Formal mentoring programmes have enormous potential for enabling and supporting organisational change and this works best when mentoring interventions are used to address growth and development at three distinct levels of
- Individual
- Team
- Organisation
At the individual level, mentoring works on the individual’s awareness of the change process and on the development of skills, knowledge and insights to enable him or her to initiate, manage and cope with change. The key to success at this level lies in the ability of the mentor to act as a role model, a source of support and a source of challenge within an open, trusting and long-term relationship.
At the team level, the mentor works with the team to raise awareness of how it functions and to formulate strategies for change. The mentor also enables the team to identify and confront obstacles that are getting in the way of change. Individual issues can be handled off-line thereby allowing the team to focus on its performance.
At the organisational level, a mentoring programme can provide networks, channels of communication and feedback between different parts and levels of the organisation. This provides significant opportunities for learning and development. Mentoring helps the organisation to raise awareness of the organisational vision and culture, and the need for change. Integrative strategies can then be developed and acted upon.
Within the STInno project mentoring concentrates on exchange of knowledge and learning from each other. This is not a top-down activity but a process where the Work Package leader facilitates the process.
We have created a Mutual Learning Forum in order to optimize mutual learning and ensure the end-user dialogue. Co-ordination is an interactive and dynamic process where the emphasis will be on achieving the project objectives and where communication, dissemination and mentoring will be horizontal activities which last for the whole project lifetime.
Our Objectives for the STInno Mentoring Programme
- To foster knowledge transfer, know-how and experiences between regions, in particular from regions with a well developed research driven cluster to those with a less well developed research profile
- Design, development and implementation of a Mutual Joint Learning Forum for the intellectual cross-fertilisation of the project partners
- To bring global foresight to the project consortium work
We aim to foster mutual exchange of experiences and learning between the partner regions.
The STInno Mentoring Process
Previous work had sought to identify the strengths and weaknesses in the participating research organisations’ current research agendas by a thorough analysis and comparison of the industrial wastewater-related research state of the art in the consortium.
Using this as a starting point we then used the following steps in order to develop the mentoring programme content
Methodology
Task - Identification of Mentoring Needs
- Desk research on global best practice in mentoring
- Creation of template for interviews on mentoring needs
- Administration, co-ordination and organization of interviews
- Analysis of mentoring needs and mentor capabilities
- Report including methodology for mentoring programme
Task - Mentoring Plan
- Mentoring planning and building up co-operative tools for sharing information
- Identification and matching of mentees and appropriate mentors
- Administration, co-ordination and organization of mentor programme
- Evaluation of effectiveness of plan
Task - Mutual Learning Forum
- Consult and agree with partners on scope and priorities of Mutual Learning Forum
- Agree with partners styles and levels of engagement
- Develop Forum methodology
- Evaluation of the effectiveness of the Forum
Task - Four Inter-regional Mentoring Events – nest stage
- With partners agree programme, locations and timing for events
- Administration, co-ordination and organization of events
- Design and development of programme for events
- Evaluation of events with participants
Mentoring and Organisational Change
Formal mentoring programmes have enormous potential for enabling and supporting
organisational change. This works best when mentoring interventions are used to address growth and development at three distinct levels of
- The Individual
- The Team
- The Organisation
At the individual level, mentoring works on the individual’s awareness of the change process and on the development of skills, knowledge and insights to enable him or her to initiate, manage and cope with change. The key to success at this level lies in the ability of the mentor to act as a role model, a source of support and a source of challenge within an open, trusting and long-term relationship.
At the team level, the mentor works with the team to raise awareness of how it functions and to formulate strategies for change. The mentor also enables the team to identify and confront obstacles that are getting in the way of change. Individual issues can be handled off-line thereby allowing the team to focus on its performance.
At the organisational level, a mentoring programme can provide networks, channels of communication and feedback between different parts and levels of the organisation. This provides significant opportunities for learning and development. Mentoring helps the organisation to raise awareness of the organizational vision and culture, and the need for change. Integrative strategies can then be developed and acted upon.
Mentoring
Mentoring is exciting, challenging and rewarding. It offers support, consistency and a chance for new personnel to develop the knowledge and skills needed to reach their full potential. It also offers the chance for experienced organisations to share their successes and failures in a way to allows other to benefit from them. As a result, STInno partners will increase project performance and the organization will realize the expected return on project investments.
The goals of the mentoring program are:
- To contribute to individual growth
- To allow project personnel to develop
- To network with more experienced partners and so improve the capacity and capabilities of the project organisations managers
Mentoring is a learning partnership between an experienced project manager (mentor) and a less experienced project manager (Mentee) for the purpose of sharing knowledge and information. Mentoring provides all project managers with the opportunity for and access to professional growth and development.
Mentor Benefits
A Mentor is a trusted friend, counselor, or teacher and although the primary function of the mentor is to facilitate the Mentee’s project success and professional growth through the development and execution of the Mentoring Plan, the mentors/Mentee relationship offers growth and development to the mentor as well.
When mentoring is approached with a willingness to learn and share knowledge, all parties benefit. Mentors have opportunities to:
- Increase their mentoring skills which they can use in numerous personal and professional areas
- Learn new technical knowledge and skills
- Increase their professional network by developing new professional contacts
- Pass on years of experience
- Gain satisfaction from contributing to the development of capable individuals
- Gain exposure to new ideas, technologies, and perspectives through interaction with Mentees
- Broadened perspective
- Enhanced challenges and interests
- Increased competency and confidence
Mentee Benefits
The Mentee i.e. a student, a pupil, or someone who is receiving mentoring is expected to proactively pursue growth opportunities to achieve improvement goals and effectively meet project success criteria.
The successful Mentee:
- Is eager to learn and open to new ideas
- Is willing to take risks
- Has a positive attitude
- Is open to receiving feedback about skills
- Is able to integrate feedback and act on it
- Takes initiative and demonstrates resourcefulness.
Many of these skills are developed during the mentoring relationship and in a Mentoring program, Mentee’s have opportunities to:
- Observe and interact with more experienced staff and organisations
- Receive encouragement (which in turn increase their motivation)
- Acquire knowledge and professional skills
- Save time by learning shortcuts and strategies normally learned by trial and error
- Ask specific questions and get one-on-one feedback
- Network with professionals in the field of Project Management
- Realize faster growth in
- Demonstrate success in immediate Project Management challenges
