Approach
The direct benefit of a mentoring program is the development and growth of talent.
The indirect benefits are the attraction and seduction of talent.
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What is your organization’s biggest challenge?
At IMS we believe that, of all the challenges that an organization faces for its survival and continuous growth, the most relevant is to attract, develop and retain a workforce with high levels of responsibility, commitment and motivation.
We understand that this is the most difficult and, at the same time, the one that can make a substantial difference in the current scenario of change. An organization’s competitive advantage is directly proportional to the ability of its people to respond, anticipate and innovate.
The size of an organization, its culture, the degree of maturity in talent management, the sector of activity in which it operates, the needs or type of applications it wishes to implement, are just some of the elements that differentiate it and make it unique. This requires different approaches to effectively implement a mentoring program.
Whether an organization is planning to launch a mentoring program or to improve the effectiveness of the ones it already has in place to achieve a higher ROI, our consultants can assist in each and every one of the four phases (“4 Es”) of the program.
Launching a new mentoring program
When we assess an organization’s readiness to roll out a new mentoring program, we help it conduct a cost/benefit analysis, design an action plan that meets its needs, and accompany and advise it throughout its implementation.
Improve the effectiveness of your current program
We work with your organization to align your existing mentoring programs with tangible and measurable business goals, and help you generate superior career development results for your employees.
What are the 8 critical elements you need to consider before deploying an Effective Mentoring Program?
See the 8 elements
Alignment with business objectives and strategy, ensuring its value contribution and sustainability.
Its effective communication and appropriate sponsorship.
Establishment of appropriate criteria in the choice of participants (mentors, mentees and program managers)
Evaluation of their skills based on the application of the mentoring program to be implemented.
Education in the key skills for the effective performance of their roles.
Definition of the criteria for matching mentors and mentees.
Design of support structure and necessary resources for the follow-up of the process.
Measurement of results and identification of best practices
The IMS team of consultants and facilitators has the necessary expertise to plan, design and execute your mentoring interventions taking into account these critical factors.
Benefits
We help on whether or not to carry out a mentoring program and how to make it optimally aligned with the strategic and business needs of the organization.
We collaborate in the creation of an Effective Mentoring Program once the program objectives, success indicators and action plans for the Mentoring Program are determined.
We offer support to implement the most effective mentoring process for the organization, ensuring the most efficient use of the most valuable resources: people, money and time.
We ensure that the mentoring program integrates and supports the other talent development management initiatives after its implementation to maximize the established expected results.
Effective Mentoring
Effective Mentoring is the result of IMS’ extensive experience in the design and implementation of mentoring programs, based on the modeling of its critical factors. This enables us to guide and accompany our partners through each step of the complete mentoring process.
We have identified, selected and enriched those practices that guarantee the achievement of results.
Effective Mentoring is based on three principles:
Alignment with business strategy
Adaptation to organizational development needs
Sustainability and return of the implemented processes, measuring the results of the program from the design of its objectives and strategic planning.
We believe that the effectiveness of a mentoring program is related to its degree of alignment with the organizational strategy and its value contribution. Effective Mentoring is based on a rigorous study of existing mentoring programs, modeling the critical factors that determine the success of such a process. We have identified, selected and enriched those practices that we believe guarantee the achievement of results.
Effective Mentoring: the difference
Regardless of the needs of an organization or the type of program it wants to implement, for it to succeed it is crucial that Program Managers understand and master their roles in advising and guiding program participants, that mentors are competent in communicating and facilitating the learning of their mentees, and that mentees are adequately prepared to leverage the mentoring relationship for their skills and career advancement.
Proper training of the protagonists (mentors, mentees and program managers) and proper understanding of the other stakeholders (managers of the above) is vital to ensure their alignment, involvement and support for the program.
Our consultants will provide the knowledge, processes and tools to design and deploy the best possible program as a key element of the organization’s business strategy.
Training to Effective Mentoring standards
Although the training programs for mentors and mentees that we develop at IMS are fully customized and adapted to the needs of each entity, there are a series of common characteristics that we respect when designing them and that we consider to be key to guarantee that you implement an Effective Mentoring ® Program:
See characteristics
The IMS skills development programs for mentors and mentees have been designed with a fully experiential approach, which allows them to work from their experience and with their experience, and thus learn to use, structure and organize it in a useful and meaningful way in their work.
