The Benefits of Mentoring are More Significant than a Short-term Fad could ever Deliver, as Long as You Ensure that the Process is 'Right':
Let Us Show You How!

Summary of Page Key Points

On this page we will consider the benefits of mentoring holistically:

* from the mentor and mentee/s perspective

* from the release and realisation of potential perspective

* from the business and its stakeholders perspective

* from the organisational development and culture perspective

* from the returns on investment perspective

What are the benefits of mentoring?

After 30+ years of earning my living in this field, I have learned the answer to that question re the benefits of mentoring is long so I've tried to group the many responses together as listed above with the five categories above.

They are not in any order of priority.

So, let's start at the heart of mentoring, the relationship between mentor and mentee(s).

What are the benefits of mentoring to the mentor?

Both mentor(s) and mentee(s) have an 'agenda' / goals / purpose and motivation for taking part.

The first benefit is that those things, whatever they are as long as they are legal, safe and legitimate, are achieved - ideally to a higher standard than planned or expected.

The self-confidence of both mentor and mentee will be lifted and they will feel a sense of achievement, satisfaction and personal and professional advancement. 

The value of these two people (human assets) will have been appreciated in both senses of the word - a very worthwhile return on mentoring investment. 

And they usually go on with an improved attitude and contribution to the business' performance.

In terms of the benefits of mentoring, where the above happens, the return on investment is likely to be unknown in total but the effect will be impressive.

For example, the mentor may benefit in seeing his or her tacit wisdom being enthusiastically learned and put into practice with great results by the mentee(s).

In helping the mentee to help himself or herself to deliver high performance standards results, she or he may grow their self esteem, improve their self-image; learn much from the (usually) younger mentee and gain valuable personal satisfaction from the process.

The major benefits of  mentoring to the mentee(s) are well summarised by his or her experience of intrinsic motivation and self-management and ownership of the mentoring process.

If the mentee truly experienced intrinsic motivation she or he will have grown as a result of their achievements;

recognition for their achievements;

using their initiative;

doing more interesting learning and work;

taking responsibility and

personal and professional advancement.

These six intrinsic motivating characteristics are all positive and powerful self-confidence, self-belief and self-worth boosters.

They are also an inspiring and different approach.

And, as a result of the strength of the relationship they build, they would also have both learned that even in a team of two, valuing differences and creating synergy (2+2=5) is a smart, fun way of working that delivers the goods more easily and reliably.

The Benefits of mentoring in terms of potential are significant:

Investing in mentoring is investing in the future and your people will know that.

I am convinced that the most significant outcome of business mentoring is the release and realisation of potential of every mentor, mentee(s), leaders, every employee and of your business.

WHY?

Well, we define potential as: unrealised possibilities and 'impossibilities'.

Benefits of mentoring that help you, your people and your business to realise more of the possibilities available puts you in control of your future (as far as that can be achieved) and creates more choices.

As a return on investment outcome, that is very worthwhile achieving and it will enable you to move from 'survival' to 'survive and thrive', if that is needed. 

Because of this it will strengthen the future that you will live in, with more security as a result.

Realising more potential pays back a return many times over and depending on what it is, it may contribute to the business's survive and thrive future for many years.

It may also be larger than the costs of mentoring making mentoring self-financing.

With our client Lubrizol, releasing and realising the potential of 70 existing employees enabled the company to survive, secured their jobs and the new culture they had created enhanced them as people.

We won a UK National Training Award for our efforts which the judges described as 'revolutionary and inspiring'.

These very impressive mentoring high performance results were achieved by the same 70 employees who had been 'written-off' by past management as the company was declining year after year.

Click The Lubrizol Story to read why? and how? we did it.

Click here to read PART TWO of the Story when we faced a different reality.

Self-financing mentoring is not unusual when the mentoring process integrates continuous improvement as our bespoke and different approach does.

As described above, when the mentoring works successfully, the mentee(s) will have demonstrated the release and realisation of more of their potential, often to their and others' surprise.

The same may be true, to a less dramatic effect, of the mentor.

That, by itself, may be a very acceptable return on investment.

However, I have often seen other results of realising potential, as have small business clients who report cost reductions in the tens of thousand of pounds, from continuous improvement ideas emerging from the mentoring process.

This is possible with very modest mentoring investments, say one mentor and one mentee, and the scale of cost reduction / profit improvement may exceed the investment - in other words realising more potential can make mentoring self-financing.

Where mentoring has led to culture change in companies, the scale of cost reduction results may be significantly larger of course.

