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Give Them Options, Not Answers
Whether they’re in a formal or informal mentoring relationship with you, people will often come to you for answers. To truly help them grow in their careers, says Cheryl Gray, you shouldn’t give them answers. You should guide them in arriving at the answers on their own.
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Before You Become a Mentor
Mentors need some amount of training and a lot of empathy.
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Involve Individuals in the Mentoring Process
The secret to good mentoring is asking questions, not providing pat answers.
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Retain and Attract High Performers
Mentorship can attract and, importantly, retain high-performing employees.
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Mentorship: Identifying Skills to Develop
Mentors help people discover what areas they need to work on.
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Skills: Mentorship vs. Apprenticeship
Mentoring and apprenticeships focus on two different areas of skills, and you need to understand the difference.
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The Job of Mentors
Mentors act as process consultants, teaching mentees how to solve problems on their own.
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How Mentors Help Others Understand Their Weakness
Most people are naturally resistant to negative feedback, so it should be handled with tact.
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When Mentors Don’t Have the Answers
Even the best mentor doesn’t have the ability to solve every problem, and that’s okay.
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Mentoring Informally
Teachable moments can happen anywhere and at any time.
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The Impact of Mentoring on Succession Planning
One of the jobs of every supervisor, regardless of level, is planning for succession.
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Mentoring in the Digital Era
Mentoring will evolve in the digital era but retain its key principles.
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Becoming a More Effective Mentor
Mentors have multiple options if they want to improve in their role, many of which Paul Levy shares here.
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The Leader Sets the Example
Leaders are constantly being observed and evaluated by the people around them. Learn how to set the right example.
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Six Question Coaching Process
Becoming a better coach is easier than you think. It takes only six simple questions to make you—and your organization—better.
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The Importance of Mentoring Your People
A manager’s most important job is to develop his or her people.
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Guided Learning and Reverse Mentoring
Since young employees prefer to learn from mentors and coaches, not in classrooms or via elearning, companies are learning how to mentor in real time using media tablets and mobile devices. In reverse mentoring, young people help their elders apply social media.
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Tips on Coaching
To grow as a company, leaders need to shift responsibility to others, grow more leaders within the company. John Foster talks about effective ways to do this.
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Coaching Across Distance
Coaching at a distance takes more effort, but it can yield results in the same way as face-to-face coaching.
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Qualities of Good Leaders
In the eternal quest for a good leader, there are three qualities to look out for.
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Defining a Coaching Culture
Creating a coaching culture starts with defining a coaching culture, and there’s much work to be done before that can happen.
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Two Contexts of Mentoring
Mentors help you learn about your internal and external worlds in order to make better choices.
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Coach vs. Mentor
Mentoring and coaching have different origins but work similarly to accomplish goals.
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At the First Mentor Meeting
During their first meeting with a mentee, it’s critical for mentors to identify whether they’re the right person for the job.
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Powerful Questions
What makes a good question? The answer is a PRAIRIE: questions should be personal, resonant, acute, incisive, reverberant, innocent, and explicit.
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Building Coaching Culture Inside Teams
A high-performing team is reliant on effective coaching, a process that involves greater complexity than coaching individuals.
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How Leaders Can Improve the Quality of People's Thinking
Leaders usually try to help people’s thinking by suggesting what to do. Ask questions instead. Have a conversation. “What are you trying to achieve?” Help them come to their own insights. This is motivating, changes the brain, and helps them develop general rules.
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Coaching Team Members
When someone come to you for coaching, ask them for several solution options, invite them to consider the pros and cons of each option, then brainstorm the best option with them. Don't rush to the first solution. Step back. Ask what outcome you are trying to achieve.
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Coaches Build Self Confidence
Great coaches build self-assurance in the people they coach, so they have the confidence to tackle new challenges. As an example, Jay Conger tells how he taught his daughter to visualize a small change that helped her avoid belly flops while diving into a pool.
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Feedback That Can Have the Biggest Impact
Short, frequent feedback is more useful than scheduled meetings to address issues.
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Great Coaching: Don't Give the Answer
Good coaching is not about finding better answers; it is about asking better questions.
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Reverse Mentoring
When Cisco hires a young person out of school, they assign that person to a senior executive, to teach the older person how to navigate social media. It’s a form of reverse mentoring that benefits both parties. And the cost is zero.
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Succession Planning
Companies complain that their biggest problem is lack of talent.
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Effective Coaching
Coaching takes a lot of preparation; coaching should be a #1 priority.
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Coaching: What Gets You 90% There
In coaching more than 90 percent of the battle is confronting someone with something they need to improve.
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The Biggest Challenge for Executives: How to Receive and Get Coaching
As you ascend the corporate ladder people above you are less likely to be your coaches. To get coaching meet individually with four or five subordinates.
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The Three Tools A Senior Leader Must Use: Self-Disclosure, Inquiry and Listening
Three tools a CEO or senior leader can use are self-disclosure, inquiry, and listening.
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Mentoring Matters
Dianne Ledingham talks about how mentors were important to her development. When she left a client meeting where they had not met their objectives, a mentor congratulated her on their progress and her future potential. Having such a person was critical.
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Positive Feedback: Create Moments of Inspiration
Moments of inspiration can be pivotal to people. Remark on their accomplishments and positive attributes. Balance those moments with constructive feedback. Positive feedback is four times more powerful.
