How May We Help You?

Page Key Points

On this How May We Help You? page, we have:

* described our existing range of services

* explained how they are collaborative and thus bespoke

* highlighted how our bespoke and different approach differentiates us from other providers

Our web site is still being created and our full range of services is not yet fully showing (e.g. webinars; ebooks; DIY video sessions; training and learning experience courses).

We can help you in 3 ways though (in no order of priority):

1. Dennis is available to be a direct Mentor for YOU if you  wish to benefit from his 30 years experience and award winning approach?

Or as Mentor for someone else or for a group of mentors or mentees in your business.

2. Are you about to invest in mentoring or have an existing mentoring scheme that needs refreshing or auditing or updating?

We would be delighted to provide you and your business with a bespoke and different Dennis Martin Consultants Service with over 30 years experience 

3. If your needs are for:

* organisational development and / or culture change

* or for a start-up business or for downsizing

* or for Leadership and Employee development

* or to move from 'survival' to 'survive and thrive'

we would be delighted to provide you with a bespoke and different MDS Consulting Service to match your needs, and to integrate mentoring into the process if you so wish? 

Each of these three How May We Help You? services is described in more detail in what follows.

All three will adhere to our seven values and will be bespoke and different in nature.

MDS stands for Motivational and Development Services and is our trading name created in 1978 by Dennis

Mentoringandmentorship.com is the domain name for this website, created in 2023,  and is totally owned by MDS

Dennis Matin Consultants is an additional trading name created especially to support mentoring and OD (Organisational Development) 2024

The purpose of this page is to give you an outline of our consulting and mentor services to help you decide whether or not to invest in mentoring and whether or not to invest with us.

One of our 7 values is collaboration and with 30 years experience working in mentoring, we value it highly and hope that you do too.

WHY?

Because it is YOUR business we will be working with, not ours, and you will want to support and develop the emerging benefits and created changes long after we're gone.

In our experience, you must own the process, be involved in diagnosing and designing the work we do, hold us and others accountable and share the fun and satisfaction.

In this context we will not do anything TO or FOR you and your people, we will do things WITH you and your people.

Being collaborative creates synergy (i.e. 2 + 2 = 5) when we combine the massive experience and knowledge you have about your business with the 30 years experience we have in mentoring.

Each of us will bring things the other will not know, so that's a win-win, and produces much better synergistic results than an off-the-shelf package can achieve because no one-size fits all.

The other major reason we stress collaboration (i.e. team working between us) is sustainability.

When the project work with us is finished, that isn't the end.

In fact, it's the beginning of sustaining what has been learned or changed or created so that you will realise the returns that you deserve and need on your mentoring investment .

Our experience has been that if YOU have ownership for the learning and changes that have occurred with you and your people in your business, your returns on mentoring investment will be significantly greater than if you don't.

What's that old saying?: 'of the best leaders, when the job is done, the people say, 'we did it ourselves'.

And that's what we will be aiming for when we work with you.

How May We Help You? - we believe the above is the best way.

1. Dennis as your mentor

We will be delighted to provide a Mentoring Service role of a direct personal Mentor for YOU, or someone else or a group of mentors or mentees in your business, with Dennis.

Contact us for a preliminary zero obligation and cost conversation via the Contact Help Form for Dennis below.

Then what happens?

Either nothing because one or both of us do not see an appropriate match between us that would be mutually beneficial OR we talk further and / or we send you a PROPOSAL which will outline a suggested course of action, what's involved in that and what will it cost to do it?

Then what? 

Well, either nothing OR we modify the proposal until it is acceptable to both of us OR we begin working together. 

You will incur zero costs before we have agreed a proposal, unless we mutually agree otherwise.

The whole How May We Help You? process is in line with our VALUES, is bespoke and different,  and is totally transparent.

YOU are in control of what happens? and why?, and that's how it should be because you may be inviting us into YOUR company to help you.

We respect that, of course, and have no right to be in your company otherwise. 

We will not be 'selling' you anything or 'persuading' you to do what we want rather than what YOU want.

We will be doing what we have agreed is what your business, people and YOU need for your future.

Where we may disagree, we will see the differences between us as an opportunity for creativity and synergy, and never as a win-lose 'battle'.

YOU will make the final decisions, not us.

Let me know if there is anything I have described that you disagree with via the Contact Help Form for Dennis above.

2. Our Dennis Martin Mentoring Consultancy Service

Our approach will be bespoke and different, collaborative, based on our 7 values and intended to help you to help yourself to achieve the release and realisation of more of your people's and business's potential. 

My 30 years of experience has convinced me that this is the prime success criterion of mentoring requiring at its 'heart' a shared learning, synergistic team relationship between mentor(s) and mentee(s).

In brief, where a one-size-fits-all, off the shelf approach will sub-optimise the returns on mentoring investment, the following aspects of our dynamic mentoring approach are crucial in achieving sustainable high performance success and returns on investment. 

They are what differentiates our award winning evolved definition approach from the traditional approach of others.

