Designing an effective mentoring program is different from how other employee and leader development programs are often built. Unlike a normal training program, for instance, which might be piloted and run several times inside of a calendar year, mentoring programs often are launched on an annual basis. And, program effectiveness won’t be known for a minimum of 3 to 6 months until the results start showing up in protégé development.
To address these shortcomings, we offer mentoring program design services to help clients build programs that will start strong and continue to improve over time. We help shorten learning curves that many new programs often experience by bringing expertise built over decades of helping clients both large and small across a wide array of industries. We blend best practices with internal company culture and talent management strategy to create a customized mentoring program that can deliver results over time.
Our design process engages one of our consultants with an internal design team from the client to build out the structure of the program. The consultant then uses the results of the design process to construct a charter document which serves as a blueprint for the program. The client subsequently owns the resulting charter and is able to update it over time to reflect program learnings and changes. Since mentoring programs often launch only once a year, much of the tacit wisdom that would otherwise be lost can be captured in the charter and passed on to future program administrators.