Mentoring should be mandatory (Harvard says)
Discover more from And It's Up to You! by Antoine Martin
Mentoring should be mandatory (Harvard says)
Teams work better if they get a mix of guidance and support. And research says that making this optional is a bad idea!
TL,DR:
Research suggests that onboarding and mentoring teams increase results by 18% compared to un-mentored staff.
The ROI on mentoring programs could be as high as 870%. 🥸
That's mostly the case if mentoring is made mandatory, otherwise, ROI drops.
Those who could make the most of mentoring would seem to be those who reject it in the first place - don't make that mistake! Start your own journey now and sign-up 👇 for this biweekly, 5 min newsletter series!
We get asked the question a lot as business coaches and mentors: what is the ROI of a mentoring program, really?
The question is always difficult to answer, in reality, because most companies lack the KPIs they need to be able to measure performance.
In fact, our own team performance survey so far seems to suggest that most small businesses simply don't have any team performance goals or KPIs at all!
(Wanna help? Follow the link and take the survey too!)
Interestingly, some smart-ass guys at Harvard Business have come to interesting conclusions that shed some light on how profitable mentoring can be, and under what conditions.
18%, and 870%
Two key numbers come out of the research (and from the summary published in the Harvard Business Review this September).
18% - that's the increase in performance for the participating sales teams that received mentoring, compared to the teams that received no mentoring.
870% - that's the return on investment (ROI) witnessed by the participants in the study.
I know, right?
Mentoring definition.
What did they do exactly, though? In that study, mentoring was mostly a matter of onboarding new staff, and giving them the keys as early and as efficiently as possible.
How? By making sure someone senior would facilitate the job of new hires, and explain the intricacies of the job as well as the complexities of the company.
The test, however, looked at the difference in results when mentoring was made optional or mandatory - which is where the thing becomes interesting.
Long story short? The best way to train your teams is to make your mentoring program mandatory.
When the program was optional, the study revealed two interesting patterns.
One, those who openly asked to participate were usually those already convinced by the self-development logic and already at an advanced stage (so they didn't need it the most).
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Two, those who made the most progress were the ones that didn't ask for it but didn't get the choice.
Yep.
Why is that? The study doesn't reach a final conclusion but formulates two hypotheses:
They lacked self-confidence and therefore felt threatened by the act of asking to join. Big potential ahead.
Or they had so much self-confidence that their weaknesses were in a blind spot, in which case mentoring was seen as irrelevant - big potential again. (Which comes back to my previous post on the imposter syndrome 👇, by the way)
Making the thing optional, said differently, could give those who feel either too secure or too insecure a way out before things have even begun.
Making the process mandatory, however, gives everyone a boost and produces a significant ROI.
The Microsoft feedback
Microsoft is a good example here because they've told Harvard about the result of their 'buddy program' - a mentoring process made available to 600 new hires.
The point was to give newbies insights on workload management, a bit of context, some best practices, and some guidance as to how to get things done more efficiently.
And their conclusion is partially aligned with what I just wrote.
Again, two insights are worth remembering.
1 - Productivity was boosted by 97% if the mentee attended more than eight meetings with the mentor in three months (that’s about a session every other week). Against a 56% increase for just one meeting (still pretty good, though).
2 - To stay aligned with the internal culture, they however made the program optional. Doing so possibly excluded those who needed the most support if we follow the Harvard study logic, but the numbers remain interesting.
How to use the thing?
There are many ways to use mentoring, really.
Of course, one way is to do what we just mentioned, i.e. show people around before you give them the keys.
In my experience though, you'll also want to reach people how to speak the same language, which is a question of making them talk to their counterparts a lot (lot) more.
You can make them work on clarifying the big picture of the company, whether that's a matter of getting aligned with its vision and mission or a matter of knowing why they have to do what they have to do.
You can make them work on task prioritization and personal organization.
You can make them work on becoming leaders, rather than 'just managers'.
Your imagination is your main limit here!
Wrap up: mentor your teams!
My five minutes are over - wrap-up time!
Onboarding and mentoring teams increase results by 18% compared to un-mentored staff.
The ROI on mentoring programs could be as high as 870%. 🥸
That's mostly the case if mentoring is made mandatory, otherwise, ROI drops, because those who could make the most of mentoring are those who reject it in the first place.
Need a hand? Hit reply or get in touch we'll get you going!