Group Mentoring Can Avoid Perceived Favoritism [Information Week] Tuesday 03/22/05 8:39 AM
A potential problem that can arise from a mentoring program is that non-participating staff may view a mentoring relationship as favoritism, especially when the mentor is the boss and the mentee is a coworker. Favoritism, or just the perception of favoritism, can cause resentment in the organization and lower employee morale.
One way to avoid this situation is to keep your mentor program open to all interested employees. Let everyone who is willing to be mentored participate.
Another solution is group mentoring, in a one to many relationship. This would be useful where there are a few mentors that are highly sought after.
How one CIO implements group mentoring:
- Holds monthly all-hands meetings on company direction including the decisions that were made and the reasons for each. Any employee can ask anything and all questions are answered or explained why they cannot be answered.
- Holds smaller follow up lunch time meetings with any employee that signs up. This self-selects employees that are motivated to be mentored.
- Takes his lunch in the staff lunchroom whenever possible to keep informal channels open to all.
- Keeps his door open to all for private one on one conversation and corrects for any over use of his attention by explaining his need to spend time with others.
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