific skills.

Psychosocial benefits are those which assist the employees to socialize, improve their interpersonal skills, and
allow them for collaborative critical thinking, planning, reflection and feedback.

A mentor manages the mentoring process through four recognizable phases of relationship: Initiation,
Cultivation, Separation, and Termination.

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Characteristics of Mentoring
Characteristics of mentoring as under:
 It is essentially a supportive form of development.
 It focuses on helping an individual, manage their career and improve skills.
 Personal issues can be discussed more productively unlike in coaching where the emphasis is on
performance at work.

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 Mentoring activities have both organizational and individual goals.

Mentoring and Coaching ©

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Coaching is a process of developing skills and knowledge of people, to improve their job performance.
Hence coaching primarily focuses on achieving the goals of the organization. In that respect coaching is more
specific to facilitate achievement of employees’ goals so that organizational goals are achieved. It is narrow in
approach.

Mentoring is more holistic. It builds relationships, and even inculcates confidence in employees’ which
autnomously compels to take higher responsibilities and deliver the best results.

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 The following table explains the difference between mentoring and coaching:
Mentoring
It ensures long lasting relationship.
It can be even informal and can take place at any
point of time and anywhere, depending on the
needs of the mentee.
The process considers the mentee from a broader
perspective
Mentor during the process of mentoring shares
his/her own experience.
Here the focus is on career and personal
development
Revolves more around developing the mentee
professionally
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Coaching
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In this case relationship is relatively for a shorter
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duration.
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It is more formal and structured.
It focuses on specific issues or specific areas of
development of the individual.
Coach shares his knowledge, specific to the
occupational role.
Here the focus is on development/issues at work
Revolves more around specific development
areas/issues
Benefits of Mentoring
Mentoring benefits the organization in many ways. Some of these benefits are listed below:
1. It exerts positive impact on recruitment and retention.
2. It is very effective for succession planning

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3. It makes organizations adaptable to change
4. It increases productivity through better engagement and job satisfaction.
©

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Also mentoring benefits the mentored person in several ways, as under:
1. By facilitating development of mentored person in terms of knowledge, technical skills and behavioural
improvements
2. By better management of career goals
3. By developing wider network of influence
4. By increasing the confidence and self awareness which helps in building performance and contribution

Also mentoring benefits the organization as a whole, more particularly the line managers and the HR as both of
them benefit through better employee focus and engagement.

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Types of mentoring
Mentoring can take several forms. Some of the widely used mentoring forms are explained below:
1. One-to-one mentoring
2. Group mentoring (or mentoring circles)
The advantages of group mentoring are:

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 efficient use of mentors, with a higher ratio of mentees to mentors
 the mentees in the group can build a rapport and integrate with colleagues ©
 the mentees can receive multiple sources of feedback

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However, group mentoring has several disadvantages:
 some people do not work well in a group environment
 there may be concerns about confidentiality
 the mentee has less or possibly no one-on-one contact with a mentor
 Group mentoring has to be more structured than one-to-one mentoring as scheduling is necessary in order
to accommodate everyone.
3. Remote mentoring
If the mentor and mentee do not work in the same location, the mentoring may have to be done over the phone
or via e-mail and/or some other method of electronic communication - also known as e-mentoring – e.g instant
messaging or social networking.

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Foundations of a mentoring programme
Mentoring as a tool is used by the organizations to nurture and grow their people. An effective mentoring
programme needs to comply with the following assumptions:
 Must enforce deliberate learning: Mentor should promote intentional learning, making use of several
methods like; instruction, coaching, sharing of experiences, modeling and advising; with the focus on

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building the capacity of the mentees.
 Must share both the failure and success: Sharing of such experiences of the mentor helps the mentee to
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understand the dynamics of experiences and accordingly they can also count on their practices with

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appropriate selection of right or wrong.
 Mentors need to tell their stories: Telling to the mentees personal scenarios, anecdotes and case examples
develop better insight for the mentees.
 Mentoring should be ongoing.
 Mentoring needs to be a joint venture between the mentor and the mentee.
 Mentoring must provide a sense of purpose to evoke responses from the mentees.

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 Ethical guidelines for effective mentoring programme
To ensure that the mentoring programme of the organizations yield results; it is necessary to follow certain
ethical guidelines as under:
 Ensure discussion between the mentor and the mentee. Such discussions may be continuous, may be
conducted at length, so that the relations between the mentor and the mentee strengthens.

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 Both the mentor and the mentee should respect each other’s time.
 The mentoring process should facilitate in achieving the mentees’ goals, and not the goal of the mentors.
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 Mentors must be sensitive to diversity and cultural issues while mentoring.

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With the above ethical protocol, it is expected apart from the ethical compliance, organizations can also
achieve the desired results

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Culture of Mentoring
Mentoring culture can be defined as certain believe and the norms, that are instrumental in shaping the process
of mentoring in organizations. With a positive mentoring culture, organizations can achieve excellence in
business.

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Some of the important constituents of mentoring culture are:
 Accountability: To make people accountable, it is necessary to inculcate shared intention; sense of
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responsibility and ownership.

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 Alignment: Cultural-fit promotes shared understanding on the organizational values, practices, mission
and goals.
 Communication: The culture of communication by increasing the mutual trusts and relationships, achieve
excellence and positive results in mentoring.
 Value and Visibility: For developing a sound culture of mentoring, mentors also make effective use of
storytelling, role modeling, rewarding, recognition, celebrating, etc. Such activities create proposition and
also sustain the inculcated value and visibility.
 Demand: The mentoring culture in organization need to be developed in a way so that people
autonomously demand for the mentoring support.
 Multiple mentoring relationships: Sound culture of mentoring also ensures role reversal for the mentees,
i.e., mentors become mentees and mentees become mentors.

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 Making use of multiple mentoring opportunities: This combination approach reinforces the culture of
mentoring. For example many organizations combine group and one-on-one mentoring to reinforce the
process of learning.
 Education and Training: Strategic integration of the training and development function with the process
of mentoring facilitates in exchanging the best practices and promote peer learning.

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Executive Mentoring
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Conventionally in organizations, mentoring programmes are used for operation level workers, to make them

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understand technology-enabled process of manufacturing. However, today’s complexity of business also
requires systematic executive mentoring.

Executive mentoring is reinforced by the management development and education programmes in

organizations.

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Executive mentoring by stimulating the individual growth of the executives, build their capabilities to enable
them to deliver the business performance. It benefits the executives, which also indirectly benefits the
organization in following ways:
 It builds a solid personal foundation and inculcates strong confidence in executives.
 It develops executives’ personal vision and uncover their value priorities

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 It enables executives to think strategically and inspire people down the line with a shared vision, mission
and values
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 It facilitates in determining appropriate goals, strategies, tactics and action plans

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 It enhances their management and leadership skills
 It identifies their personal winning strategies
 It helps executives to overcome their unhealthy habits, which are counter-productive for performance.
 It helps executives for positive personal change and accordingly they can demonstrate high commitment
for achieving the performance results for the organizations.

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