In Ireland, working with Pfizer Ireland Pharmaceuticals, we worked on implementing a culture development process at a new site where 85% of the people employed had never worked in pharmaceuticals before.

The site became a record breaking success with all targets / goals etc. met or exceeded so that in its first year it generated sufficient funds to pay for a refurbishment of the other 4 Pfizer plants in Ireland.

Our approach facilitated the release and realisation of the potential of all 250 or so employees by working on a self-management, 'our job is our business'-owned basis with no overt direct supervision, no traditional management hierarchy.

In our culture, we believed that if you have to manage someone, you are wasting their time and yours.... and a lot of money.      So, we didn't do that.

We had two FULL TIME Team Development Mentors instead to support the self-managed employees, all of whom were now leaders (a few formal, most informal) and mentors (2 formal, everyone else informal).

Self-managed high performance teams were created with mentoring playing a key role in developing, for example, 360-degree giving and receiving paperless feedback re performance and potential for every employee.

But can mentoring improve my business and help me deliver the best results for my stakeholders, and, if so, how?

Well, as we considered above, when mentoring releases say 99% of the potential possessed by mentees, and in so doing, generates cost reduction continuous improvement ideas, that's a pretty good start, I think.

Along with the creativity and synergy that emerges from the process and often achieves unexpected high performance results as mentioned above.

These benefits of mentoring will frequently have positive impact on aspects of your business such as morale, motivation, alignment and fun, all of which will improve your business and your stakeholders will notice the differences in the services they receive and in the improved attitudes that make interactions with your business more enjoyable.

In addition though, releasing and realising more of your people's potential will release and realise more of YOUR potential as C.E.O., M.D. or small business owner AND of your formal leaders potential and, therefore, of your business's potential, won't it?.

ARE YOU SURE ABOUT THAT, Dennis?

Yes, absolutely. 

Let me ask YOU, how much of your company's potential would you say is currently being utilised successfully. The response of most people I ask that question is, 'I don't know.  Maybe 60%?'.

So, where appropriate, I may ask other questions, especially of small business owners and senior leaders, 'if running your business on 60% of its potential means running YOU into the ground, how sustainable is it as you go into whatever your future may be?' and / or, 'are YOU running the business or is your business running YOU?'. 

Wouldn't it be better if your people ran the business TODAY so that YOU can look after the business's TOMORROW?

This is achievable through the entry-point of mentoring; is one of the 'secrets of success' and is one of the major benefits of mentoring.

Our training and learning experiences for your mentors and mentees help them develop the potential, motivation and enthusiasm to achieve all of the above and enjoy doing it.

Self-owned and self-managed mentoring will stimulate the motivation and energy of mentors (including YOU) and mentees, offer an opportunity to pursue culture change (if needed) and provide a role model microcosm of the future for others in your business to follow.

It will be very emotionally supportive of YOU - it can be lonely at the top sometimes, can't it? 

If you are what some people call a 'control addict', and / or feel insecure in trusting your employees, understandably you may be disagreeing completely with what I am saying based on my 30 years experience.

I have worked with other clients with 'control addiction' who were M.D.s, C.E.O.s or small business owners and I've experienced how things and people can change with major benefits for them and their business. 

Don't hesitate to contact me via the Contact Help Form for Dennis if you wish.  I'll be happy to listen and talk with you

No obligation or cost for you is involved.

Take action now by using the form below.

Benefits of mentoring in terms of organisational and culture development and change can be difficult to 'measure' whilst also being highly significant.

With some of our small business clients, what started out with quite modest but highly successful mentoring became an 'entry-point' to significant organisational development and culture change.

With other. maybe larger, client businesses the diagnosis stage indicated that mentorship or business coaching didn't match the deeper need of large scale more fundamental changes, Lubrizol being a classic case even though it employed only 70 people.

Whatever the starting point, mentoring, when done successfully, especially displaying the self-management and self-ownership characteristics of our bespoke approach, creates a real life demonstration of what is possible in your business.

And it proves what returns on investment may be achieved, which is very persuasive if the mentoring is self-financing.

The microcosm mentorship culture it generates becomes a role-model for YOU and your people and your mentor and mentee(s) and leader(s) who were involved become valuable champions of the process and powerful positive influencers.

Their enthusiasm and personal growth will encourage others who, seeing the benefits-of-mentoring to others, may even have starting asking, 'when can we do some of that?' or 'why aren't we doing that?'.

What that means is that the receptivity to future change has improved because existing employees have seen the benefits for themselves and understand the implications for the future of your business and themselves. 

It all helps align business objectives and personal objectives so that your people are going in the same direction as YOU (and vice versa).   

