I was recently having dinner with a very good friend of mine who is an aspiring lawyer discussing the subject of;  is a mentor really necessary for children, teenagers, post-grads and adults. It was a fascinating discussion that caused much debate for hours.

We examined the current world we live in, which is a world that is focused on the things that are new, fast and most innovative — but there was also something to be said about looking back in time and how life has changed through the generations.

We discussed that in society the older generation rarely used coaching or mentorship as a succession plan to their careers, mentors provided newer employees with information and support they really needed to succeed and move up the ranks in an organisation. But the employees who did engage with mentorship saw the benefits of the mentor-employee relationship, thus, the benefits were not just for the employees; generally the company saw some significant engagement benefits as well.

At its most basic, the mentor-protégé relationship is one of information sharing. When the mentor works at the same workplace as the protégé, that means he or she will be able to share details about the way the workplace functions that may have taken the protégé years to figure out. This can enrich the protégé’s understanding of a subject in ways that may not have been possible in the classroom, or help the protégé understand a topic in a way she may not have considered. In short, the additional knowledge helps employees become more well-rounded and think more critically about problems and solutions.

At one point, the mentor was probably in a similar job or a similar position as the protégé, and thus has intimate knowledge of what it takes to move up the ranks. Mentors can be great sources of information on what steps the protégé needs to take to move up in the company and the dynamics of making one decision over another. And since the mentor will also have an understanding of the protégé’s skill set and ambitions, the mentor relationship makes it easier for companies to identify future leaders, or match employees with the right job within the company.

Often, all it takes for an employee to succeed is the knowledge that someone believes in his or her abilities. The mentor-protégé relationship helps to foster that. Managers should be responsible for motivating employees through positive reinforcement, but in the midst of looming deadlines or an excess of work, that can get thrown by the wayside. That is where the mentor relationship — which is often fostered outside of regular work hours — can come in handy, to boost morale when it needs boosting. Another positive thing about mentoring: it’s contagious. When a protégé has a positive mentor relationship, he or she may find ways to mentor others.

In some cases mentorship can often mean more than one person, both internal within the organisation and external and for very difference reason of mentorship, balancing technical and emotional stability.

When employees have a mentor to whom they can turn when they have a question or concern, they do not need to spend a lot of time seeking out the answers to their questions. Mentors may not have all the answers, but they can help you find them. When there’s less confusion about the work at hand or managers have to spend less time explaining a job, a business’ productivity can increase. And since mentoring can improve employee retention, your productivity will further increase because you won’t be constantly re-training employees.

An employee benefits from a mentoring relationship because he has someone with greater knowledge and experience to turn to for advice. While a mentor will not do the employee’s job for him or her, the mentor may demonstrate a task, guide the employee through solving a problem, or critique the employee’s work. A mentorship may help an employee feel less isolated at work, too, and encourage him to interact more with others. A mentor can offer an employee with tips on career growth and introduce the employee to other professionals. As the employee matures in his career, a mentor may remain a valued adviser to the employee.

The employer of a mentored employee gains from greater productivity in the workplace. As employees turn to their mentors for advice, they make fewer mistakes on the job, cutting losses to the employer. Employees in mentoring relationships tend to have greater job satisfaction as well, which can mean a more positive work environment. Employers might also notice less turnover of employees as workers feel a greater loyalty to the company. A company might even use its mentoring program to attract new employees.

Jeff Myers, http://www.summit.org/announcements/new-incoming-president-jeff-myers/, has a great quotation “Mentoring is the cultivation of young adults, the tender caring for and nurturing of them so that they will grow, flourish, and be fruitful.”​

Who are your mentors and most importantly, are you a mentor to our next generation?

Is middle management still necessary or do we just need a few strong managers to guide a company?

I have been engaged with some very interesting debates over the last few weeks on the subject of leadership and the shift in the leadership models within business today.

I think it is clear: a company needs leaders—not managers. From the top down, every employee has the opportunity to lead, starting with the organisation of one within the larger organisation that we call “Mr Me, Ltd.” Every person is responsible for shaping and creating their own future with collaboration and some help in the making.

What does that look like? We trust and then we empower. You know how leaders will typically say “I empower my people”—and then they do not? The tendency is all too common. The minute there is a mistake it’s like a rope around your neck that rebounds back—you either get your head taken off, or you get pulled back so hard the natural reaction is to buckle down and become “less engaged” instead of growing to “maturing growth.”

At this point, your entire company is flat.  With no hierarchy, everyone leads within their areas of stewardship and responsibility.  Many will have excess capacity and offer to help another teammate or even go to another department to ask how they can help.

Then there is the temptation to micromanage, which makes people so fearful of making a mistake, they do not dare create something courageous.

Top-management greed is corrosive but in some important sense the greed is not systematic. There are certainly many firms, doubtlessly a majority, where those at the top are sensitive to these issues and believe in shared pain and some measure of equity. There has, however, been a structural shift in the circumstances of middle managers, which leads them to feel more distant from their leaders.

This is the disruption of career paths and the increased difficulty in making a move from the middle to the top. Middle managers today have less reason to believe that they are on a trajectory that will take them to the top and, therefore, they have less reason to identify with their bosses.

Just who are middle managers? It is important to note that though middle managers make many decisions, and many important ones, the context in which they make those decisions is not of their own making. Middle managers do not set the organisation’s strategy, nor do they decide which markets to enter, with whom to merge, how much to invest, and what technology to use.

Senior managers, in the words of Harvard Business School professor John Kotter, “set agendas,” and in doing so shape the direction of the organisation.  Do middle managers do anything similar? In fact, it turns out that the answer is “Yes.” They make decisions about resource allocation that are central and strategic, albeit at a lower level and with much less visibility than decisions made by senior managers.

We live in an era in which CEOs are glorified. It would be foolish to argue that the CEO is not relevant to organisational performance and it would be equally foolish to claim that no firm should ever reduce its managerial ranks. But the fundamental spirit of the times is wrong. As a group, middle managers are central, indeed crucial, to an organisation’s success.

Most sizable organisations have a management hierarchy that includes several if not dozens of managers, below the executive team or owners. As organisations have found ways to recover from the global recession and remain competitive, the costs of a significant management structure becomes questionable. Some would argue that middle management is no longer necessary and should be abolished.

A number of significant organisations are downsizing or removing middle management structures. For example, the digital-security giant Symantec has completed a restructuring process that saw middle management reduced by as much as 40%. The world’s biggest appliance making company, Haier, in China, has reorganised the company’s workforce into 2,000 self-managed teams that are responsible for not only production but for profit and loss and they are paid on performance. Online retailer Zappos, a company obsessed with customer service has moved to eliminate traditional managers, done away with the typical corporate hierarchy and job titles, and now has an approach that has been termed “holacracy.” This move gives employees more of a voice in the way the company is run.

It may be an ideal time to re-examine the purpose and structure of management for organisations, one that better suits the times and needs of modern organisations and their customers and employees.

I like Jack Welch quote that states “Leaders are generally not judged on their personal output. What would be the point of evaluating them like individual contributors? Rather, most leaders are judged on how well they’ve hired, coached, and motivated their people, individually and collectively—all of which shows up in the results.”