Grooming Your Unicorn

I am going to begin this post by restating something I have said in the past: happy employees = more productive employees = increased sales, etc.. Shawn Achor, Harvard-trained psychologist and happiness researcher, understands this.  Archor says that we should be looking to design programs around the outliers, the star performers (sometimes so rare they are akin to mythical beings) instead of utilizing "one size fits all" programs implemented with the average employee in mind. Think about that. Most programs are developed using the mean rather than those "odd" employees who offer unique and innovative solutions, who continuously take initiative, and who may not fit the prototypical employee in your organization. As you will see in Archor's TED presentation below, that employee is more apt to turn stresses into challenges that beg for solutions they are happy to work toward.

So go out there and benchmark your stars rather than the average and "groom your unicorns".

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...