Talk:Mentoring and Coaching as Knowledge Sharing Strategies

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Charles Dhewa, 2009/03/03

Dear Colleagues,

What is the significance of Mentoring and Coaching as Knowledge Sharing Strategies? Any experiences on this?

Matt Moore, 2009/03/03

Charles,

Why do you want to know this? What is your context? Do you want to set up such a programme? Are you doing research? A bit of background would enable a more useful response to your question.

James J. Tarrant, 2009/03/03

Agree that the context of your question is important for an informed answer but clearly the Web has the potential to greatly facilitate online mentoring and coaching and its effectiveness. Of course, mentoring and coaching as functions are as old as humanity as knowledge sharing strategies since most of human behavior is learned. Mentoring and coaching in the online sense (whether simple email or more sophisticated collaborative/interactive web sites) requires organization above all. Spontaneous mentoring and coaching online chiefly occurs with hobbyists and "techies" with very focused communities engaged in short-term projects, I think. Otherwise, mentoring and coaching as an organizational strategy needs to be carefully developed so that incentives on both sides (those providing and those receiving mentoring/coaching) are transparent and motivating. The "incentivizing" mechanisms may be top-down organizations (some corporate or military entities) or may be organized by drawing upon institutional fealty or payment incentives or yet some other strategy.

There's not much doubt that, if the coaching and mentoring is strongly moderated and supported - see my drift here - it can be a tremendous resource for flattening that learning curve for new employees or whatever the target happens to be. The point is that it doesn't happen automatically, which I am sure you already knew.

Nadejda Loumbeva, 2009/03/03

A distinction between mentoring and coaching should be made, too.

I see mentoring as helping somebody find their way through an activity, a project, even an organisation. Mentoring occurs in response to a broader objective/challenge in order for this to be best possibly addressed benefiting from the experience of the mentor. Coaching however is more specific in the sense that you coach somebody who is already doing a more or less defined activity (i.e., he/she is a manager, a project leader, a facilitator, etc.). In this, off course, mentoring and coaching are intimately related.

Both mentoring and coaching can be extremely useful as knowledge sharing approaches, or methods, as they bring those who have the know-how to those who need it (and why not vice versa). As already mentioned, what is needed are incentives, structures and shared processes which facilitate mentoring and coaching in the organisation.

Hope this helps!

Ghazali Mohamed Fadzil, 2009/03/04

It is important for Knowledge Sharing, Transfer or mitigating knowledge lost. Our strategy has been to include this into our new recruit development as well as part of our leadership development programmes. As for coaching specifically every supervisor is expected to have the skill to coach their direct reports. In other words both Mentoring and Coaching are part of wholistic strategy for our human resource development.

Charles Dhewa , 2009/03/04

Dear Matt,

Thanks for the questions.

I am enhancing the capacity of Small and Medium Scale Enterprises in Zimbabwe to share and document their knowledge. I was wondering how Mentoring and Coaching would add value to this effort. I am thinking about how established businesses could be lured to mentor and coach SMEs. This could, perhaps, lead to a vibrant Learning Alliance between SMEs and big businesses - giving SMEs the inspiration and techniques for growth so that they do not remain SMEs.

Joitske Hulsebosch, 2009/03/04

Hi Charles,

Thanks for explaining why you asked a question about mentoring. Your explanation made me think of the World Bank program in Kenya that used a voucher system to build the capacity of SMEs. They did not provide training but vouchers. With the vouchers the enterpreneurs could go to a training institute or to senior craft workers. Interestingly, the senior skilled craft workers were far more popular than the training centres! Or if you google World Bank, Kenya, Voucher program you may find more resources. But the conclusion is that Small and Medium entreprises valued on-the-job mentoring much more than training. Does this help you shape your ideas?

