With today’s dynamic and rapid-fire changes in how we do business, organizations everywhere are working not only to keep up with the technological changes, but also, to keep in touch with the heart of their organizations…their people. Technology may change the tools with which we work, but it is our people, who sustain the substance of how we work, how we live into our core principles and values.

History of mentoring
Mentoring began in ancient Greek mythology when Odysseus asked his friend Mentor to take care of Telemachus, Odysseus’ young son. Over the next twenty years, Mentor helped Telemachus grow into a fine young man and the pride of his father. This selective, one-to-one, long-term relationship became the model that was followed through to modern organizations. Today’s organizations need mentoring more than ever before, mentoring that reaches everyone, not just a select few people.

Benefits of mentoring culture
An organization with a mentoring culture defines and continuously refines the best practices of doing business. As a result, an organization with a mentoring culture will:

• Attract and retain the brightest employees
• Get new employees productive in significantly less time
• Maintain higher quality and productivity
• Sustain higher employee morale
• Build leadership skills in everyone
• Accomplish better decision making
• Lower absenteeism and turnover
• Transfer information and assimilate changes more effectively
• Accomplish more with less
• Improve business products and services
   

Developing a mentoring culture
Developing a mentoring culture is not the same as developing a mentoring program. Programs start and stop, come and go. A mentoring culture is an on-going way of living and working each day. It is the organization's life-blood. An organization with a mentoring culture is self-perpetuating…building, growing, evolving, improving and driven by the employees. A mentoring culture means everyone is personally and professionally invested in ensuring the company’s best outcomes and results. Employees make it happen and keep it alive and healthy.

When people realize that they are at the center of their spheres of influence and support and that their spheres overlap with each other to strengthen the whole organization, the organization experiences an exponential growth in each and every employee. Each person becomes a mentoring advocate in the mentoring culture.

The process of developing a mentoring culture starts with teaching effective mentoring skills. It’s the employees who make the choice to use these mentoring skills to help themselves and each other. It may sound simplistic, but actually, like any living breathing organism, a mentoring culture is really multifaceted and dynamic. It is worthwhile for all aspects of the organization from employee morale to increased bottom-line results.

Clara Thompson, Sr. Executive Director of Behavioral Health and Intellectual Disabilities in the Greater Delaware Valley, PA describes it this way, “Mentoring is not a program, but rather a way for each of us to live each day in support of each other, our customers and our Core Principles. Mentoring has helped us check ourselves against our Core Principles everyday, in every thing we do and with everyone we touch. And when we find ways to improve ourselves and each other, we use our mentoring skills to connect, strengthen and be better than we were.”