THE WOMEN IN BUSINESS TOOLKIT: Mentoring and Sponsorship
THE WOMEN IN BUSINESS TOOLKIT All of the Chapters so the Women in Business Toolkit can be found online on the Women in Business Toolkit section of the Birmingham Chamber of Commerce Website along with an online version of this document. Click the links below or see www.Birmingham-Chamber.com/WIBToolkit for more information.
Having a family and caring for dependents
Promoting Best Practice Mentoring and Sponsorship
Maternity Leave and Pay
Unconscious Bias Training
Paternity Leave and Pay
Transparency in Pay and Promotions
Adoption Leave and Pay Shared Parental Leave and Pay The Right to Request Flexible Working
Promoting Diversity Through Recruitment Flexible Working
Statutory Parental Leave
Diversity Policies and Strategies
Your Rights in the Workplace
Making the Case
Discrimination, Informal and Formal Grievances and The Equality Act (2010)
Making the Case: How to Construct a Business Case and Useful Statistics
Taking a Case to Employment Tribunal
INTRODUCTION: This handy little guide offers you some concise and, we hope, highly practical and useful information on mentoring and sponsorship, including advice on how your employer can get involved in offering mentoring. If you like the sound of mentoring check out the ‘How Making the Case’ chapter of the Women in Business Toolkit for lots of helpful advice and statistics to help you make the case to your employer. For more information click on the link on the left-hand page or go to the Women in Business Section of the Birmingham Chamber of Commerce website: www.Birmingham-Chamber.com/WIBToolkit
Connecting you to opportunity... This guide, brought to you by the Greater Birmingham Chambers of Commerce, is part of the Women in Business Toolkit. This toolkit aims to help inform and empower women and encourage best practice in businesses, helping make the UK a forward thinking, attractive place to work. Whilst useful and informative, it does not aim to provide encyclopaedic knowledge or in-depth legal advice about the topics in question, merely an introductory account. If you have any questions about any of the topics covered in this document please do speak to your HR department/the member of staff responsible for this area or seek professional advice. The Greater Birmingham Chambers of Commerce features some of the UK’s oldest and largest Chambers. It has nearly 3,000 member companies that employ over 200,000 plus affiliate organisations representing 15,000 people. It offers extensive services to industry and commerce, having served the interests of business for nearly three centuries, promoting trade locally, nationally and internationally.
WHAT IS MENTORING? Mentoring generally involves a more experienced individual offering advice and support to a less experienced one. The aim of the relationship is to help encourage the positive personal and/or professional development of the less experienced individual. Mentoring relationships can be created in numerous ways:
Some larger organisations offer their own in-house mentoring schemes that employees can sign up to in order to receive mentoring from a more senior colleague.
Some people find mentors through structured programmes offered by professional networking organisations or leadership programmes.
Some industry or regional bodies also offer mentoring schemes.
Some people find mentors simply by asking a senior colleague, acquaintance or even someone they have never met, whose professional development or career they admire, relate to or wish to emulate, if they would like to mentor them.
Please Note: as well as personal development mentoring, there are also numerous business to business mentoring schemes. This document will refer to personal development mentoring only. For more information on business to business mentoring click here or go to www.gov.uk and search business mentoring.
WHY MENTORING? There are two main kinds of mentoring scheme:
Formal Mentoring (where mentoring relationships are controlled by an organisation e.g. a scheme that you have to apply to and are then formally assigned a mentor from)
Informal Mentoring (where the mentoring relationship is controlled by the individual mentor and mentee, e.g. where an individual has personally asked another individual to mentor them/that relationship has developed organically)
Organisations that offer formal, in-house mentoring schemes do it for a number of reasons:
To help new employees settle in and get to know the company.
To support employees who aspire to hold leadership roles in the future.
To support employees who may be facing particular challenges in their personal or professional lives.
Simply to aid in the general personal and/or professional development of staff.
Individuals look for mentors for a whole host of reasons, these can include:
For support and advice around finding a job/changing career.
For advice on career development.
For support and advice on getting in touch with key contacts/ organisations.
For general professional and personal development.
HOW CAN I FIND A MENTOR? There are a wide variety of ways in which you can find a mentor. Here are some common ways of finding a mentor:
Ask your HR department/relevant member of staff about in-house mentoring schemes.
Look up the websites of any relevant trade bodies to find out if they offer mentoring.
Look up the websites of any local or national professional membership organisations you are/might like to be a member of to find out if they offer mentoring.
Get online and search for local charities or business organisations that offer mentoring.
Ask a colleague, acquaintance, or anyone you would like, to be your mentor.