* 1. we will help you to practice mentoring as a shared reciprocal learning process

which is, therefore, most effective when mentors and mentees (and all leaders) understand their own and others’ thinking style preferences because this fundamentally affects how they learn.

To facilitate this, we use the Ned Herrmann HBDI and whole brain model with everyone we train. We will teach your mentors, mentees and their leaders whole brain thinking knowledge and skills.

Click the link above to go to our web page explaining whole brain thinking, the HBDI and to view my thinking preferences profile.

* 2. we will help you benefit from significant positive change resulting from mentoring (e.g. making mentoring self-financing)

The combination of the above points, and the synergy that that approach to mentoring creates, allows a multi-entry-point for significant change, if that is needed, and yields significant returns on investment including making mentoring self-financing.

* 3. in our approach mentoring is self-owned by mentor and mentee and self organised, managed and implemented by them with accountability held via giving and receiving feedback for learning purposes.

If mentors and mentees can manage their own lives, surely they can manage their own mentoring programme? 

We know they can, and enjoy doing so, and achieve amazing inspiring results if they are supported and encouraged properly - and organisations get these life-skills resources for free!

* 4. we will develop an inside out motivational focus with your people and you (i.e. intrinsic motivation)

Too often I have been asked by managers, 'how do I motivate someone?'.

My answer is: 'YOU don't.  THEY do.'

Traditionally, organisations' managements have relied on extrinsic motivation (especially fear and money) to achieve high performance results when most of the time it doesn't and may have 'nasty side effects'.

Our 30 years experience has proved time and time again that intrinsic motivation is the real driving force for achieving sustainable high performance. 

That is, effective motivation is not something you do TO people from the outside, as they are already motivated from the inside if they are alive, breathing and moving.

* 5. we will encourage a full-time facilitator resource (i.e. a two-tier 'mentor' resource structure) to match needs and function as the mentors’ mentor and as senior leaders’ mentor.

This is usually a very under-rated resource which if affordable, appropriate and well supported will significantly increase your returns on investment and positively influence everyone. 

Use the Contact Help Form above to ask me about Eileen if you need proof of what I am saying.

We will help you to recruit, train and develop facilitators and their amazing potential and effectiveness.

* 6. we help you to develop your mentoring as a complex adaptive system

rather than as a linear reductionist, top-down driven management approach which will inevitably sub-optimise the results and benefits.

Click the link above to go to our web page that describes what complex adaptive systems are, why it matters and what you may choose to do to turn them to your advantage.

* 7. we will help you learn to help yourself to release and realise more of your people's and business' potential

Our bespoke and different approach to mentoring aims to release and realise potential (i.e. potential = unrealised possibilities and 'impossibilities') from the 'cellular' level up through the whole hierarchy (if your business has one?)

For example, a single mentor and mentee using our approach can become a role model inspiration for others; can demonstrate what is possible and act as positive 'influencers' in your culture.

As they release and realise their potential this often enables their leaders to do so too (e.g. the mentor and mentee are self-managing and making decisions that would otherwise be made by their leaders, thus releasing and realising some of the leader's time and potential)

Keep going and at some point (usually much earlier than you might think) this process begins to facilitate the release and realisation of the business's potential (e.g. continuous improvement ideas that emerge and are self-funding).

* 8. we will help you to create an 'upward overlapping' hierarchy if you need one. That is, an upside down inverted structure with decentralised ‘bottom-up’ decision making to replace top-down driven direction from a central ‘boss’

This requires transparency and 'open-book' trust from ‘management’ and, in most cases, stimulates changing downward overlapping 'management' into upward overlapping leadership.

We will help you to achieve this significant culture change. 

* 9. we will facilitate the creation of self-managed operational teams

in which leadership is fluid and emerges from any team member who matches the situational needs – i.e. everyone is a formal or informal mentor and leader with potential.

Informal leaders are rarely developed deliberately and consciously in most organisations.

They are one of the most frequently wasted FREE resources (along with informal mentors) despite having the potential to make a major contribution to culture change in your company.

We will help you to create self-managed operational teams and personal informal leadership through effective training and learning experiences tailored to your specific needs and people.

* 10. we will facilitate creative macro goals that include self-financing mentoring through continuous improvement teams and stakeholder satisfaction feedback.

The micro goals major focus is on releasing and realising mentees’ potential with ‘survive and thrive’ benefits for all involved and to the business.

We will help you to clarify and set appropriate goals and hold effective positive accountability through training of how to give and receive positive feedback for learning purposes.

* 11. we will help you to implement a change programme

that will remove as many of the ‘stabilisers’ (i.e. inhibitors and obstacles) in the working environment that were creating barriers to high performance or incentives to low performance (e.g. overtime pay).

* 12. We will encourage you to base your rules and your values on your trusted best people and not on their 2.5% worst 'idiots'.   

WHY?

Because if you base your rules on the 'idiots', you risk 'punishing' your good people by restricting things unfairly and may communicate a message that unintentionally implies you think your best people are like potential 'idiots'. 

