Mentoring a Winner: What an Experience!

That phone call from Istanbul, “Fortunate has won!” will not be forgotten very soon.A journey which started late in December last year culminated in a young colleague, Fortunate Mboweni, winning the 2014 Young Freight Forwarder of the Year competition which is organised by the International Federation of Freight Forwarders Associations (FIATA).  Fortunate is the first Africa born African to have won this competition since its inception in 1999. What an amazing experience to have been her mentor through the process.

This will change Fortunate’s life forever. For those like me who are given the opportunity to partner with our future leaders there were valuable lessons- in some ways I learnt more than Fortunate.

As these are lessons which may benefit others I would like to share them.

1.     The end is the key.

Fortunate and I spent a great deal of wasted effort by misinterpreting the requirements of the competition. Thanks to another member of the team’s more careful scrutiny of the competition criteria we were able to focus our efforts on what was really needed.

It is also vital to know what your respective roles are. It was a huge temptation for me to over participate and carry out work which Fortunate needed to do, in which case Fortunate would have learnt very little except to sit still, look and listen.

2.     Be brutally frank.

The whole objective of mentoring is to have your protégé succeed beyond their wildest expectations, but not yours. In taking on a mentorship take great care to understand the clay with which you are going to work. 

If you are not 100% confident of your candidate’s capabilities, don’t start the project. On the other hand do realise that, when the goal ahead is very clear and very worthwhile, people do outperform themselves.

It is up to the mentor to carefully assess the potential of the person to be taken on the journey. Mentoring is leading for success, not setting up for failure.

3.     One of youse ain’t gonna make it!

At different stages of our journey Fortunate or I became extremely disheartened: there was too much to do in the time available, material we needed was not forthcoming, material we did obtain could not be digestively packaged within the constraints of the completion criteria, our presentation concept was brilliant but it just wouldn’t work and so on. What kept us going was the ability of the one who was standing to pick up the one who had fallen.

In a mentoring journey obstacles are inevitable: each will affect each partner differently and it is up to each to counter the effects of each setback on the other.

4.     There are no rules.

Mentoring is very much like parenting: there may be guiding principles but generally the rules have to be made up as you go along.

People change with time and mentorship is all about development. As development takes place so the protégé needs to be taking on more responsibilities whilst the hand of the mentor grows lighter and lighter.

As Fortunate’s mentor I knew I had done my job when she left for Istanbul fully equipped to win the competition.

5.     It’s the team which succeeds

Vital to successful mentorship is the opening of doors by forming a support group around the protégé. The mentor doesn’t necessarily have all the answers but does need a very wide network of contacts who collectively do.

 

As Fortunate so eloquently put it when she thanked everyone “A key part of the presentation I made in winning the competition was to point out that much of my success was attributable to the team which supported me, and that means YOU. My winning was truly a joint effort in which I acted as your spokesperson in articulating all the knowledge and experience you had poured into my poor little head during my journey through the competition!”

6.     The rewards far outweigh the pain

In general I estimate that every hour of a presentation takes 10 hours of preparation. In Fortunate’s case the 15 minute presentation she made to win the competition took not less than 100 hours. This just gives some idea of the level of commitment needed to be a mentor for a project of this nature. One thing is for sure though: the rewards from this experience will stay with me forever- every second spent on this project was worth it.

It may be true that legislation and other Government interventions may assist in transforming our society into one in which the limitations on each individual’s success are only the self-imposed ones. 

I would like to suggest that a more important element to a nation’s success  is that those who have gained a measure of experience and expertise take proactive steps in using those assets to invest in society’s future – our young people. 

Key Weapon for Maximising Training Investments

Introduction

Businesses have a simple, burning question to ask of any training intervention, “How do we know that our investment was profitable?” Key to answering this question is in knowing WHEN to ask it and HOW.

Back to basics

The key to maximising investment in training is to define what results are expected in measurable terms, which is not as easy as it seems.

Whilst “To reduce the error level in XYZ production process by ABC%” might be straightforward, how do we set measurable objectives for soft skills training such as strategic thinking, negotiation, emotional intelligence or self-awareness for example? We know they can be taught, but how can we measure the extent to which a particular intervention has transferred these skills?

The objective of any workplace training intervention is to change the behaviour of the training programme participants. Why? To improve business results by either rectifying substandard performance or by imparting new skills. In either instance a business case would need to have been submitted which includes measurable results, usually expressed in financial terms.

The first step is for the training objectives (what will learners be able to do?) and these measurable, financial objectives to be made known to the provider and those enrolled on the training and their line managers.

What works?

Clearly, those questionnaires at the end of a course will not help to measure how far financial objectives have been met. They determine whether the delivery of the training had a positive impact on the participants and assists providers in improving their delivery.

What more needs to be done if we are to be assured that any training intervention is delivering the goods?

The tools

Valuable insights by one Don Kirkpatrick¹ (1924 –2014) have given industry the tools needed.

In addition to determining the immediate impact of the training, further evaluation must be carried out to measure:

What was learnt?

Assessment of participants is vital. If this is not a part of the training programme, then it is edutainment, not training. More will have been achieved by taking the same participants on a team building exercise or to an inspiring movie.

To what extent has behaviour been changed?

At some stage after the training has taken place, we need to determine whether the learning which took place is being applied:

• Are training participants applying the new skills in their work, or
• Have the individuals concerned changed their previous practices in line with changes in client needs, legislation, company strategy, or other developments

This is implies that, prior to training taking place, we need to have the tools to measure these results. In practice this can be carried out through interviews, of assessment of observed behaviour against checklists or the evaluation of finished products.

Training providers need to be a part of building these tools and will need to include it in their quotations.

What it the financial impact?

The business case defined financial objectives. After an agreed period (should not be later than six months) the financial results of the areas in the company that were targeted for training need to be measured against these objectives. It may not be easy to gain an accurate result because other factors may intervene which either enhance or detract from the financial impact of the training.

What is the overall ROI?

By collating the financial impacts of all training interventions it becomes possible to calculate a real training ROI as opposed to one built on the Training Manager’s flights of fancy.

To summarise:

There is an argument which says that all this measuring is too time consuming and costly. On the other hand training is becoming an increasingly costly budget item whose value has until now been difficult to quantify.

Does your company think it important to calculate return on training investment?

Is the work involved in objectively assessing worth the effort involved?

What tools other than those which have been suggested do you use to measure training impact?

When organising training interventions, what importance do you place on measuring participants’ ability to apply what they have learnt?

Reference:

1. The New World Kirkpatrick Model: http://www.kirkpatrickpartners.com/OurPhilosophy/TheKirkpatrickModel/tabid/302/Default.apx