Problem: Management Team Decision
Mentoring Millennials Mentoring isn't what it used to be. Traditional mentoring programs usually match an up-and-coming newbie with a seasoned, gray-templed, and usually male executive for a career-long relationship that helps the junior person move up through the ranks of the company. But the work climate has changed, and people don't tend to stick with the same company for an entire career. Plus, the old-school model has its serious drawbacks. Senior executives often say they don't have time for such an intensive, long-term commitment. Scheduled lunch meetings with no specific purpose leave both the mentor and the mentee wondering "What's the point?" and wishing they were back at the office actually getting work done. Such traditional matches can feel like arranged marriages. And, like a marriage gone bad, they can end in a messy divorce when a mentor takes credit for a mentee's work; a mentee vies for the mentor's job; or the two are just incompatible in their personalities, values, or work styles. And such sour relationships can be tough to pull out of when the matches are imposed from above.164 You've read a lot lately about new approaches to mentoring. Instead of formal matches, many involve a mentee seeking out a mentor, sometimes for help with a specific question or problem.
Such relationships tend to be very focused and short-term, eliminating a number of the problems that plague traditional mentoring programs. There are also a variety of new takes on setting up relationships. Programs like Mentoring Worldwide or Circle of Friends transcend corporate boundaries, connecting mentors and mentees across businesses and industries-even across the globe. The Internet is a key tool in such efforts, connecting people through online databases, wikis, e-mail, and Skype. Some companies, like IBM and Intel, have even adopted such tools for in-house mentoring programs. These approaches have really changed the face of mentoring, which is becoming more about learning than feedback and perks. What's more, mentoring is becoming reciprocal. No longer top-down, senior executives are learning as much from the up-and-comings as they are offering their own knowledge and experience. In the new knowledge economy, everyone benefits.
165 You're pleased to read about these new developments because you've been thinking about setting up a mentoring program to help the increasing number of millennials, or Generation Yers, who work for your company. Their turnover rate is very high, about every 18 months or so. You would like to keep them with the company longer so that you can benefit from their creativity and skills. The problem, perhaps more than anything else, is boredom. These folks need to be constantly learning, or they bolt. Ironically, they appreciate stability, but stability for them means support and constant feedback about how to improve and what challenges to take on next. It also means an environment in which they feel others genuinely care about their success in life.166 You think a mentoring program could really help develop this part of your staff-and even benefit your more senior people-but you know that the traditional approach won't work. For this exercise, assemble a team of three to four students to represent the senior management team responsible for this decision. Try using the dialectical inquiry technique discussed in Chapter 5 ("Planning and Decision Making") on page 158.
Questions: 1. Why are traditional mentoring relationships unlikely to work for you in this situation? Use what you know specifically about millennials from this case and the text to help you answer.
2. What type of mentoring program would you set up? Explain your answer.
3. How could the mentoring program you design benefit your senior staff? What challenges might you encounter in bridging the generation gap to make such a program work? What features can you build into your program that will address these issues?