Andragogic Learning
In all IMS programs we are very careful to follow andragogical principles and fundamentals that facilitate adult learning and development. The self-directed nature of learning, the involvement of the participants in the co-design and the immediacy and direct applicability of the concepts worked on, are some of the aspects that we take care of to guarantee the rational and emotional commitment of the participants with the process. Likewise, understanding and using these principles facilitates their subsequent integration by mentors and mentees in their mentoring relationship.
Adaptation
We start with a diagnosis of the key mentoring skills and competencies needed, depending on the type of mentoring program to be implemented and the skill level of the different actors.
Alignment
For an optimal and fluid fit between mentors and mentees, the complementarity of the design of their programs is necessary. At IMS we design “symmetrical” actions, which facilitate the effectiveness of the meetings between mentors and mentees and guarantee their alignment with the organization itself.
Continuous Support
Working with behaviors requires a platform that contributes to reinforcing, sustain and integrating the skills and concepts trained. In this sense, IMS training programs for mentors and mentees provide at all times the appropriate individual and group support to help participants in the effective exercise of their new role.
Implementation process
A formal Effective Mentoring program requires a series of steps that guarantee its alignment with the business strategy and with the development needs of your organization.
At IMS we consider that the 4 E’s to maximize the probabilities of success of your Effective Mentoring program is:
Select below:
Exploration
Involves the creation of a plan for your mentoring program
This is the first phase to ensure the correct alignment between the business strategy and the effective design of the mentoring process. Whether the organization is thinking of launching a mentoring program for the first time or trying to improve an existing one, IMS helps companies map out their roadmap to maximize the chances of success of mentoring initiatives.
This phase focuses on the design and development of a Mentoring Plan through which a series of key questions can be answered in an organized and structured way: from the definition of the launch and communication strategy to the establishment of the criteria and success metrics by which the effectiveness of the program will be evaluated.
Effective selection of mentors and mentees and assessment of mentors' skill level (Skills Assessment)
The success of any mentoring program depends on an effective match between the key players in the process: mentors and mentees. Without an optimal match, any of the mentoring initiatives that you try to promote may result in insignificant achievements for those involved, with the consequent risk of abandonment of the program and therefore the failure of the process.
At IMS we help to maximize the effectiveness of the selection processes, establishing selection and matching criteria based on the business objectives of the organization, as well as the Mentor Skills Assessment tailored to those cases in which it is necessary to accurately assess the degree of competence of the mentors. We also provide our partners with state-of-the-art matching techniques and technological tools to help achieve the best possible matches among mentoring program participants.
Training of the main actors of the process: mentors, mentees and process managers
Proper training of the different actors in the process (mentors, mentees and program managers) is the next necessary step to ensure the effectiveness of the mentoring process. The understanding of the different roles played by each actor, the development of specific skills and tools or the design of the meetings between mentors and mentees are some of the training areas that we address from IMS.
In this sense, it is crucial that process managers understand their functions when advising and guiding participants, that mentors understand how to communicate and facilitate the learning of their mentees, and that mentees are optimally prepared to take advantage of the mentoring relationship to advance their skills and/or career development.
Follow-up, consulting support and measurement of program results
The mentoring process concludes with the capitalization of the experience of what happened, allowing henceforth to disseminate, improve and/or replicate the Best Practices and, ultimately, to favor in the future the implementation of an effective mentoring culture in the Organization. To this end, it is necessary to design measurement criteria that allow us to monitor the effectiveness of the process throughout its development, as well as to have feedback instruments that allow us to monitor the success of the mentor-mentee relationship during and after the process.
At IMS we help to design and create tools to measure the effectiveness of mentoring programs, being able to accompany organizations both in the collection of information and in the measurement and design of precise evaluation criteria adapted to their strategic needs.
Delivery formats
All types of Intervention that IMS carries out can be delivered synchronously (face-to-face or virtual experiential workshops), asynchronously (e-learning) or in combination, achieving a high degree of versatility and adaptability to the human and logistical needs of each of our partners.
Each organization can configure its own itinerary, combining the actions and delivery formats that it considers most useful for its particular situation.
IMS can guide you on how to operationalize a mentoring program to your organization’s business goals.
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