How Would You Create A Learning Organization?
The lessons learnt out of a teacher and a student relationship goes beyond the level of textbook or any business manuals, for both involved. Learning is a two way process and in the corporate context many of us must have donned both hats that is of a mentor and a mentee. Let us see how a mentor and mentee can help in creating learning organizations of tomorrow.
Mentor At His Best
Organizations and teams are built on faith and trust. A true balance of trust, human understanding and symbiotic working between different hierarchies in a team is the fundamental premise for successful teams. I always believed the greatest virtue of a mentor is not only to be superior in knowledge, but also display patience to enable learning and wisdom. People feel like they have too much to do and not enough time and lack of time is blamed for everything from not getting enough exercise, unachieved goals, bad relationships and so on. Through a mentor, you will learn ways to compartmentalize time and work and even hone the art of multi-tasking.
A mentor will help you transform your career from a mere follower to a leader. He would demonstrate the mentoring skills in shaping you up as a good leader. He will teach you ways to handle people, give feedback and maintain work life balance in a very demanding job that we are in today. A good mentor will always step in and help you learn & understand ways to handle high pressure situations while still respecting people.
A mentor will help you understand that once performance levels of people are established; don’t delay telling people where they stand. In case performance isn’t meeting expectations, they may need you to ensure they know this before hand. Further establishing a relationship with people beyond what they do at work and remember the small things about them will also help in building healthy organizational environment.
Mentees of Tomorrow
Mentoring is done with a view to create a successful career on one hand and to sow the seeds of mentoring on the other. The greatest of the challenges in mentoring is the resistance to change and willingness to unlearn certain preconceived positions of understanding and decision making. Also, I am not sure how and when the mentor takes over from being a mere superior in terms of administrative hierarchy. In the process of mentoring, he develops an ability to absorb the experiences of his mentees which they have acquired through their course of life. It is learnt that every person’s problem is a case study by itself; through them, you can enrich your learnings.
Understanding the view of your mentee is sometimes difficult for which one need to step into their shoes to understand the problem before guiding them to the right pointers. Also, mentors gain from a mentee’s experience. Hence, look out for opportunities for improvement on both sides, both mentee and mentor.
I think the strongest lesson I have learnt while mentoring is that you have to let people go and make their own mistakes. Don’t give solutions as much as ask questions that help them to take the decision for themselves.
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Hi Amit,
Good points of view. Esp. the symbiotic one which seems to be all too lacking now a days…
Anyway, I have a question: Who would you choose, a guy with a “degree” in MBA (HR), or a guy who is really interested in looking after his Human employees and clearly knows what he’s doing even though he’s with a technical background and does not have an MBA degree? Would you become his mentor and give the opportunity of a lifetime or would you be a reactionary and say that he doesnt have a “background” or “experience” in HR?
Thanks,
Sriharsha
P.S. words in quotes are very interesting words.. need a second look at how to define them and what exactly are they and are they what we mean them to be?
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Hi Sri,
I have come across this question many times and what I feel is that to be in HR you need the right kind of attitude. By ‘attitude’ I mean that you should understand the concerns/issues shared by your people and address them well even if they are not under your control or beyond your limitations for solutions. A good connectivity with people and networking will definitely help you as an HR person.
Now coming to your question, given a choice between a person with a “degree” in MBA or a person who is really looking after the employees, I would be keen to become a mentor of the non MBA person however would also suggest him to do MBA so that his attitude gets a proper direction.
Your question reflects biased ness for a person with a non MBA degree and that he will prove a better resource than a MBA degree holder. How can you say that a person who has spent 2 years to get a degree will not be keen to serve his employees?
I understand that most of us would have answered that we will choose the non MBA person however coming to the ground realities a “degree” always adds value and give a direction to your thought process. So the non MBA person who has contributed well for the organization and is a good resource will definitely be in an excellent shape after completing MBA and there will be nobody to place hindrance to his future career aspirations. The current scenario/organizations want qualification first beyond “experience” or “background” in HR. The organizations of today have really changed and that they like to hire qualified and competent staff for an exponential growth. The times have really changed and what personnel department used to be in grandma days is now totally different. I would definitely benefit my company by getting a good & cheap resource however; I will be actually playing with the future of the non MBA person.
So as a mentor I will push the non MBA person to complete his degree and as he already has an “experience” and “background” in HR he will be much more competent & there will be queue of people who would like to hire him before me.
[Reply]