It’s 2021 and you have set out personal and professional new year goals and resolutions. The challenge is: how to action and sustain them?

We all know that it’s hard to change behaviour after the initial glow of the new year resolution begins to fade.  Our advice is to consider getting a Mentor to help you make your commitments happen in reality. David Clutterbuck, an expert in this behavioural field, put it simply with the title of one of his early books: ‘Everyone needs a Mentor’.

Mentoring makes sense. It has wide and proven application including:

• Preparing and supporting people through change.
• Helping to implement goals.
• Virtual or face to face onboarding
• Assisting performance management.
• Supporting self-directed learning and development
• Reverse mentoring

Mentoring has a long history…

Mentoring originates in Greek mythology. Odysseus left for the Trojan war and he entrusted his son to his friend ‘mentor’ to offer him guidance and support while he was away.

Mentoring, also known as ‘buddying’, has survived over the centuries through war and peace. It has wide application today, from preparing and supporting people through changes linked to the pandemic, through to helping ensure successful implementation of those elusive new year goals.

During Legal Island’s November Annual Review of Employment Law 2020 Conference, mentoring featured as one of the key tips endorsed by Morgan McKinley and spotlighted in a case-study by Zendesk using mentoring to help new hires quickly move up the learning curve. In Zendesk, a Buddy gives the new hire the special feeling of being supported from Day 1, a go-to person for those difficult questions that we all have when we start out in a new organisation.

Simon Sinek, one of the popular thought leaders recently endorsed mentoring on LinkedIn in ‘How Mentorship really works’ and highlighted that there can be significant advantages for both the mentor and the mentee or protégé.  Closer to home, Denise Lloyd an experienced, former HR Business Partner and current Board member of the charity One in Four, also recommended mentoring or having a buddy as an important step in helping develop the knowledge and skills of new Board members: “it’s a proven way to help a new Board member quickly and successfully navigate an organisation”.

Professional bodies like Engineers Ireland, the CIPD and the IITD promote mentoring with their members. These organisations help their members in the area of people development and not only endorse mentoring but also, in the case of the CIPD and IITD, host their own in-house mentoring programmes to help members progress their own careers.

“Mentoring in the workplace tends to describe a relationship in which a more experienced colleague shares their greater knowledge to support the development of an inexperienced member of staff. It calls on the skills of questioning, listening, clarifying and reframing that are also associated with coaching.” (source: CIPD Coaching and Mentoring Factsheet.)

In many ways although coaching and mentoring technically mean different things, for many line managers the terms are used interchangeably. Check out ‘Coaching and Mentoring: Aids to the Development of Performance’ to better understand the differences.

Baby Boomers Reverse Mentor Millennial Zoomers

A recent trend that has emerged is called ‘reverse mentoring’ where organisations are now sharing the knowledge and insights of younger workers with, for example, their older colleagues. This intergenerational mentoring is helping to upskill and build greater engagement between the different generation types where baby boomers are matched with millennials. In this instance, the more experienced manager can help the enthusiastic new starter to, for example, understand and manage the organisational politics and in return the millennial upskills their mentor in social media. It’s a win-win and a case of the baby boomer reverse mentoring with the baby zoomer!