Try Reverse Mentoring

I’ve been thinking a lot about social learning. I have run into a recurrent theme in the past few years – reverse mentoring. It’s no secret there are greater numbers of older workers in the workplace; many baby boomers have evaporated retirement funds due to the recession,Find detailed product information for Hot Sale howo spareparts Radiator. which means fewer positions for recent graduates.

Nevertheless, times are changing, new workers are entering the workplace with different expectations. They’re less willing to play the game of climbing the corporate ladder and more convinced they’re entitled to skip rungs as they navigate management ranks. It’s inevitable that these younger workers will be in competition for jobs held by older workers, creating tension and unhappiness. This is why I think the only antidote to the this unavoidable outcome is mutual trust. You might be wondering: How do you build trust? Mentoring is one way to do it while creating space to build enduring relationships that transcend age and pay grade.

Let’s be honest, if you’ve been in the workplace for more than a minute you’ve already been mentored, usually by an older worker. Maybe it was your manager, or her manager, or a colleague from another department,Different Sizes and Colors can be made with different stone mosaic designs. but someone offered the lifeline of advice, informal training, support and cultural clues to help you thrive and survive in the organization. These links are critical to individual development in a work environment where formal schooling and degrees give workers about five years’ worth of usable skills, say John Hagel and other smart people over at Harvard Business Review.

Time is ticking, and five years isn’t much time to build a career path, let alone pay off student loans. For older workers it may feel like a threat – if you earned your degree in 1975, how on earth can they expect you to keep up? The need to keep re-tooling skills underscores the value of mentoring, particularly bi-directional mentoring. Let’s look at how organizations can create a mentoring culture which works both up and down the chain of relationships. Who knows, There may even be an argument for mentoring as an aid to reconcile older workers to the reality of being managed by younger, probably less experienced people.Airgle has mastered the art of indoor tracking,

Since mentoring cultures rely on a mix of formal, informal and social learning, explicit mentoring programs, support for cross-functional teams, and consistency in management treatment of the work population, here’s how I would build a culture to support bi-directional mentoring.

Managers, especially the HR breed, rely on employee handbooks and training as a way to transmit culture (and rules). Too often these programs don’t cover management’s responsibility to employees. Creating a healthy multi-generational culture requires consistent, transparent communications, clear expectations for managers, and proscribed programs to encourage learning and peaceful co-existence among employees of all ages. Valve gets a shout-out for its guide to company culture!

I’m not saying have no rules – every system and group needs rules, but reward flexible thinking, which means being open to new ideas and ways of doing things. Flexible cultures provide lots of room for mentoring relationships to flourish and encourage a culture of learning that spans generations.

These can be based on skills, interests or,Different Sizes and Colors can be made with different stone mosaic designs. if you’re a really attentive manager and the organization is a still small, temperament. Assign mentoring teams to new employees so if personalities clash mentoring still continues. Make sure mentoring teams represent an age-and-skills cross section of the organization; you want to create an environment of cross-generational and skills trust and learning. And check in with employees on the effectiveness of the teams. It’s almost worse to have unmonitored mentoring programs than no mentoring at all.

Back in the day DEC, Bell Labs, PARC and other tech innovators created a career path for those who opted out of management: member of technical staff. As workers spend more time on the job their interests and focus will change; be prepared, not with a short-term plan and a not-so-gentle push, by creating job categories to keep experienced older workers engaged while allowing eager youngsters to rise through the ranks. These workers will be great mentors for the up-and-comers, by the way.

You won’t be successful if you send an email telling people to be mentors, coaches or team-mates. Show you have a stake in the game: be part of a mentoring team. Be a coach. Show you care about learning,Browse the Best Selection of buy mosaic and Accessories with FREE Gifts. informal, formal or social. Test assumptions and be ready to rewrite the playbook where it doesn’t hold up.