WHY MENTORING?

Mentoring - The Business Case | Mentoring & Talent

MENTORING & TALENT

It doesn't matter how brilliant your strategic plan is - it will be the people who make or break it.

An overwhelming cry from successful organisations is their need to recruit, reward and retain superb people. They want to build cultures which will attract high performers.There is little point in chasing ambitious goals without the right people to deliver results, people who are self managing and who have a values 'fit'.

They know that they have made themselves vulnerable sometimes in not pulling a pipeline of talent through the business. This has left them exposed when key people leave. Mentoring can contribute here.

If you take this view, that people are not an organisation's biggest asset, they are its only asset, then getting these people to peak performance over a sustained period is the key to driving things forward.

Leading edge businesses understand that to succeed they need to build on their people's talent and their strengths, not focus on their weaknesses. They need to put the emphasis on the 'engine' in their people, not the 'trailer'. A natural belief from this is that people's greatest potential for development lies in their area of greatest strength, not in their area of weakness. This is totally transforming the thinking about the way learning and development plans are shaped. Building on strengths can deliver excellence, building on weakness is at best remedial.

Mentoring is being used as a key vehicle in helping people identify and build on their key strengths, understand their successful style and craft their best possible contribution to the business.

Each of us has an 'A' Talent, an area where we come alive and do brilliant work. We also have a 'B' and 'C' Talent. Companies hire people for their 'A' Talent and want them to use this most of the time. This is a win for the individual because they can do work they find fulfilling. It is also a commercial win for the company because it benefits from them performing outstanding work.

Mentors can help people shape their contribution around their 'A' Talent and help them position the business benefit for them focussing in this way. Smart organisations build jobs around people and their strengths rather than squeeze them into a list of competencies.

This helps people shape a positive future for themselves and their organisations.

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