Alakh Asthana, 2009/03/04

Dear Charles,

I dont know how my suggestions will be relevant to your workplace. Few tips:

Try designing a template / templates for each of processes; standardization and table of contents helps to ease understanding You might want to coach or mentor them on the benefits of KM, Documentation, training collaterals etc. explicit knowledge sharing etc. Mostly documentation is always seen as an overhead to the existing workflow

I agree to Joitske's point in the last mail; on the job works better. You can also start CoPs (communities of practice) and document the learnings for the meetings. This way the insights are more relevant and surfaced. These CoPs can have members from big businesses as well as, from your SME!

Matt Moore, 2009/03/04

Charles,

A few thoughts (as a small businessman myself):

• Mentoring & coaching relationships happen between individuals rather than organisations.
• Think about who a small businessman (or woman) can best get help from. It may not be a senior manager in a huge company because running a small business & running a large business are very different things. Often those who want to be entrepreneurs want to learn from those who have already succeeded in the role that they currently have - rather than someone simply working somewhere bigger.
• It's important to establish groundrules between mentors & mentees. What the expectations in terms of support? What are the boundaries?
• The knowledge needs of SMEs are very different to large organisations. Patrick Lambe wrote an interesting article here about SMEs & KM in Singapore

Carl Jackson, 2009/03/04

Hi Charles,

One of the lessons I had from initiating a request for someone to mentor me was that often people who have a high profile / reputation don't actually get directly asked if they would be someone's mentor because everyone assumes they are too busy or self-important. In fact sometimes this kind of person would really liked to be asked. So you could help by encouraging SME people who would like a mentor to ask that ideal person. You could also help them to do this by suggesting a simple framework to frame their request (Who I am, What I am looking for in a mentor, What being a Mentor would involve).

Eva Schiffer, 2009/03/04

Dear Charles,

I agree with others in this thread that it makes most sense to find mentors/coaches who have achieved what your clients are striving for (instead of big business managers) and to look carefully at the incentives that the mentors have for giving advice. In this context you need to have a close look at the question of competition. If your prospective mentors have the feeling that they are nourishing future competitors this may diminish their motivation or even make them sabotage your efforts. What are ways that you can make sure that they either develop a scenario where they collaborate with and benefit from the mentees or their interests are different enough (e.g. they work in different locations, produce different things) that they will not compete on the market place?

Patrick Kalas, 2009/03/04

Dear all

In terms of general online mentoring methodology

Matt Moore, 2009/03/04

• So you could help by encouraging SME people who would like
• a mentor to ask that ideal person. You could also help them
• to do this by suggesting a simple framework to frame their
• request (Who I am, What I am looking for in a mentor, What
• being a Mentor would involve).

Finding a mentor has some similarity to finding a romantic partner. Think of the techniques that are available to help people find that special someone:

• online dating sites with semi-structured profiles that allow people to "browse" each other
• speed dating where people are introduced to each other quickly to get a sense of what they are like
• asking for referrals through friends for someone they think would be right for you

You don't have to do these exactly but what ideas can you steal from these?

Eva's point about competition is an interesting one: if people are allowed to choose for themselves & have sufficient info about the other party then this isn't an issue - potential competitors would naturally avoid each other.

James J. Tarrant, 2009/03/04

Also social networking sites, increasingly, which may also be more directly useful for the SME folks.

International Resources Group (IRG) Washington

Esther Nasikye, 2009/03/04

Hullo Charles,

I work with the Icon Women and Young People's leadership Academy an organization in Kampala, Uganda that is involved in mentoring and coaching. One thing I have learnt here is that mentoring and coaching happens better if it is on a one to one basis. Group mentoring may happen, yes, but it feels more like a class so the mentor may not engage with the proteges fully. So in the case of large organizations mentoring SMEs, the same rules apply. It is better to identify the skills, knowledge etc that workers in a particular SME lack and that a worker (s) in a large organizations is/are doing well in.

Find the best person to mentor because not all people in high positions are good mentors anyway.

Also identify the best mentees because some people are yet to understand the concept of mentoring