Leadership training is as much about personal development as it is about learning set skills through formal training. For this reason, mentoring is often chosen as the best way to develop leadership potential.
What is mentoring?Mentoring is a supportive form of development that many experts believe should be independent from other training activities. Mentoring is an informal, generally unstructured process in which a mentor, usually someone very experienced in business, spends time developing the inner resources of the mentee. It is not a teacher-pupil relationship; rather, the mentor is more of a guide and somebody against whom ideas can be safely sounded out.
Mentoring usually takes place outside the conventional employee-manager relationship, and the mentee sets the agenda based on their own development needs, with the mentor providing guidance to help the mentee achieve their goals. Read the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development's (CIPD) factsheet on mentoring.
What are the differences between coaching and mentoring?Although 'coaching' and 'mentoring' can overlap, they perform different functions. Coaching is aimed at developing a person's skills and knowledge in a specific area of work leading to achievement of an objective. Read this CIPD factsheet on coaching.
Mentoring is the long-term provision of guidance to someone less experienced in order to support their general development at work.
Read this guide to use mentoring to boost employee performance.
The Northwest Regional Development Agency, through a network of approved providers, is offering a business mentoring programme to established SMEs with less than £2 million turnover.
Further information
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