Mentors, Mentees, and Mentoring...Oh My!

"Is mentee a real word? I hate it" states Andy Grove, former chairman and chief executive officer of Intel recently in this article at Bloomberg Businessweek. Grove feels that managers should be acting as a mentor by being open to sharing information and learning from others everyday. Grove has a special dislike of mentoring programs constructed as stand-alone, separate programs that lead participants to feel as if mentoring is something you do part-time. "My problem is this: As a manager you are supposed to be a resource. The principal job of somebody in management is to be a resource to the people who work for you" Grove clarifies. The point is that mentoring should not be confined by the constraints of scheduled sessions and company-sanctioned forms and processes. 

Another current take on mentoring is that many organizations have not brought mentoring into the current age. Mentoring is not strictly about seasoned managers taking younger, less-experienced employees under their wing. This contributes to the many myths that surround mentoring. Here, courtesy of Amy Gallo, contributing editor at Harvard Business Review in her article Demystifying Mentoring is a list of common mentoring myths:

1. You have to find one perfect mentor
2. Mentoring is a formal long-term relationship
3. Mentoring is for junior people
4. Mentoring is something more experienced people do out of the goodness of their hearts

Check out both articles and think about your organization's mentoring plan. Maybe it's time to update it, bring it in line with current business needs, and ensure mentoring is less a program and more a integrated part of company culture. 

I leave you, my fellow human resource practitioners, with a final quote from Grove (you'll love this): "I suspect the reason these programs exist is so HR can beat you up and have something they can brag about". Oh boy...

Achoo! Work Is No Place For The Flu

It will soon be flu season again and, inevitably, coughing and sneezing employees will begin to appear. Before you break out the industrial size container of antibacterial wipes and ban anyone with a slight sniffle from your office, take a few minutes and read over the helpful hints on How to Prevent the Flu in Your Workplace from Advanced Safety and Health. This tip from the article, however, is the one that seems to be the most difficult and tricky to convey: "Let it be known that sick employees should stay home whenever possible."  Most organizations agree they do not want sick employees spreading the love (um, germs) in the workplace but at the same time employees may feel they are expected to come in. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (aka the CDC - why not the CDCP? - good question) has a wealth of information on their site to help answer the question, including checklists to ready your organization for the coming germ onslaught.

Part of any good flu awareness campaign is marketing regarding your plan to keep the workplace free of zombie-like germ carriers. Here's a nice poster courtesy of the Center for Hygiene and Health in Home and Community to get you started:

Flu Awareness -

Social Pressure: The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly

Periodically, I like to put on my "outsider glasses" and search through social media sites to find out the latest buzz regarding my organization. I do this to learn what the current perception is of the organization and how aligned our mission and goals are with our actions and results. In the era of networked social media, our customers have the ability to instantly communicate what they like about what we are doing and what they would like to see done differently. Make no mistake about this: they will tweet, post, and blog about it. Prior to the explosion in social media outlets, customers had to be fairly upset with your organization to take the time for letter writing (or even a phone call). Now, it's as simple as pressing the submit or send button. David Kirkpatrick writes in Social Power, an article for the September 26th edition of Forbes, "Both your customers and your employees have started marching in this burgeoning social media multitude, and you'd better get out of their way - or learn to embrace them". 

Okay, so we know that social media is here and must be reckoned with if your business is to succeed. How can you make all those quick bites of feedback work for your organization's benefit? Kirkpatrick states that "customers and employee activists can become the source of creativity, innovation and new ideas to take your company forward". Positive feedback is great to get, it lets you know you are on the right track, but negative feedback is what is going to make your business - that is, if you are open to it and act on it.

Acting on negative feedback means recognizing an opportunity for improving a service, product, or even a process (here's the tie-in to human resources!). It may even mean soliciting suggestions from your customers. Customers and employees appreciate "authenticity, fairness, transparency, and good faith" Kirkpatrick further states.

Take a look at the article and think about how your organization is utilizing social media (or ignoring its existence) and how that reaction is affecting your business. 

Who Are You Stapled To?

The September 12, 2011 edition of Forbes magazine contains a special on the 100 Most Powerful Women. Anne Sweeney, co chair of Disney Media Networks and President of the Disney/ABC Television Group, spoke to Forbes about the inspiration behind her success. The resulting article portrays Sweeney as someone who values her team and feels that individuals working on teams should not only know their own jobs but also what their jobs mean to other teams. When addressing a group of teams about their new jobs she is quoted as saying: "I want you to wake up every morning feeling that you are stapled to the other person. Understand that one of you is not successful without the other being successful. And when one of you fails, the other fails as well."

I found this quote interesting in not only the use of the word "stapled" but also for the meaning and intention. In the words of English poet John Dunne, "No man is an island, entire of itself". This is true in all facets of business as it is in life. Regardless of what your actual role and responsibilities are, I'll bet that your job affects someone else and another's affects yours. It is not something we think about consciously and many times are only aware of it when something goes wrong: you can't get your report completed because someone over in accounting hasn't completed your department's projections, etc..

Now is a good time to become more aware of the interconnectivity of departments within your organization and ask yourself the question: Who am I stapled to?

Equal Opportunity Learning

I love TED. Now, before my husband reads this and casually asks me "So, who is this Ted guy?" I would like to clarify that TED is a nonprofit organization owned by the Sapling Foundation established to "foster the spread of great ideas". I've known TED for a long time and have thoroughly enjoyed the time I've spent listening to the presentations Ted offers. TED re-entered my life recently when I was on a hunt for open courseware. Open courseware allows you to take courses and listen to specific lectures all for the small price of your enraptured attention. Nothing else. No money required - isn't that great!

So, in keeeping with The Human Resource Resource's mantra of community learning I present to you a presentation from Richard Baraniuk, founder of Connexions, regarding open-source learning. Take a listen and imagine what could be done in your organization with the ability and freedom to create better quality, customized and instantly updatable training materials all at low cost. Then - imagine being able to make the training material interactive because, as Baraniuk states in the presentation "We really don't understand until we do" [practice the new skill, use the new knowledge].  

Now that you've got a taste of what open-source learning can do. Check out our list of open-source courses and lecture links. There is something to be had for everyone - from general business and human resources to lectures on specific topics of interest. Then keep the community learning momentum going by coming back and sharing what you found!