How's that for a worthwhile return on investment with real significant effects?

And all of those benefits of mentoring may have resulted from one mentor and one mentee - the equivalent of the old saying: 'from small acorns, great oak trees grow'. 

In terms of benefits to returns on investment, clearly, our bespoke and different approach to mentoring will deliver some financially measurable results.

For example, one of our small business clients reported cost savings of GB£40,000 in the first month due to implemented continuous improvement ideas generated by mentees. 

For them, mentoring became self-financing within one month. 

And this can be an on-going accumulative sum if, as we often do, we help self managed teams learn how to create and implement one improvement idea per month per team re any aspect of your business they can see can be improved (that's another possibility realised / potential achieved). 

There may well be other financial benefits emerging from the complex adaptive system that is mentoring.

An outstanding example of that was the new Pfizer plant in Ireland where we helped to build a different culture, owned by the employees. 

They went on for 13 years changing and improving everything they could.

All 250 employees managed themselves, their work, their interactions across functions (which often turn out to be 'silos' in a traditional management hierarchy); and saw their jobs as their business which collectively was the company.

It's not easy to measure accurately the return on investment in mentoring that this represents but it was clear that if the 'revolutionary and inspiring' culture they created, nurtured and enjoyed with our help had not existed, neither would the record-breaking performance of the plant.

There's an old saying that used to be quite 'fashionable' among managers (maybe it still is among some?): 'you can only manage what you can measure'.

This is a valid left-brain dominant perspective, but it's not the whole picture re the benefits of mentoring I believe.

Hmm, but how do you 'measure' attitudes, creativity, innovation, potential, possibilities, enjoyment, fun, laughter and a whole lot more aspects of working and living that make the difference between 'good' and 'great'?

These elements are feeling-based and are a valid right-brain perspective, but it's not the whole picture either I believe.

We need a whole-brain expression of return on investment and maybe a mentee somewhere is being helped by a mentor right now and when they get their synergy together they will produce one.

Or, watch this space and maybe we will.

The many diverse benefits of mentoring run 'deep' in the sense that they can be the catalyst for future change and the realisation of possibilities and 'impossibilities'.

And, there's a bunch of the benefits that are part of the Returns on Investment, in my opinion, that shouldn't be ignored or dismissed because they cannot be measured in the same way as money or materials.

On this page, for example, I have described financial benefits from our mentoring bespoke approach that includes continuous improvement ideas. 

This may be thought of as left brain thinking dominant.

I have also described the benefits of releasing and realising potential which includes personal and professional growth and development; improved self-image and self-belief; self-managed teamwork and intrinsic motivation.

These benefits, amongst others, prevented Lubrizol from being shut down and the loss of 70 jobs.

This may be thought of as more right brained thinking  / feeling dominant.

I have also described the benefit of releasing and realising more of senior leaders' and business' potential, including how this may facilitate a stronger survive and thrive future for YOU and your employees and your business.

If your employees, who manage their own lives, are encouraged to manage your businesses TODAY (i.e. every employees' livelihood) whilst YOU now have the time to manage its TOMORROW, to everyone's benefit, what's that worth as a return on investment? - whether you can measure it or not.

I have also described how from even one mentor and mentee, a giant business oak tree can flourish through fundamental  organisational development and significant culture change.

All of these unrealised possibilities and 'impossibilities' (i.e. potential), limited only by our thinking and imagination, are awaiting YOU and your people to awaken them to become part of your return on investment. 

And when they do, believe me from my experience, it can feel like 'that's magic'.

What is a mentor?                                                    What does a mentor do?

go back to our HOME PAGE                                  go to our How We Differ page

If you would like more information relating to this page, please click any or all of the links below:

* why be a mentor

* leadership and mentoring

* letter to a mentee

* letter to a mentor

* what is a mentor

If you have any questions, comments, suggestions you would like to make, please use the Contact Form for Dennis below. It is zero cost and obligation and I look forward to talking with you and listening to your thoughts - from such relaxed discussions both of us will benefit.

PAGE SUMMARY

On this page we have considered the benefits-of-mentoring holistically:

* from the mentor and mentee/s perspective

* from the release and realisation of potential perspective

* from the business and its stakeholders perspective

* from the organisational development and culture perspective

* from the returns on investment perspective

We've covered a lot of ground on this page and I just want to THANK YOU for visiting my web site and reading this page.  Your attention is much appreciated.

I hope you found the page as enjoyable, worthwhile and interesting reading it as I did writing it.

Kindest regards,

Dennis