Barnabas File

Although mentoring has been practiced for generations on both informal and formal bases, the practice has attracted a great deal of attention in recent years as a means to encourage gender, racial, and socio-economic diversity in leadership of all types of organizations. In Bridging Differences for Better Mentoring , Lisa Z. Fain and Lois J. Zachary offer a three-part model for taking advantage of this process to develop leaders in contemporary settings:   Part One:  Learn Forward into Differences Part Two:  Learn from Differences Part Three:  Leverage Differences There are three key foundational ideas for this model.  First, differences can be leveraged to build successful mentoring relationships.  Second, mentoring takes intentional planning, hard work, and commitment to effective communication.  Third, the learning that comes from mentoring is a two-way street--it benefits the mentor as well as the protégé, providing le...

In her book  Leadership Revolution: The Future of Developing Dynamic Leaders , Lori Mazan takes a rather critical approach to mentoring.  She sees it as helpful but only when matched with coaching and of lesser value than coaching: “In a sense, mentoring can encourage looking back, emulating what was previously successful. Coaching is a methodology for looking out ahead and figuring out what's going to be successful next.” She goes on to say, “Mentoring just can't take the place of the kind of transformative development employees can get from coaching.”   Just for clarity, let’s define terms here.  In mentoring, someone (usually an experienced person in the field) shares their knowledge, skills, and experience with another person to help them to progress.  The person being mentored is identified by terms such as “mentee” or “protégé.”   Coaching is   a partnership between coach and client . They are “thought partners.”  Th...

The Mentor’s Guide:     Facilitating Effective Learning Relationships has just been published in its third edition, a clear testimony to its importance in the practice of mentoring.    Authors Lois K. Zachary and Lisa Z. Fain have updated this “bible” of mentor practice to reflect new insights, developing theories, and contemporary reality.   The authors see the mentor relationship as a mutual experience that generates growth for both mentor and mentee (although I prefer the word protégé).  As such it requires investment, preparation, and reflection on part of both participants.    The revised edition considers not only evolving theories about adult development and mentoring, but also incorporates insights about the global nature of organizations, the importance of innovation, the reality of diversity, and the necessity of innovation.   One insight relating to innovation is the idea of SMARTER goals to augment SMART goals.  We ...

Although mentoring has been practiced for generations on both informal and formal bases, the practice has attracted a great deal of attention in recent years as a means to encourage gender, racial, and socio-economic diversity in leadership of all types of organizations. In Bridging Differences for Better Mentoring: Lean Forward, Learn, Leverage , Lisa Z. Fain and Lois J. Zachary offer a three-part model for taking advantage of this process to develop leaders in contemporary settings: Part One:     Learn Forward into Differences Part Two:     Learn from Differences Part Three:     Leverage Differences There are three key foundational ideas for this model.  First, differences can be leveraged to build successful mentoring relationships.  Second, mentoring takes intentional planning, hard work, and commitment to effective communication.  Third, the learning that comes from mentoring is a two-way street--it benefi...