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Job One, Two & Three of Developing Your People
Great coaching starts with clear communication to your mentee that you are there for them.
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Coaching Your Team Members
Great managers don’t tell or teach. They coach.
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Coaching and Mentoring are the Key to Leadership Development
Dan Labbad explains the difference between coaching and mentoring, and he offers tips for how to develop all levels of employees to their fullest potential.
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Six-Question Approach to Coaching
The six-question approach to coaching: Where are we going? Where are you going? What do you think you are doing well? If you were your coach what would you suggest for you? How can I help? What suggestions do you have for me?
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Gender Differences in Leadership Feedback
Marshall Goldsmith describes considerations in providing feedback between genders.
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Great Mentors Ask Great Questions
A great mentor asks so many questions you're forced to think about your life in a different way.
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If You're Not Getting Better, You're Getting Worse
David Brandon warns against complacency and presents ideas and attitudes to help you inoculate your staff and company against it.
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Learn Not To Fear Feedback
Nobody's an expert at coaching and mentoring. Paula Barbary Shannon explains why providing supportive feedback is something you have to practice and do every day.
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Coaching Skills Fundamentals
Coaching is about developing individuals to the point where they can think on their own, and the two essential practices that make this possible are asking questions and listening.
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Coaching and Mentoring Can Be Taught
It’s not obvious how to mentor or coach. The Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania offers each incoming MBA candidate a personal coach, who is hired and trained as a leadership coach. Companies are encouraged to think along similar lines.
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The Importance of Mentoring
Paula Kerger talks about the importance of being aware of all the people around you in the work place and making a conscious decision to mentor those climbing the ladder.
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Close the Performance Gaps
Executives and managers who are responsible for coaching talent can employ the GAPS model to close performance gaps.
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Peer-to-Peer Coaching
A system Marshall Goldsmith intends to use for the rest of his life.
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The Benefits Of Coaching
Jason Zeman relates a personal story about how continuous coaching can encourage people to achieve their goals even when they don't believe in themselves.
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Inspiration As The Catalyst For Goals
The energy that comes from inspiration is far better than the energy that comes from obligation and duty. Myles Downey talks about how to use inspiration to set goals.
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How to Stand Out from the Competition
Focus on being excellent at one thing to differentiate yourself, or product or service, to stand out from the competition.
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When a Team Member Isn't Contributing
When a team member isn’t performing, start with questions. Don’t judge their outside with your inside — don’t judge their behavior with your assumptions. Be curious about what motivates them, how they want to contribute. Ask questions.
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'People Team' Coaches
The Motley Fool found that successful companies like Google collect many types of data on its employees. Similarly, the Motley Fool also collects many types of data on its employees that a large and growing HR “People Team” uses for coaching.
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Close the Performance Gaps
GAPS is a coaching model that helps employees understand where they are and where they need to be.
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How to Coach and Mentor
A successful mentoring program can set attrition rates below industry standards. Sujaya Banerjee shares how her organization’s mentoring program works and why it’s successful.
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Coaching & Mentoring: Find the Guru
There is a strong business case for investing in coaching and mentoring programs. Sujaya Banerjee shares the lessons she’s learned from her organization’s “Find the Guru Within” program.
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Successful Mentor Relationships
Consider younger as well as older mentors, and different mentors for different skills. The mentor should be someone who will look out for you, not just someone more experienced.
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Feedback That Can Have the Biggest Impact
Feedback is like good health. You can never have enough of it. Frequent feedback sessions during the year has a bigger impact than a formal evaluation at the end of the year.
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Great Coaching: Don't Give the Answer
Coaching is helping persons come to answers on their own or with assistance. The process the individual goes through is important, not what you give them.
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Mentors Are All Around Us
Glen Senk’s first mentor was his riding instructor, when he was ten years old. She said it doesn’t matter what you decide, just make a decision. He still teaches and uses that advice 50 years later. Glen Senk also gives other examples.
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Coaching and Mentoring for Career Development
Career development, says Martyn Redgrave, hinges on four issues: intellect, energy, ambition, and choices. Here he details how people can use each issue to further their careers.
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Good Coaches Ask Questions
Good coaches don’t give advice. They ask questions. First frame the discussion. What are the goals? Then ask questions to understand the situation, what success would look like, what action they decide to take, and how you can help resolve the topic.
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Using REPS to Measure Learning
REPS stands for 4 qualities present in people during “high velocity” learning.
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The Differences Between Mentoring and Coaching
Mentoring and coaching are often used as interchangeable terms, but they aren't quite the same thing.
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How to Be a Better Coach
1) Work on listening skills. Take a class; read; watch a video. 2) Demonstrate you’re at stake for the other person. 3) Be sensitive to behavioral triggers. Great listening includes body language like nodding, and verbal behaviors like mirroring. Also, don’t interrupt.
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Great Leaders Teach and Don't Leave People Behind
Leaders have a passion to win and truly care about people and their goals.
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Coaching a Bad Attitude
You may not be able to coach away a bad attitude, but you can coach new behaviors.
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Be a Better Coach
Coaching a reluctant employee takes a little more patience and effort.
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Great Coaches Don't Have Answers
True leadership is about letting go of your own personal journey. Karina Andersen describes why great coaches share theories, not answers.
