In an age where people "connect" with or "friend" each other without so much as shaking hands and where some coworkers who work on projects together never meet in person, how do you go about finding an ideal mentor?
Web-based programs may make it easier for companies to offer mentoring opportunities to employees, but you still have to do the hard work of building a useful relationship.
Consider Sodexo. Before the food services and facilities management company launched an e-mentoring program several years ago, the company sponsored from 45 to 125 new mentoring partnerships each year, says Jodi Davidson, director of diversity and inclusion initiatives. But Sodexo has a U.S. workforce of 115,000 employees and about 15,000 managers who could benefit from a mentorship program.
The one-on-one nature of the formal program "was not going to allow everyone to take part," says Davidson. So Sodexo has begun to use software by Greenwood Village, Colo.-based Triple Creek, which uses an algorithm to suggest ideal mentor-mentee matches.
Now, Sodexo has an informal program open to all managers that has about 1,700 mentees and 1,300 mentors and it continues to have about 125 formal mentoring partnerships.
Financial manager Northern Trust also relies on technology to open up the mentoring process to its more than 13,000 employees across the globe. Northern Trust also uses Triple Creek's mentoring software.
Web-based mentoring doesn't necessarily save a company money, because it requires an initial investment in the software, says Northern Trust spokesperson Sophia Venetos. "Setting up a traditional face-to-face, manually run program doesn't require much upfront investment, but [does] require significant time and resources to manage."
It's the relationship that counts
Whether online or face-to-face, mentoring is "a social relationship," says Daniel Debow, co-CEO of Rypple, which produces performance management software. Any technology "should facilitate deeper, richer relationships."
It all comes down to your commitment to that relationship, says Lois Zachary, director of the Phoenix-based Center for Mentoring Excellence and author of The Mentor's Guide: Facilitating Effective Learning Relationships. The right mentor "can be in Timbuktu or New York but you have to understand who that individual is and what they bring to the relationship."
Zachary recommends identifying specific goals you want to achieve and establishing criteria to determine the right mentor to help you reach them.
"Learning is the purpose, the process, and the product of mentoring. It's why you do it."
Kathy Bollinger, president of the Arizona West Region of the Banner Health system of hospitals, has plenty of experience as a mentor and as a mentee.
Over the years, Bollinger finds she has become much more selective about giving up her time to mentor others. "I want to make sure I'm the right and best person for what that person wants to accomplish ... It's a contract, a commitment."
Bollinger has taken on Julie B. Sherman, Banner Health's senior director of brand services, as a mentor.
