Replace Yourself!

Here’s a story my mentor told me about his mentor.

My mentor is a master facilitator.  Previously, he worked with corporate communities empowering them and helping them to be the best they could be.  He was good at this, and very successful.  One day his mentor came to him and asked, “What’s next?” which took my mentor by surprise.  What could possibly come next now that he had reached the pinnacle of success? 

“What happens when you’re gone?” his mentor continued.  “Who’s going to be there to take over what you can do?  What you must do next is replace yourself.”  And now this is what my mentor does for a living, training people around the world to do what he does and replacing himself in every continent on the globe.

It sounds like an unusual job description, but as a mentoring manager, replacing yourself is exactly what you need to be doing for your organization.  What you have learned over the years in your position and what you have contributed to your organization’s growth and success is what your organization needs for continuity.  Who’s going to be there to take over what you can do? 

Let’s discuss some of the important experience you’re bringing to a mentoring relationship.

First is your management perspective.  You’ve acquired this through years of experience working in various positions, and now you know the ropes more than most do.  You have cross-functional experience, so you understand how the different parts of your organization and others work together.  This enables you to share how things get done and help learners understand how their activities contribute to the organization as a whole.

Second is your influence.  Having been around for a while, you are fluent in your organization’s culture and understand how to work with existing power structures.  This makes you a powerful advocate for your learners.  In addition to creating the right atmosphere to develop them and showing the rest of the organization that what they are doing is important, you are also providing opportunities for your learners to develop.

Third is your personal style.  Having been successful in your position for a number of years, you’ve obtained a fair amount of respect or even admiration for who you are and what you’ve done.  This makes you a role model for your learners.  You have a set of habits, approaches, tools and skills and they can see see first hand how you use them.

Your organization and the individuals within it need what you know.  To ensure the continuity of your contributions, replace yourself.

Five Qualities for the Mentoring Manager

Two years ago, I attended a mentor training program.  Along with my fellow trainees, our upcoming assignment was to mentor a group of new facilitators that would be attending a training program the following week.

Although I expected that the content of the program would focus on mentoring techniques, the program facilitator began by spending the first two days getting us to probe deep within ourselves to determine what it was that we were bringing to the mentor experience.  “Part of your job as a mentor,” he told us, “is to be a role model for others.  And the only way to really understand that role is to understand yourself.”

Are you interested in mentoring individuals for your company?  Do you have what’s necessary for success in developing someone is a one-on-one relationship?  Let’s discuss some of the qualities for successful mentoring and see how you manage.

Obviously, the first quality of the mentoring manager is management experience.  Your experience should provide a window to the world outside for those you mentor so they can get out of their own corners and begin looking outwards.  In addition, through their relationship with you, they should be able to get some second-hand management experience in your business.

Second, mentoring managers need organizational insight.  Your knowledge about how your organization behaves should enable your learners to navigate it on their own.  Your leverage within your organization will also be useful for supporting your learners during negotiations and providing opportunities for further learning.

The third quality mentoring mangers need is credibility.  As a mentor you become a role model to your learners and the extent to which they look up to you will be defined by your own personal and professional credibility within your organization.

"Know thyself."  -  Socrates

A fourth quality valued highly by learners is accessibility.  The success of your mentor relationship begins with making yourself available, especially during the early stages when your learners may require more time and attention than you can give.  Discuss, agree to and honor the terms you establish with your learners so that you can provide what they need.

Fifth, mentoring managers need excellent communication skills.  Your learners will run up against walls that you need to talk them over.  They’ll need correction and critique.  They’ll also need to be verbally rewarded for a job well done.  Your ability to listen and respond in these situations will make all the difference in your relationship.

These five qualities are the foundation of what a successful mentoring manager needs.  If you possess them, someone is waiting for your help.

The Value of Mentoring

“People who grew up in difficult circumstances and yet are successful have one thing in common; at a critical juncture in their adolescence, they had a positive relationship with a caring adult.”  Former US President Clinton said this.

