Wisdom Share Mentoring Blog

The whole idea of women and mentoring has been to make progress in the effort to break the glass ceiling, to get women into the upper echelons of business management. It has been a team effort to stand up for our tribe and to make a difference for our daughters.

Is Poor Mentor Matching Like a Bad Blind Date?

I’m thinking about hosting a call-in radio show called “Hey Bob”– where people call in with questions about business, and get the latest relevant information on their questions. A typical show might sound like this:

Earlier this week, we gave a presentation on multigenerational issues in the workplace.  HR Toolbox started a discussion on Generation Y and should managers train and retain differently to appeal to Generation Y.  

Our next blog will address that directly, but we decided to rerun one of our oldest blogs to get you thinking about other "Wars for Talent" in history.

I know several women who tell the same story. 

They graduated from a top-tier college in the early 1960’s.  Near their graduation date, they were offered an opportunity to sit for an IQ test and, based upon the results, they were immediately hired by a large insurance company to be trained as a computer programmer. (This was in the era when a “computer bug” was a moth that flew into the vacuum tubes and shut down the computer.)

In the course of our work here at Mentor Resources, we interact with several hundred companies a year helping them investigate, evaluate and start mentoring programs. 

Every mentor wants to be a Great Mentor – they want the personal benefits of a job well done, the joy of watching their protégées succeed, and the sense of connection with someone who shares their values and goals. Organizations want Great Mentors to improve their management bench strength, achieve strategic goals faster and transfer skills and knowledge in an effective way.

Here at Mentor Resources we interact with thousands of people who act as mentors in the course of a year. They all want to be a great mentor.

Dell received the 2012 DiversityInc Special Recognition award for the computer company’s commitment to Employee Resource Groups (ERGs). Regular readers of the Mentor Resources Industry Commentary know that there is a difference between Business Resource Groups (BRGs), Employee Resource Groups (ERGs) and Affinity Groups, with groups aligned with the organization’s strategic goals (Business Resource Groups) being the ultimate goal. Dell’s award was no surprise to any observer of the ERGs or BRGs. There have been articles about Dell’s efforts to attract and retain a diverse workforce since 2006, when Strategic HR Magazine published, "Embracing and managing diversity at Dell: Introducing flexible working and a women’s network to help retain key employees."

Who would have thought that a Swiss-based pharmaceutical company, would have the best Diversity Talent Development program, according to DiversityInc.’s 2012 Awards? Perhaps it shouldn’t be a surprise. This multinational, with over 120,000 employees, has been open to a variety of ways of thinking (the true goal of all diversity programs) since Joseph Jimenez became CEO in 2002.

Are your employees the heroes of your organization’s story? We spend a lot of time discussing knowledge management and helping companies maximize productivity of their managers and knowledge workers, but Tanveer Naseer’s blog, How Are You Helping Your Employees To Be Your Organization’s Heroes? gave us a new perspective on productivity during a period of organizational change and knowledge workers.