However you find your mentor, remember to seek out someone that will be able to offer you the advice and support you are looking for. If you want specialist advice about particular industries or professions try to find a mentor with relevant experience. If, however, you simply need general support with your professional development (e.g. support identifying general skills you need to develop); the personality or life experience of you mentor may be more important. With this in mind do not be afraid to have more than one mentor at a time, provided that you can give due time and attention to each. If you want to become a mentor simply get in touch with a relevant organisation/individual and ask if they would like to have you on board. Many mentors find the experience highly rewarding, not only in terms of helping another grow and develop, but also in terms of their own development and scope for reassessing their own goals and aspirations.
HOW TO GET THE MOST OUT YOUR MENTORING RELATIONSHIP However you find your mentor, once you have one there are some very simple hints and tips you can employ to make sure that you make the most out of your relationship. Before you meet make yourself a list setting out:
1. Why you want a mentor. 2. What you want to get out of the relationship. Set some clear goals.
3. How often you would like to meet/how you would like to communicate. Some people prefer to keep their relationship with their mentor relatively informal, but if you are unsure what you want a mentor for, clearly thinking through these points before you meet them can help give structure and form to the menteeship. It may also be worth setting out how long you expect the mentoring relationship to last and roughly when you expect your last meeting/formal contact to be. Your mentor will also probably find it useful to know how you see the mentoring relationship. It can give you something to work on in your first meeting and help form the ‘roadmap’ for your time as a mentee. It may also be useful to ask your mentor what they want to get out of their experience and offer them any relevant support in return.
Once you have set out what you expect from your relationship and how often you will meet/communicate the next step is to start setting goals. At the end of each meeting with your mentor, discuss what you are both going to do between then and the next meeting. For you it could be things such as applying for a certain number of jobs, asking for a pay rise or taking part in training in an area you have identified as needing improvement. For your mentor it could be something such as signposting you towards organisations or opportunities they have identified as being potentially useful for you. Whatever they are note them down and make sure you follow through and complete any actions by the next meeting. You may have very clear ideas about what kind of support you would like from your mentor. If not here are some ideas for what you can do with your mentor:
Ask for support and advice on the content and design of your CV/resume.
Identify key skills or competencies you need to develop and how you can do so.
Discuss your future career development: where you see yourself in a year, three years or five years time and how you are going to get there.
Attend conferences/events together either out of shared interest or to facilitate introductions to useful contacts.
Generally discuss both your own and your mentor’s career history, future plans and interests to see if any key themes/ideas emerge.
Whatever you discuss remember to regularly thank your mentor for their time and input. Remember: if you do receive any negative feedback, try not to get defensive, take it as a useful learning experience, giving you the opportunity to improve.
HOW CAN YOUR EMPLOYER HELP? Whilst many people find mentors informally or through external schemes there are some ways in which your employer may be able to help employees find an appropriate mentor:
Raising awareness of existing external mentoring schemes amongst employees, perhaps by including it in a welcome pack for new employees.
Offering employees subsidised membership to an organisation that offers mentoring.
Offering employees mentoring sessions with senior staff members.
Offering a formal in-house mentoring scheme.
Working with other companies in the sector to offer a joint mentoring scheme.
If you think that your employer should be doing any of the above have a chat with your line manager or the appropriate member of staff to see what can be done. For useful advice on writing a business case for mentoring please click here or see the ‘Making the Case’ section of the Greater Birmingham Chambers of Commerce Women in Business Toolkit on www.Birmingham-Chamber.com/WIBToolkit.
WHAT IS A SPONSOR? Mentors are individuals who offer advice and support to mentees. A sponsor is a more senior member of staff who uses their influence to act as an advocate for you higher up in your organisation or industry. It’s a special form of support that can develop out of a mentoring relationship or simply through normal working practices. A sponsor is, effectively, someone who recognises potential in a more junior colleague and acts in ways that help support their career development. This could include recommending them for particular opportunities or encouraging other senior colleagues to take an interest in their career and professional development as well. They can be useful advocates, supporting you when, for example, applying for promotion or asking for a pay rise. A few large organisations do offer schemes aimed at helping link up potential sponsors and protÊgÊs (the term used to describe the junior member of staff being sponsored). In many cases employees find sponsors informally, by engaging with senior members of staff in the workplace or at events. If you are already in a senior position you may want to act as a sponsor to more junior employees. Ask around various colleagues and line managers to find out who the potential leaders of the future are. If certain groups (e.g. women, ethnic minorities, religious groups) or even leadership styles and personalities are significantly underrepresented at senior level in a way that concerns you, you may want to focus on finding impressive junior colleagues to sponsor from those groups. Whoever you choose to sponsor, acting as a sponsor can help keep the best and brightest talent in your organisation, encourage loyalty and support the advancement of potential industry leaders of the future.