If you’ve read Bill Clinton’s memoirs, you know about his difficult circumstances – the early death of his father, the turbulent relationship between his mother and abusive stepfather – and yet, because he was given proper instruction by the right mentor at the right time in his life, Bill Clinton went on to serve for two terms as President of the United States.

Can you remember a significant mentor in your life?  Someone who set you straight or helped you develop your potential?  I can.  I remember three.  One helped me understand the value of teamwork and mutual support, one motivated me to begin my career overseas, and one rearranged my paradigm for how I work to develop others.  My life, and probably yours as well, would have been much different had it not been for these caring, influential mentors.

The need for mentoring is not limited to adults working with adolescents.  There is also a need for mentoring as a manager within your organization.  In addition to managing your staff, your role is also to mentor and develop them as individuals for their benefit, for yours, and for your company’s.

Mentoring adds new dimensions to your role as a manager.  You also become a facilitator, a developer and an empowerer.  You work with individuals to bring out the best in them as you, in turn, become their role model.

Mentoring is a useful alternative to training for many reasons.  For one, it’s flexible and can be accomplished in many different ways requiring only time and two people.  Also, it’s an off-line activity, so it needn’t interfere with normal operations.  Unlike training, mentoring is individual and can meet individual needs as group development activities cannot.  It’s also all-encompassing in its focus, while training tends to be on specific technical or functional skill areas.

Finally, mentoring requires no outside resources or expenditures.  Your expertise and your willingness to devote your time to developing others is all you need.

The success of your organization depends, to a large extent, on continuity.  This means that you always have a large pool of talent within your organization to fill critical positions when necessary.  To help ensure this, a successful mentoring program may be just what you need.

Coming Up with Answers

Here’s a question for you.  Is it reasonable to expect that you should be able to answer every question that your audience asks at the end of your business presentations?

Well, no.  It’s not.  As much as you prepare, the questions your audience asks are unpredictable and, as a result, if you miss one or two, your audience will generally be forgiving.  They do expect, however, that one or two will be your limit and that when you do respond it will be more than just a simple shrug of your shoulders accompanied by a dopey, “I don’t know.”

So what do you do?  If you don’t know the answer to a particular question your audience asks, how do you answer?  Let me offer you five techniques for evasive action.

The first is Repetition.  Most of the questions that your audience asks will be for clarification, so if someone asks you a question and you’re not sure of the answer, treat it as a clarification question.  Go back to one of your slides that comes close to what your questioner has asked for and explain it a second time in a different way.  Very often this will be what they need and when you ask, “Does this clarify things for you?” they’ll often answer with a ‘yes’.

The second technique is Responsibility.  If you don’t know the answer, refer your questioner to someone in your office or on your team who does know.  You may be delivering a sales presentation, for example, and someone may ask you a technical question.  It would be nice if you could answer, but it will be understood if you explain that your company has expert technicians who can answer that question much better than you can.

The third technique for sidestepping a question is Delay.  You hear this one all the time expressed in five words: “I’ll get back to you.”  This answer, however, suggests that you do not know the answer, and you have to do additional research.  Delay can be more effective if you explain to your questioner that you can answer the question, but the information you need isn’t with you; it’s back in your office on your desk.  As soon as you get back, you’ll send whatever your questioner has asked for.

Throwback is a fourth useful technique.  If you don’t know the answer, find someone in the audience who does.  Turn the question into a discussion and get as much information from your audience as possible.  Then go back to your questioner and ask whether he or she needs more information.

Finally, a fifth technique you can use when you don’t know the answer is Reference.  You might not know the answer, but you do know where it can be found.  Refer the questioner to a book, a magazine article or a website that you’re familiar with. 

Not all of these techniques will work in every situation.  However, if you use them wisely, you can still wind up looking good even when you don’t have all the answers.