尊敬的安妮：我是公司的一名团队领导。公司已开始鼓励所有和我同级别的领导层人员至少带一至两名员工学徒。目的是为了发掘那些有晋升潜力的人，引导他们获得正确的技能和经验。我们可以自行选择学徒，而不是指定分配，但是必须定期汇报进展情况。事实上，“人才开发”目前是我们发放奖金时考核的重点内容。

    这个措施固然很好，但是已然非常繁忙的工作让我十分担心是否有时间在工作的同时来做这件事。如果公司能对当导师应做的事情设立一些具体的标准，事情可能也会简单一些。然而，恰恰连这一块也得由我们自己来决定。那么我每周在这上面花大概30分钟的时间可以吗？对此，您和读者有什么建议吗？——超忙

    尊敬的超忙：你们公司的导师动议看起来非常不明确，但也许这是件好事。毕竟，如果没有基本准则，公司就不能指责你违反准则。另一方面，具体期望值的缺失可能让你为自己是否有时间做这件事情而感到焦虑——顺便说一下，这一点很正常。为大型企业设计正规导师计划的人力资源咨询公司Nobscot的贝斯•卡文称：“那些被要求当导师的人第一反应普遍都是：‘我没有时间’。”

    一点不奇怪。沟通培训公司Communispond首席执行官比尔•罗森瑟尔表示，最有效的导师会完成以下列表中的所有或大部分事项：

    • 让学徒了解目前公司和公司所处的竞争环境的状况；

    • 参与学徒的表现评估，“或者至少提供相关信息”

    • 向上级展示学徒所取得的成就

    • 帮助有前途的学徒考虑“在公司可以获取的所有发展机会，例如工作调动、在跨职能团队工作和拓展性作业等等。”

    • 帮助弥补学徒的技能不足，包括利用内部培训或外界资源；以及

    • 出现问题时出面斡旋——“例如出现冲突的时候：进步很快的学员会向高管汇报工作，而高管则喜欢让更有经验的人来做这项工作。”

    虽然要做的事情有很多，但罗森瑟尔表示，大部分工作都可以在“少量时间内完成”，而且可以融入目前的工作日程。他说：“要高效地完成这项工作，可以就此问题经常与学徒见面讨论，甚至是通电话。”它需要练习，但是这一经验会让你成为更加全面的团队领袖。“对于出色的经理来说，带学徒或培训学员其实只是一种更为集中的工作形式。”

    罗森瑟尔表示，还有一件事可能会让这份工作看起来并不那么可怕，那就是，“师徒关系融洽的前提就是互惠。”因为学徒所做的工作至少有一半是为了发展他/她自身的职业生涯。

    Dear Annie:I am a team leader at a company that has started encouraging everyone at my level to mentor at least one or two people below us. The point is to identify those with the potential to move up and guide them toward getting the right skills and experience. We can choose our own mentees, rather than having them assigned to us, but we do have to report periodically on how it's going. In fact, "talent development" is now a big chunk of what determines our bonuses.

    All well and good, but I'm so busy already that I really worry about whether I have the time to do this on top of everything else. It might help if there were some specific benchmarks for what mentors are supposed to do, exactly, but that's being left up to us, too. Can I be any good at this in, say, 30 minutes a week? Do you or your readers have any suggestions for me? — Overbooked

    Dear O.:Your employer's mentoring push sounds unusually vague, but maybe that's a good thing. After all, if there are no benchmarks, you can't be accused of not sticking to them. On the other hand, the lack of specific expectations may be adding to your anxiety about whether you have time for this -- which, by the way, is far from unusual. Notes Beth Carvin, whose human resources consulting firm Nobscot designs formal mentoring programs for big companies, "It's very common for people's first reaction to be 'I don't have the time' when they're asked to be mentors."

    And no wonder. Bill Rosenthal, CEO of communications coaching company Communispond, says that the most effective mentors do all or most of the things on this checklist:

    • Keep mentees current on what's happening in the company and in its competitive environment;

    • Participate in mentees' performance reviews "or at least provide input";

    • Showcase the mentee's accomplishments to higher-ups;

    • Help promising mentees consider "all the available development opportunities in the company, like job rotation, work on cross-functional teams, stretch assignments, and so on";

    • Arrange for help to plug any skills gaps, including training from in-house or outside sources; and

    • Step in to mediate when there's a problem -- "when, for example, there's a conflict when a fast-tracked mentee is reporting to an executive who'd prefer a more experienced person in the job."

    It's a lot to take on, but according to Rosenthal, much of it can be done in "small bits of time" that fit in around your current schedule. "You can be highly successful at this by having frequent and focused meetings, or even phone calls" with your mentee, he says. It takes practice, but the experience may make you a better all-around team leader. "Mentoring or coaching people is really just a more concentrated form of what good managers do anyway."

    Something else that might make the task seem less daunting is that "for a mentoring relationship to work, it has to be reciprocal," Rosenthal observes. The person you're mentoring has to do at least half the work" of nurturing his or her own career.

    Moreover, Nobscot's Beth Carvin says that, in interviews with mentors at her client companies, many initially reluctant mentors express surprise at how much they end up getting from the deal. "Working with a mentee lets you see business issues through a different lens," Carvin says. "If you're mentoring someone in a different part of the company, it gives you another pair of eyes there, which can give you information that helps you succeed at your own job. A mentee's point of view can sometimes help you understand your own team's concerns, too."