HOW DO I GET A SPONSOR? Finding a sponsor is potentially more challenging than finding a mentor. Where finding a mentor can involve applying for one or directly asking a colleague, finding a sponsor is a subtler enterprise. Sponsors generally find you, rather than you finding them. There are, however, some simple tips you can employ to help attract a sponsor:
Refine your reputation. Being known for being reliable, flexible, approachable and friendly will help get your name known in your organisation in a positive light.
Be prepared. Try to have short, 1-2min elevator style pitches on the main projects you are working on ready to go at the back of your mind. This way, whether you bump into a potential sponsor in the work place or approach them at an event you are ready to promote your work and highlight its importance and quality if the opportunity comes up in conversation.
Take time to reflect. Consider your own skill set, competencies and interests. Find out what you need to improve on in order to further your chances of success, ask for feedback and follow it.
Keep in touch. Once you have attracted a sponsor (i.e. a senior member of staff is taking a genuine interest in your career development and access to opportunities) remember to thank them and keep them up to date on your successes (e.g. the outcome of attending an event/training/interview they recommended you for).
It is worth remembering that a connection like that between a sponsor and protégé will be heavily based on reputation. Be sensitive to the fact that your actions will reflect back onto your sponsor and behave accordingly.
CASE STUDY: Offering Mentoring in the Workplace
Organisation: Aston University Mentoring Offered: Workplace Mentoring Scheme available for all members of staff
Various departments and training course to get them up to individuals across Aston speed on what mentoring involves. University have been involved Our Staff & Graduate in mentoring for some time and Development department then so we recently decided to offer match up appropriate potential a university wide pool of mentors and mentees, matching mentors to help “It’s a really effective way for gender where the support mentee asks for interested of giving staff who want or it. Once the pairing members of need it some additional is made it’s down to staff. support and guidance” the mentor and Staff are made mentee to agree aware of the mentoring how often they will meet, what scheme through emails, our they will do, whether they will intranet and in meetings with communicate by email, Skype or their line managers. Members face to face and how long the of staff can apply to be a mentoring relationship will last for. mentor or a mentee through It’s a really effective way of giving our intranet and prospective staff who want or need it some mentors are offered a half-day
additional support and guidance at key times in their career. Everyone needs a hand from time to time, especially if they’ve just moved into a new role. It helps with the personal and professional development of both mentors and mentees and it also helps build up
positive relationships across the departments. Some of our mentors find it hugely rewarding to watch their mentees develop and grow - it is a great way of re-investing in the organisation and making sure that wisdom and experience is passed on.
About Aston University: Based in central Birmingham and ranked 12th out of 113 UK Universities by the 2010 Complete University Guide, and 19th in the Guardian rankings 2010, Aston is recognised for its world-class research, teaching and strong links to industry, government and commerce. Aston is based on an attractive, green campus in the heart of Birmingham. Over 1200 people work at the university in a wide variety of professional, technical, academic, manual and clerical roles. Click here: www.aston.ac.uk for our website
JARGON BUSTER: FORMAL MENTORING SCHEME Where mentoring relationships are controlled by an organisation e.g. a formal scheme that you have to apply to and are then formally assigned a mentor from. INFORMAL MENTORING SCHEME Where the mentoring relationship is controlled by the individual mentor and mentee, e.g. where an individual has personally asked another individual to mentor them/that relationship has developed organically. MENTEE The individual receiving advice and support from a mentor. MENTOR A more senior individual, often from another organisation, who offers advice and support to a mentee regarding their professional and/or personal development. PROTÉGÉ The individual receiving support from a sponsor. SPONSOR A more senior individual, often from inside the same organisation, who acts in the interests of a more junior colleague that they recognise as having great potential, in order to help them access opportunities/provide support for them amongst senior colleagues.
USEFUL LINKS: Race for Opportunity: Mentoring and Mentoring Circles Toolkit http://raceforopportunity.bitc.org.uk/tools-case-studies/toolkits/ mentoring-and-mentoring-circles Race for Opportunity (a Business in the Community Initiative) have recently launched a mentoring toolkit offering practical advice on how to get mentoring and start a mentoring circle. The Mentoring and Befriending Foundation http://www.mandbf.org/ This website offers an array of information on mentoring from how to set up a mentoring scheme to a search engine highlighting existing mentoring schemes in your area. CIPD Website http://www.cipd.co.uk/hr-resources/factsheets/coachingmentoring.aspx This section of the CIPD website offers advice and factsheets on mentoring and coaching. World Pulse http://worldpulse.com/?gclid=CJD48bT4jroCFVLJtAodIA4ApQ Through the ‘Resources Exchange’ section of the website you can find opportunities to offer remote mentoring (usually email or skype) to women and girls all across the world and/or request mentoring in return.
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