| Over the past decade, a critical shift has occurred in the way people view mentoring. It used to be that mentoring was only seen as a hierarchical one-to-one relationship. Today, mentoring is viewed through a broader lens that focuses on creating learning networks.
In this 3-part newsletter series, you will learn compelling reasons for this broader, more collaborative view of mentoring, explore ways to leverage a mentoring network for your own personal and professional development, and discover best practices for doing so.
This first issue will focus on the compelling reasons why a broader, more collaborative view of mentoring is essential in today's hyperconnected, fast-paced world.
The shift in the mentoring mindset came about in part because of the rise in social networking. As research in this new field emerged, it became clear that it could be a powerful tool in personal and professional development—if only it were focused more on learning.
People need multiple mentoring relationships at different intensity levels for their wide and ever-changing learning needs. The old view of mentoring (i.e., a single, more experienced and powerful mentor working with a junior mentee over a very long period of time) is simply not a large enough conceptual frame to encompass the way people really use mentoring today.
Fast forward from those beginning flickers of social networking power to where we stand today. The new view of mentoring, which fits more firmly into our 21st century world, leverages collaboration of all types (e.g., career development relationships, topical groups, and situational engagements) so that learners find the right experts in the right relationships for the right results. Choices are endless, networks grow continuously, and knowledge emerges from vast resources.
Several factors have driven us to this new mentoring reality.
1. The world is changing so fast that no one, single person can help you with most everything you need to know. An apprentice view of mentoring assumes the mentor is preparing the mentee for a job that will be exactly the same in 5 to 10 years. Even if the job title exists 10 years from now, there is almost no chance that it will be comprised of the same competencies, knowledge, and practices. Preparing for the future necessitates a broad understanding of a wide variety of skills—an understanding best learned in collaboration with a wide variety of people.
2. Innovation and creative learning occur best when people are exposed to ideas and perspectives that are different from their own. This is one of the reasons why mentors report that they learn as much as mentees. They experience these relationships a co-learners, not as experts simply depositing knowledge into empty heads. Differences in values, culture, job level, and generation are seen not as communication barriers, but as innovation accelerators for all parties involved in the collaborative learning experience.
3. Collaborative learning and mentoring can take place in multiple ways, such as through career development relationships, topical groups, and situational engagements. For example, topical groups connect one or more advisors with multiple learners who, according to our research, learn nearly as much from each other as they do from the advisors. In situational engagements, a single learner may recruit two or three advisors to help solve a pressing problem or navigate a difficult issue. This networked view of mentoring allows people to find the right type of learning engagement to fit their need.
4. People choose the person they want to learn from based more on need than the person's level in the organization. While learning from someone higher up may be helpful in making a career decision, working with a peer may be advantageous in learning a particular skill or competency. In fact, people can even find help in technical areas or in cross-training situations from people who are actually lower on the organizational chart than they are. Knowledge resources are all around us.
5. Technology removes geography as a barrier to accessing the wisdom and knowledge of others. As a result, mentoring has moved beyond face-to-face relationships to effective learning engagements where the parties never actually shake hands. With today's technology, the entire tacit knowledge base of a global enterprise can be accessed.
All of these factors shape the experience of mentoring, making it fit our fast moving, collaboratively learning, technology driven culture. The new networked mentoring model is more flexible, more collaborative, and more technology assisted.
Some of you may be asking: Why should I invest the time and energy to expand my learning network, especially if I am already involved in a traditional mentoring relationship? Allow me to give you three powerful reasons why.
Improved Performance and Effectiveness
There is a large and growing body of research that suggests high performance is directly correlated to building a robust and sufficiently diverse network. It's clear why this is true: Someone who has abundant, productive, accessible resources to help them learn more and solve pressing problems can more easily perform well and exceed expectations than someone who relies solely on themselves. An ideal learning network typically consists of 5 to 8 people and can flex and change as needed. When you expand your network, you build relationships that can be accessed for current and future learning needs.
Increased Creativity and Capacity
Constantly interacting with others in collaborative learning exchanges increases the chances of serendipitous creative encounters, especially with people who have different strengths, experiences, and perspectives. Both experience and research indicate that exploring new territory and new solutions requires us to access our creative capacities to a larger degree. The more our learning needs involve exploration, the more likely innovations will come from multiple interactions with people from different perspectives. Additionally, as we invest in learning the expertise and capacities of others, we build the learning capacity of our network for future development needs.
Exponential Knowledge Expansion
Triple Creek's research and my own experience have taught me that mentoring relationships increase the learning of all parties involved. When you collaborate with others in your own learning, you expand their learning as well, thus multiplying the total knowledge base of the enterprise. Therefore, expanding your network increases the learning of others in the enterprise, whether their primary role in the relationship was learner or advisor.
In the next two newsletters, we will explore factors that can guide the creation of flexible and robust learning networks, such as:
- Is the learning need an expansion of an existing idea or competency, or does it involve exploring new problems, ideas, or competencies?
- Does my learning require that I collaborate with people at higher levels of expertise or power in the organization, or will peers and even those at lower levels be more helpful to me?
- Would someone with a similar job and background be more helpful, or would I benefit from collaborating with others in a different function, geography, or culture?
Look for answers to these questions in our next two issues.
Consider using your current mentoring relationship(s) as a launching pad into this brave new world of networked mentoring. Begin by discussing the following questions with your mentoring partner(s).
1. What are some of the biggest challenges and issues that I am facing right now that are not being addressed in this mentoring experience?
2. Who do my mentoring partner(s) and I know who may have interest or expertise that could be useful in a collaborative learning relationship on one or more of these issues?
3. How can I begin the process of changing my approach to mentoring and expanding my learning network?
Leveraging your combined networks of friends, acquaintances, or previous collaborators is a great starting point to broadening your own personal learning network. Reexamine your learning needs periodically, as they may change with time.
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