7 Tips for Building Mentoring to Develop Employees and Raise Engagement

7 Tips for Building Mentoring to Develop Employees and Raise Engagement

When I decided I wanted to write a book, I was utterly terrified and baffled. Where do I start?

Thankfully, I’d learned years ago that I do not have to go it alone with new challenges: I called on a trusted mentor. Elaine Biech has written or edited more than 50 books. She knows about this thing! I’m grateful for the amazing insights Elaine shared with me to guide my book publishing process. I couldn't have done it as quickly or as well without her mentoring support.

Have you had a mentor or mentored someone? I actually devoted a whole chapter in Employee Development on a Shoestring to the idea that mentoring can be a wonderful tool to develop employees. It is also an amazing employee engagement booster. In this post, I’ll share some of the highlights with you about what mentoring is and why it’s helpful, who is the ideal candidate for this kind of relationship, and seven tips for creating a strong mentoring program and/or building a great mentoring relationships which will increase both learning and engagement in your organization, department, team, or even just yourself.

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Halelly Goes to Vlogland - Welcome, and 2 Requests

What are your big goals for this year? How are you forwarding your action on achieving them?

Well one of my goals this year was to venture into the wonderful world of video blogging. And I've decided to just leap into the deep end. So - here is my first 'vlog'. I hope you like it - and please give me suggestions and feedback. Thanks! 

TRANSCRIPT

Halelly: Hi. This is Halelly, from TalentGrow, and welcome to my first video blog, or vlog. I wrote down my goals for 2012 and this is one of them – I want to create more video delivery of content. I write in my blog, I wrote a book, I speak with clients via my workshops and my conference presentations and my training and facilitation work and teambuilding, but I’ve never done a video. So I decided, why not? Let’s do it.

You write down a goal, you have to write down what actions you’re going to take to make that goal a reality. There has to be something that you can do everyday, or at least every week, to move you every big closer to achieving that goal, even if it’s just baby steps. Because stuff gets in the way. Emergencies, crises, other people’s priorities, all can actually hijack your goal. And sometimes if we don’t revisit them on a regular basis, they can go to the wayside. And that’s a shame, because your goals are what’s important to you. It’s what you decided you really want to do. So I hope I encourage you to work on your goals, not to forget them.

So, this is my attempt to take a baby step and so I decided that my very first vlog will be one that’s kind of easy because I’m just going to make it public. Now I can’t back out because everybody knows I’m planning doing vlogs. And I also want to ask you – I actually have two requests. The first request I have for you is for suggestions on content. What topics would you like me to talk about in short segments, about three, four minute segments, that don’t take a long time to listen to or to watch, but that bring you value, that teach you something new or give you an idea or make you think of something in a different way. You know, the topics I usually focus on are related to leadership and communication, especially interpersonal communication in the workplace, related to employee development and employee learning, and also related to working in teams and to emotional intelligence, especially at work.

So what do you want to hear about? Do you have a special challenge or a particular question, something that came up that’s been bugging you or you weren’t sure if you handled it the best way? Please share with me any ideas you have, because that’s going to be really helpful. As I said, I’ve lined up some ideas already, but I’d love to hear what will make it valuable for you. So that’s my first request, what content would you like me to share with you?

My second request is for feedback. All of us see ourselves as we can, but we don’t really know how other people see us. We don’t really know what effect or impact we’re having. We know what our intentions are, but not our impact. So I really need to know, how am I doing? What could I do differently to make this better? I’d love for some specific suggestions from you, and you can put them into the comments, you can send them to me in the various social media. I’m very active in social media. Or you can just email them to me, halelly@talentgrow.com is my email address. And I would love to hear from you. It’s going to make it really much better for you and for me because my goal is to give you quality and useful content. So thank you so much for watching, and listening to my first vlog. And I really look forward to connecting with you soon. Have a wonderful day and let’s make this the best year yet. Take care.


Sign up to my free weekly newsletter and get more actionable tips and ideas for making yourself a better leader and a more effective communicator! It’s very short and relevant with quick tips, links, and news about leadership, communication, and self-development. Sign up now

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headphones coffee cereal book by Kevin_Morris via Flickr Creative Commons.jpg

When I first told my husband about the idea for writing a book about employee development OUTSIDE the classroom and outside 'the box', he responded, “You mean, you’re going to write yourself out of a job?” Why would someone who makes her living through facilitating learning (aka 'Training'), often within a classroom or a formal learning program, try to help supervisors, HR and training professionals, and employees find ways to develop skills outside the classroom and without her help?

0911523FCD5F.jpg

Well, I don’t think Employee Development on a Shoestring will put the training industry out of business. Far from it. I wrote this book because I am passionate about learning and development. I wrote this book because I am passionate about supporting leaders in their efforts to become more effective. And I wrote this book because often, training is simply not the answer.

It is estimated that 70 percent of all leadership development takes place via on-the-job experiences rather than formal learning events. The “70-20-10 rule,” as this idea has become known, says that development happens in three ways: 70 percent on-the-job experience, 20 percent through relationships and feedback, and 10 percent from formal training opportunities.

All over the world, supervisors and professionals like you are faced with a challenging task of helping their staff members grow and develop within limited budgets and timelines and ever-increasing pressures to perform more with less. Supervisors and employees desperately need alternatives and complements to the usual approach, because it is not enough. And so many of you are so overwhelmed with a growing workload that you simply don’t have the time or the requisite knowledge to come up with creative ideas for developing skills within the parameters that are presented to you.

Well, this book is here to help.

You don’t have to spend any time searching for ideas, because they’re right here in this book. You don’t have to spend time thinking up possible obstacles to each method—I’ve done that for you. And you don’t have to spend lots of time designing implementation plans because I’ve created the tools and supports that can help you quickly ensure that your employee development methods are successful and sustainable.

Who Can Benefit From Reading This Book?

Employee Development on a Shoestring is written primarily to address the needs of those in a position to help employees develop in their current jobs. Whether you are a supervisor, a manager, a director, or an executive, a key part of your role (“Job 1” as Elaine Biech puts it in her foreword to the book) is to ensure that employees are growing and learning. If you are a talent management, human resource, personnel, talent development, training, organization development, or workplace learning professional, your job is to ensure that supervisors throughout your organization are tending to this “Job 1.” Perhaps you are a mentor or career counselor or coach, and you are using this book to help your protégé or client make career development plans. And if you are a self-motivated, self-starting employee, you may enjoy reading this book to get ideas about how to take your development into your own hands rather than waiting for others to suggest strategies to you. Anyone who wants to ensure that employees are developing new skills and knowledge and who realizes that sending them to a training class cannot be, and should not be, the only path to achieve that outcome, should read and benefit from the ideas presented in this book.

Modified excerpt from the Introduction to Employee Development on a Shoestring by Halelly Azulay (ASTD Press, 2012)

Headphones image by Kevin_Morris via Flickr Creative Commons


Sign up to my free weekly newsletter and get more actionable tips and ideas for making yourself a better leader and a more effective communicator! It’s very short and relevant with quick tips, links, and news about leadership, communication, and self-development. Sign up now

Also, subscribe to my podcast, The TalentGrow Show, on iTunes to always be the first in the know about new episodes of The TalentGrow Show! http://apple.co/1NiWyZo 

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