University Times

Mentoring is not just for faculty and students anymore.

Although mentoring relationships between senior and junior faculty, and between faculty and students are commonplace in an academic institution, units also benefit greatly by the improved staff social cohesion and social integration that mentoring can provide, said Jane Thompson, who last month led the workshop “How to Develop a Staff Mentoring/Coaching Program for Your Responsibility Center.”

The workshop is one of a series of follow-up sessions to the Oct. 19 University Senate plenary session on fostering mentoring. (See Oct. 26 University Times.)

“There’s an old saying, ‘Work is easy, people are hard.’ It’s the navigating of social issues that’s difficult in the work environment,” said Thompson, associate vice chancellor for management information and analysis in the Office of Budget and Controller.

Citing her own unit of more than 200 staff as a model, Thompson said, “When we re-organized about eight years ago, a lot of people were in new areas and had new assignments and new bosses and there was a bit of an uproar, so we needed to think about what we needed to do to help people adjust.”

The efforts of the unit’s management team of associate vice chancellors resulted in two parallel programs that Thompson, who holds a certification in mentoring, helped develop and now oversees one-on-one peer mentoring for new hires and employee coaching for potential future supervisors.

“Our goals were to increase productivity and to ease social integration, as well as to develop leaders through succession planning, so people would be ready to step in” when a supervisor resigned or retired, she said.

Research shows that mentoring and coaching programs dramatically increase productivity, mainly because people feel cared about, Thompson said. “You can’t take that human element out. It also is a major factor for new employees — how quickly they feel accepted socially significantly increases productivity,” she said. “It also affects their retention. The No. 1 factor in whether people stay at a job is not money, it’s whether they feel they have been accepted socially into the fabric of the unit.”

However, Thompson stressed that mentoring and coaching programs are not one-size-fits-all.

“I think a unique model to your unit is the best way to go. There is a lot of variety to choose from that might suit the goals of your area,” Thompson said. “So that is the most important question to ask yourselves if you want to build a program: What are the goals? Because every single component of your program should lead up to your goals.”

She said that possible goals include increased productivity, staff retention, social integration, leadership development, succession planning, improved morale, addressing specific problems (e.g., problems involving gender or race relations), developing competencies, knowledge management, unit-specific orientation and managing organizational change.

Once unit goals have been identified, a new mentoring program will need management buy-in, because the program will require an investment of time, energy and, probably, some funding, Thompson pointed out.

“So think about your goals and what you might say to persuade somebody that this is a good idea, whether it’s management, whether it’s [support staff], whether it’s co-workers,” she said. “I recommend a business model: Why should managers and administrators invest in this? What is the return on the investment? What is it going to cost them and how do they know it’s worth it? And how are you going to measure that? You need to think of these things first.”

Other issues to confront regarding a new mentoring program include:

• Identifying the desired characteristics of a mentor. Thompson cited a number of examples, including being friendly, approachable, non-judgmental, compassionate, comforting, easy to talk to, knowledgeable, patient, available and willing to spend time helping.

• Defining who should be mentors. Questions to ask, Thompson said, are: Do they have to be at certain job level? Do they have to have been at the University or in the unit a minimum amount of time? How much expertise do they need?

“You could open it up to everyone, but the downside of that is: Are they qualified to be a mentor?” Thompson said.

• Addressing who will choose the mentors. “This is a very tricky issue,” Thompson said, “because the people who don’t get chosen often chafe at that. In the financial organization, we didn’t want people who are negative to be the mentor face for new employees. It’s unfortunate, but there is a tiny percentage of people in most areas who are never happy. And a lot of times they volunteer for things because they just can’t wait to spread how unhappy they are.”

Under those conditions, employees who feel snubbed should be told why they were not selected. “Use it as an opportunity,” Thompson advised. “They weren’t chosen. They come and ask you why. That’s an opportunity to say, ‘We were looking for people who have a very positive attitude, and we don’t find that you fit that particular qualification.’ It’s a good opportunity for a learning experience. You say, ‘If you would ever like to be a mentor, you need to work on these things.’”

• Deciding who are the mentees. “How do you define that?” Thompson asked. “Go back to your goals. What mentees, what group, would help get to your goals? Who is management willing to support going through that process?”

In her unit, each new hire is assigned a mentor who is identified by the associate vice chancellor who did the hiring, she said.

• Matching mentor and mentee. “How are you going to match the mentor and mentee? Who’s going to decide? One of the biggest pitfalls is a bad match,” Thompson pointed out, adding that there should be a penalty-free way out of a bad match. “Make it clear to both the mentor and mentee that in the event of a poor match, they have somewhere to go: to the supervisor, or, in our case, we have an orientation committee to go to. There is no punitive aspect to it; the relationship just is not working.”

• Deciding how mentors who are volunteering time and energy will be rewarded. “Is it something that goes on their performance appraisal? Do they get a certificate, or other [token]?” Thompson said.