* 13. We will also challenge the validity, fairness and unintended consequences of, for example, post-recruitment probationary periods where they still exist.

What message does, ‘congratulations, you’ve got the job….well, you will have in 6 months if we still like you’, communicate to your new employee and to your ‘good’ people?.

ALL OF THE ABOVE MEANS THAT YOU WILL GET A MUCH IMPROVED RETURN ON YOUR MENTORING INVESTMENTS THAN IF YOU JUST ‘TICK THE BOX’ FOR ANOTHER MENTEE MENTORED.

THE ABOVE IS A SAMPLE OF OUR EXPERIENCE and it is what we will bring to share with you if you decide to use our Mentoring Consulting Service.

How May We Help You? - I hope this page has helped

Do contact me via the form below if reading the above has raised questions or suggestions or contradictions in your thinking or if you wish to enquire more about using our resources and bespoke approach.  I look forward to hearing from you and the opportunity to listen to your views and discuss them.

There will be zero charge and obligation when you do this, of course.

3.  Our MDS Consulting Service

Our MDS consulting service, being  and different, is transferrable across many situations.

It applies the same differentials as listed in the Dennis Martin Mentoring Consultancy section above.

Here we've been describing it with mentoring in mind but to illustrate the point here is a brief list of some of the areas where we have worked previously:

* Mentoring and mentorship (including releasing and realising potential)

* Organisational Development (including intrinsic motivation)

* Culture change (including Upward Overlapping and flat organisation structures)

* Company downsizing (e.g. Lubrizol) or new business start-ups (e.g. Pfizer Ireland Tablet Plant)

* Leadership Development (including Informal Personal Leadership)

* Employee Development (including self-management)

* Becoming a Learning Organisation

* Teambuilding and teamworking training (including the 'Team 10 Commandments')

* Continuous Improvement & Profit Improvement

* Performance Appraisals and giving and receiving feedback for learning purposes

* Sales Performance and Business Development

* Communications (including whole brain thinking)

* Change Management

* Systematic Training & Development.

Our team of 7 Consultants have expertise to bring to all of the above situations and we have worked together over many years. 

As a result, we have high levels of mutual trust and respect, are very creative, have a high work ethic and are client-centric.  We have a great balance of professionalism and interpersonal empathy.

Our small size is one of our many strengths: you will have one consultant to work with who will see the project through from start to 'finish' with you and will be accountable to you.

He or she may seek your agreement to involve a colleague consultant sometimes.  You will be able to build a strong and effective team with us based on our 7 Values.  We are easy to 'get on' with. We are all great listeners.

If I needed a consultant to help me with my mentoring needs, I wouldn't hesitate to call any one of us, we are all 'special' -  as I hope you will be willing to find out for yourself.

Is there an underlying process or structure to your work?

YES, and this is one of the first things we will talk with you about in our preliminary, zero cost, no obligation, complimentary discussion.

Subject to the outcomes of our discussion we will use our well-tried and tested 4-step A.P.I.C.  approach below or some agreed variant:

*** ANALYSIS - the primary purpose of which is to diagnose your agreed primary needs, priorities and the success criteria we wish to achieve re your future

*** PLANNING - the primary purpose of which is to design an agreed approach and plan of how we will achieve the success criteria identified by analysis.  This is a 'should happen' description

*** IMPLEMENTATION - is the action processes of learning & training experiences, mentoring individuals and groups, continuous improvement (which in many cases makes mentoring self-financing), teamworking, projects etc. etc. This is what 'actually happens', a.k.a. reality

*** CONTROL - this is the comparison between 'should' and 'actual' to identify variances (plus and minus) and to go round the process of APIC as a deep learning process. 

How May We Help You?

Right now we can help you in any of the three ways below. 

There is more to come as we develop our website and include suggestions and requests from other visitors.

1. Dennis is available to be a direct Mentor for YOU and / or others if you wish to benefit from his 30 years experience and award winning bespoke and different approach?

2. If you are considering investing in mentoring or want to upgrade an existing scheme, come and enjoy a zero cost talk with our MDS Mentoring Consultancy Service.  It will not put you under an obligation of any sort. 

3. If your needs are for:

* organisational development and / or culture change

* or for a start-up business or for downsizing

* or for Leadership and / or Employee development

* or to move from 'survival' to 'survive and thrive',

you should have a zero cost and obligation discussion with our MDS Consulting Service.

The three ways described above in which we may help you are not theory or off-the-shelf, one-size-fits-all.

They are all well tried and tested processes that have yielded outstanding results for real businesses and their people.

Contact us now via the Contact Help Form for Dennis below for a zero cost discussion of how may we help you.

It will not put you under any obligation to do more than have a preliminary discussion.

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

* bespoke and different (how we differ)

* what does a mentor do?

* benefits of mentoring

* HOME PAGE

* leadership and mentoring

* about Dennis

Page Summary

On this How May We Help You? page, we have:

* described our existing range of services

* explained how they are collaborative and thus bespoke

* highlighted how our bespoke approach differentiates us from other providers

We've covered a lot of ground 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