What is Mentoring?
"Mentoring is a form of informal professional development where you develop professional skills or competencies with feedback from another person. That person is a sort of trusted counsellor or guide -- someone whose skills you respect. Peer mentoring is a unique approach to mentoring where two people choose to work together on common or complementary goals. You and your peer mentor may have different professional skillsets or work experience-- or you may share certain skills or work experience. The key is that you have something to learn from each other."
[Source: University of Denver http://www.du.edu/hr/training/peermentoring.php]
What is Peer Coaching/Mentoring?
Peer coaching is "a confidential process through which two or more professional colleagues work together to review current practices; expand, refine, and build new skills; share ideas; teach one another; conduct classroom research; solve problems in the workplace"
[Source: Slater, C.L. and Simmons, D.L., "The design and implementation of a Peer Coaching program." American Secondary Education, v.29, n.3 [Spring 2001], 67-76.]
Why Does My Organisation Need It?
"Eventually all loners get burned by the empty promises of doing it yourself. You can't get too far in life without the humility to ask for help. Getting to that point is a good start, but actually seeking the best help, is crucial to long-term growth."
[Source: Living the Solution - http://www.livingthesolution.com/ goingoneonone.htm
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Why does mentoring work?
"Companies have tried all sorts of things to improve corporate life for ... employees. Many efforts fail, but one approach has proved so successful that it should be a staple at every concerned firm: mentoring."
[Source: Fortune Magazine - http://www.fortune.com/fortune/ diversity/articles/0,15114,370475,00.php]
"Lockaby recommended a mentoring program run by WOMEN Unlimited Inc., a New York City-based, four-year-old career-development company for women only. The program paired Townsend with a senior executive outside of Stride Rite who would be her mentor for a year - but it also gave her something she never would have thought to ask for: 20 peers-as-mentors who taught her more than either her MBA courses or her formal mentor would.
"I never thought about learning from someone on my level," Townsend says. "I always looked two to four levels above me and wondered what I had to do to get there. But the people who have the best solutions to the problems I face are often the people facing those problems themselves."
[Source:http://www.fastcompany.com /online/17/womentoring.php]
"The supervisory style of "mentoring" works well for initial training, but over the long haul, employees need safe relationships where they can confidentially discuss development needs, relationship issues, and career aspirations. Research into best practices of mentoring shows that self-selected mentoring relationships can be substantially more effective than forced match systems."
[Source: http://www.3creek.com/resource /AR_CallCenter.pdf]
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