How to Establish a Mentor Program. Seasoned entrepreneurs can tick off a list of predictable mistakes that new business owners are likely to stumble into. From overambitious earnings forecasts to a refusal to delegate, common startup missteps (Business. Week. com, 4/1. 6/0. Smart first- time entrepreneurs tap into the knowledge of their more experienced peers by finding mentors (Business.
Week, Winter, 2. 00. They also recognize that mentoring can help develop less- experienced employees into managers and perhaps even partners.
Here are some steps for finding and working with a mentor for your new small business. These mentoring programs are often. Mentoring: Current Trends. Current Trends Formalized Mentoring Programs on the. How to Start a Mentorship Program.
Small business owners often implement mentoring programs for their employees when they realize they need to accelerate the development of top performers, says Florence Stone, an author of two books on mentoring and a spokesperson for the American Management Assn. Other reasons for mentoring programs include helping poor and mediocre performers, revitalizing midcareer executives, and closing skill and ability gaps on the staff, Stone says. But if you are new to running a business, it's not always easy to identify a successful business owner who is willing to mentor you, let alone one with whom you have natural rapport. And many entrepreneurs have no idea how to establish a mentoring program for employees, let alone how to manage that program so it delivers maximum results. Go Outside Your Circle. Particularly in small businesses, it may be more difficult to find mentors within the company who are willing to dedicate themselves to working with less- experienced co- workers.
His site, which went live in January, 2. While the site is open to anyone looking to mentor or be mentored, it will focus on entrepreneurship as well as career and leadership development.
But why would someone want to invest time and energy to mentor a stranger online? Iluri and his partner, i. Mantri Chief Technology Officer Srini Iyengar, believe the peer- to- peer nature of their site will lend itself to a fluid model where someone can be a mentor on a certain subject and simultaneously be a mentee in another area. They also hope to appeal to both entrepreneurial vanity and goodwill: . The mentor is usually a higher- level executive than the manager who has a different area of expertise than the person being mentored. Or is it to acquaint new hires with the company faster, or to cross- train two departments?
There are very few mentors within your company who are actively committed to having you. Practices of current mentoring programs. Any organization interested in developing a formal mentoring program needs to create a business. Mentoring programs focus only on smaller companies. HOW MENTORING FITS WITH RECENT TRENDS. 6 THE MENTORING HANDBOOK public about company operations.
Every so many weeks, they review progress toward the goals. Lack of accountability and structure can be problems for these programs, he notes, but if they work, the mentoring relationship can be powerful. With a very small company, the informal program might make more sense.
Business Mentor NY connects small business. Governor Cuomo wants to bring this success to New York State's small business community. Business Mentoring Fuels. How to Use Mentoring in Your Workplace. Professional mentoring programs are an. M/WBE Mentoring Handbook. Challenges with Current M/WBE Mentoring Programs 19.