Great post. Thanks for sharing. My condolences on your lost.

I have been fortunate enough to have been under the wing of quite a few mentors in my career, as well as had the privilege of having the opportunity to provide for a mentee on two occasions. I couldn’t agree more that having these types of relationships is one of the single best ways to grow ones skills, knowledge and ability as they relate not only to the world of work, but life in general.

One thing I have begun to question, however, is the effectiveness of “implementing” a mentoring program. In my experience, those relationships that have proved most valuable for me have blossomed in an “organic” way, as opposed to what is typically a company’s “systemic” approach. Not to say that they just occur naturally, as mentoring relationships require a great degree of proactive effort for both parties, and it is always best to formally recognize the relationship as such, but rather to say that not every manager is capable of being a mentor, and not every employee sees the value in being a mentee (although an organization could certainly hire with an eye towards those qualities).

Unfortunately, as the world of work has changed over the past decade, so has the capacity for these relationships to grow to their full potential. Employee tenure is down nearly across the board- particularly for younger employees- and management has been tasked with “doing more with less”, which leaves precious little time outside the day-to-day business of doing their actual jobs. Unless you are lucky enough- and work hard enough- to have a relationship with an individual outside of your day-to-day business operations, then you’re on the right path, but more and more that is proving to be more difficult. And while there is always the option for “digital relationships”, mentor relationships typically are focused not only on professional development, but also personal development, which really does require more consistent interaction.

As with most things of value, the mentor/mentee relationship requires a lot of hard work and dedication on both sides… but as with all great challenges, those met the right way will lead to the greatest reward.

They also develop clear definitions of success and progress for new initiatives, so use metrics and data heavily to manage and monitor their projects. I think what I meant in that bullet was that technology and business move so fast that successful, forward thinking companies are ready to accept risk in order to leverage cutting edge solutions, but that they mitigate that risk by trusting in their stakeholders to research and select the right solutions.

Great post!

Cathy

Thank you for your kind words about my blog. On this topic, it appears that more readers agree with you than me!

First a point of clarification: I always want to understand a candidate’s salary expectations up front, I just don’t want to disclose the salary range up front. As a third party, our job is to ensure we don’t waste everyone’s time on a deal that cannot be closed. I think we all agree on that point.

So the real question is just this: Who shares their number first, employer or candidate? I stand by our approach, candidate shares their number first, and then we use that to inform the clinet what the “real market rate” is for someone with those skills.