One of the most common reasons for mentoring programmes failing is that they forget to train mentees sufficiently. Programmes that train only mentors deliver less than half the benefits, on average, than those that train both participants. The reasons include: Mentees’ often have little experience of mentoring and come with unrealistic expectations – for example, (more…)
Here’s a typical story: Peter was away from the office for three days. Most of the team thought he’d been on a business trip, but when he returned, he was keen to tell them about the course he’d been on. “From now on,” he told them, “I’m not just the team leader. I’m the team...
Membership Required
You must be a member to access this content.
Why not sign up to a month's free trial?
Already a member? Log in here
I took an executive to task the other day, when he talked about gender inequality as a “women’s issue”. The implication was that he and his colleagues would take more notice, the more of an issue female employees made it. Of course, it’s actually a man’s issue as well. As a director of a large...
Membership Required
You must be a member to access this content.
Why not sign up to a month's free trial?
Already a member? Log in here
One of the interesting aspects of co-editing a new book on Diversity Mentoring (due to be published by McGraw-Hill in August) was the comparative reluctance of the LGBT community to discuss their mentoring relationships – even when the research was being carried out by an openly lesbian colleague, with high credibility in terms of understanding...
Membership Required
You must be a member to access this content.
Why not sign up to a month's free trial?
Already a member? Log in here
Questioning the role and value of executive coaching is likely to raise quite a few hackles. But questioning our own practice is a key component of competent coaching. So it was with both anticipation and some discomfort that I began last year to explore the question: “Could leaders and managers be using having a coach...
Membership Required
You must be a member to access this content.
Why not sign up to a month's free trial?
Already a member? Log in here
While there are lots of good coaches around, there are a lot more, who are mediocre or worse. Few HR functions have the internal competence to assess coach competence, and standard methods of evaluation, such as client feedback, how very low validity – indeed, the level of challenge within a coaching relationship may be inversely...
Membership Required
You must be a member to access this content.
Why not sign up to a month's free trial?
Already a member? Log in here
Over the past 30 years or so, I’ve observed many Board meetings. One of the common factors of most of them is that the quality of the conversation is not as good as it could be. Ideally, an effective Board meeting should involve three types of conversation: • Debate – presentation of divergent views, with...
Membership Required
You must be a member to access this content.
Why not sign up to a month's free trial?
Already a member? Log in here
Asking questions is something we do all the time. It’s essential to how we learn, how we keep safe, how we collaborate with other people, how we make decisions, and so on… It’s a core skill of being human, yet few people stop to think about how they ask questions or whether they could be...
Membership Required
You must be a member to access this content.
Why not sign up to a month's free trial?
Already a member? Log in here
One of the most common questions in coaching and mentoring is “Who can you get to support you in achieving this goal?” When people struggle to respond, as is often the case, or feel that they are on their own, it may indicate that they haven’t invested sufficiently in creating their community of support. Research...
Membership Required
You must be a member to access this content.
Why not sign up to a month's free trial?
Already a member? Log in here
A common misconception in organisations is that it’s easy to sell a good idea. The reality, as detailed in the book Originals, by Adam Grant, is quite the opposite. Among the misconceptions his and other research identify are that: So when a coachee or mentee complains that their ideas are not being listened to, here...
Membership Required
You must be a member to access this content.
Why not sign up to a month's free trial?
Already a member? Log in here