| Team Development || Executive Coaching || Mentoring || Strategic and Business Plans || Leadership Development || Social Networks |
Mentoring and Coaching Notes
Coaching is facilitated within the structural relationships in the organisation while mentoring implies a relationship independent of organisation reporting. Senior staff often want to be mentored by their CEO or their managers.
CEO's want to be able to have chats with their reports with a genuine desire to creatively listen and reflect back as an equal, however, given thier position, it is often difficult for the other party not to see it as a quasi performance activity. That is both disappointing and frustration for CEO's.
Some companies develop an intra-organisation capacity and recognition of mentoring skills and it is seen as a safe opportunity for frank discussions, rather than being performance focused.
Intra-organisation mentoring works well for professionals, staff and middle managers. Another benefit is that mentoring greatly strengthens the informal network of relationships within a company, especially across divisions. Knowledge and experience is more readily shared.
In smaller New Zealand organisations there can be road blocks: for mentors in keeping the learning content discreet; and for mentees in being willing to raise those areas which may show them in a negative light.
Senior team members can embrace mentoring as a means of self development. Leadership is complex and any self awareness of the value of externalising for perspective and insight seems to be a healthy sign of maturity as much as a recognition of need.
'Executives develop freedom and freshness in their approach with mentors from organisations independent from their own. You may be aware of potential mentors from within your own network of relationships and make those connections between them and your own executives. These are powerful affirmations both in recognition of mentoring, and in practical support of it. Naturally it is important that there is no reporting of results to managers. Managers learn to recognise new behaviours in others, as the results of mentoring become apparent.
The other area is in being aware of those times when your executives are bringing something new into their work; with peers, you, their team, or in the way they are producing company results. Over the years, I have learned many times, how lonely it can be for senior executives. One of the more affirming organisational processes is simple recognition from above… I am aware you… while the focus of the discussion is not so much on how this has been developed, more that you have noticed the executive has developed in this area.'
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