• Designating the length of the mentor-mentee relationship. Thompson said, “How long is the formal relationship going to last? It would be great if it developed into a life-long friendship, but what’s your expectation? Should it last one year? Six months?”

• Specifying the duties and responsibilities of both mentor and mentee. “Who’s responsible for setting up the meetings? Is that the mentee, or the mentor? Think through those details, make clear all those expectations and responsibilities. Put them all down in writing,” Thompson recommended.

• Measuring success. “How will you follow up and find out, for example, if there’s a bad match? How can your find out lessons learned in order to improve your program, and how will you measure success? Will you use an evaluation form? Will you interview each of the participants, or will you do a sampling? There are many possibilities,” she said.

Her unit determined at the outset that the goals did not lend themselves to statistical measurement. Instead, the programs are evaluated by evaluation forms and word of mouth from participants and the associate vice chancellors, and that feedback has been very positive, Thompson said.

“You can establish a mentoring program that’s informal, but that’s only as good as the occasional correct match would be,” Thompson said. “But if you have specific goals I think you really want more structure. Make it formal: You will meet once a week. It is expected that you will [learn about] these three areas; you will talk about these nine subjects; you will make certain that this employee understands these five things.”

Her area’s program is very formal, Thompson said. “We have a checklist for mentors: You will meet the new hire twice per day for the first week, three times a week during the second week and periodically after that,” she said. “In some ways the more structure you have the more successful the program will be, except if you go too far and make people feel, ‘Now we’re forced to do this’ at the expense of their work. So there’s a balance.”

Other features of her unit’s program include giving a new hire an informal campus tour; having the supervisor and the mentor take the new hire to lunch the first week and the mentor take him or her to lunch the second week, both on the office’s dole; offering a free parking ticket for the new employee’s first day; demonstrating to the new hire where to find information on the Pitt web site; giving new hires a 90-minute “cornerstone course,” which describes the University’s organization and governance procedures and the office’s mission, goals and organizational structure as a unit-specific orientation supplement.

“When you first get hired and you go to HR you’re bombarded — at least I was — with: Here’s your pension plan, here’s your benefits, et cetera, and you get to work and it only gradually sinks in: Wow, this is a major research institution!” Thompson said. “We wanted them to get there faster, to know how we support the academic and research mission. We often hire financial people from the corporate world who might not understand how much different this mission is from the bottom line of the for-profit institution.”

Among the common pitfalls to look for in setting up a mentoring program, Thompson said, are: resentment by non-participants; poor matches; exploitation of the mentee; expectation of a “quick fix” or “cure-all”; lack of a clear purpose; lack of training or qualification by the mentor, and lack of commitment by management or participants.

Those pitfalls also apply to establishing a coaching program for leadership development, Thompson said, which is designed to identify and train potential department supervisors.

Social integration is a major factor in unit success in two ways, Thompson said. “It’s a way of passing on knowledge, but it’s also a way to develop those soft skills, those people skills, that most future leaders are lacking. In many cases, we promote people based on their technical, substantive ability. We move them up into supervising, but we haven’t taught them how to mentor people who now work for them. They know the technical parts of the job. Where they’re weakest is on people skills, mentoring, communication, coaching. Yet these are vital skills for them to be successful leaders.”

In her unit, potential leaders are identified by the associate vice chancellors and then are trained as a group in a number of half-day sessions, typically taught by Thompson.

These sessions include studying temperament indicators, emotional intelligence, conflict styles, management styles and learning styles, as well as how to handle common employee difficult conversations, Thompson said.

“The goal of succession planning is to build ‘bench strength,’ to identify high-potential performers who could move up and step in when a vacancy occurs. We emphasize that the program cannot be punitive, even if a weakness is identified or self-identified. That’s not the purpose,” she said.

Thompson concluded, “I recommend you take all these possibilities, go back to your unit and work with a small group, brainstorming on refining what would make a good program, knowing your organization, knowing your goals, knowing how much time you have to spare and knowing how much buy-in you have from management based on the unit’s goals.”

—Peter Hart

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Pitt faculty members and administrators will lead additional workshops as a follow-up to the Oct. 19 University Senate plenary session “Fostering Mentoring for Sustaining Organizational Vitality.”

All workshops are scheduled for 4127 Sennott Square, noon-1:30 p.m.

• Jan. 23: “Career Advancement and Mentoring,” Samuel D. Conte, University Registrar.

• Feb. 14: “An Example of an Ongoing Mentoring Relationship at Pitt,” Ellen Olshansky, professor in the School of Nursing, and Ellen Frank, professor of psychiatry in the School of Medicine.

• March 28: “Planning Your Career at the University of Pittsburgh,” Sherry Miller Brown, director of the McCarl Center for Nontraditional Students in the College of General Studies.

• April 5: “Mentoring Students and Leaders,” Audrey Murrell, professor in the Katz Graduate School of Business, and two winners of the 2006 Provost’s Award for Excellence in Mentoring: Celia Brownell, professor of psychology, and Alan Sved, professor of neuroscience and co-director of the Center for Neuroscience.