The Future of Mentorship — It’s Not What You Think

Australia’s top 10 places to work have one thing in common — they’ve all built a mentoring culture.

But mentoring is changing, and to remain competitive the best employers will need to adapt and change with it.

But what does the future of mentorship look like for individuals and organisations? How has mentoring evolved and what is the most effective form of mentorship?

Traditionally mentoring has been deployed based on hierarchy or years of ‘experience’. The old and wise mentoring the young and naive. However, as organisational structures flatten and access to information and education increases, mentoring in a traditional sense is being challenged. And this is a good thing.

As is so often the case, the startup community has been quick to embrace a new way of mentoring ahead of larger enterprises. Look at any incubator, accelerator or even VC and they often promote their network of advisors or mentors as a key selling point of their program. However, these mentors are not necessarily grey haired with a ‘been there done that’ perspective. They are diverse in their age, experience and success.

A recent study by Endeavor Insight (the research arm of Endeavor, a nonprofit that assists high-impact entrepreneurs across the world) also supports this approach. Of the 700 entrepreneurs surveyed, 33 percent of founders who were mentored by successful entrepreneurs went on to become top performers. This is over three times better than the performance of other New York-based tech companies.

We’ve always said that some of the best mentors we’ve had in our journey with Mentorloop are other startup founders that are 6 to 12 months ahead of us. That’s because there learnings are still fresh in their mind and often more relevant as we are dealing with similar market conditions. Things move fast in startup world so it’s vital to stay connected to real time experiences.

“As companies become more successful, their founders are more likely to mentor, angel invest and become serial entrepreneurs. Companies that are connected to a top-performing company are twice as likely to become top-performers themselves.” — Fernando Fabre, President of Endeavour

That’s not to say that sage advice is irrelevant — it’s just to make the point that having access to different types of mentors makes for a more powerful mentorship experience overall.

And that’s where we see large enterprise organisations lagging. While over 70% of Fortune 500 companies offer mentor programs, many are deploying it across the organisation in a very formal and uninspired way. So while some of the worlds largest organisations place a high value on the impact mentoring can deliver, they are currently underinvesting in it.

By applying a hierarchical approach to mentoring you immediately limit the number of mentors you can access, and therefore impact you can have. However, if corporates were to apply startup thinking to their mentor programs, it could turn into a far more beneficial and scalable approach for your people.

So what does this actually look like in a corporate context?

If you want to label it I guess what we are talking about here is more of a peer mentoring approach. Your ‘peer mentor’ is someone who like in the example above, might be at a similar level within the organisation but is able to offer a different perspective due to having a completely different set of experiences.

Peer mentors can provide the individual with valuable real time insights, possibly opening their eyes to an internal lateral career change, new relationships, or a better way of doing things.

For the organisation, this ‘non-hierarchical’ approach to mentoring starts to organically build a culture of mentoring where relationships are formed at a grass roots level, accessible to all, regardless of their perceived ‘status’ within the organisation.

And this is exactly the philosophy we seek to encourage at Mentorloop, and where we see the future of mentorship heading.

Want to find out more?

Mentorloop will be hosting an event, The Future of Mentorship: Fostering the Next Generation of Talent with General Assembly and organisational mentoring experts Altus Q on Wednesday 30 November in Melbourne. Register for Free

Our panel lineup will discuss:

• How mentoring can help your L&D strategy as a company?
• How can you create a mentoring culture across your organisation?
• Measuring success — what are tangible benefits for the individuals and the organisation