I am a huge fan of peer mentoring and here is why: 

Peer mentors can be tremendous assets to organizations. They help welcome new hires and pass along appropriate knowledge about the company, further develop your people and can even assist experienced employees grow and increase their levels of productivity. 

If you want to implement a successful peer mentoring program, you will want to avoid making mistakes, as employees are involved in the process. A successful program requires strong support, so you certainly do not want to randomly pair-up individuals. The following provides more details about what I mean:   

1. Make sure you have the support or the backing of the executive management team. Otherwise, you may not get the time or resources you need for both the mentor and the mentee to have a successful experience. Not having this support could be the ‘death sentence’ for a peer mentoring program.
2. Carefully examine the key characteristics of your mentors/mentees.

• For the mentors: You certainly want individuals who are extremely competent in their skills and knowledge base. But, more importantly, these individuals should possess a strong desire to mentor and help develop their peers. Effective mentors are those with a ‘big picture’ goal in mind; one of helping to improve the performances of both the team and the mentee.
• For both mentor/mentee: Your goal, of course, is a good match. You want to help these individuals, through training or ongoing dialogue, as they build an avenue of communication. As they develop their relationship, you want them to have the tools they need to make allowances or corrections. This is important so that their relationship ends up with maximum results. Otherwise, if the relationship gets off to a bad start and they grow uncomfortable with one another, what you want to see happen—which is the teambuilding phase—will fade away and die off.
• Very important component: I am a strong believer in recognizing these peer mentoring teams and their success. This recognition will go a long way in building that desire for other individuals to join the program. 

How does peer mentoring work in the real-life business world? 

Here is a story that may help illustrate how such a program can help an apprehensive new employee. I know an individual who had a very tough time participating in team and project update meetings. For example, he held back on interjecting ideas, and he didn’t understand meeting guidelines. 

He also encountered some issues of detecting subtleties: He had a problem understanding who ‘owned’ the project and who possessed the power and responsibilities. As a way to help draw out this individual, we engaged him in an ongoing, back and forth dialogue. We asked him specific questions such as: “How do you see your ideas working?” And, “What kinds of suggestions do you have for making this project more successful and efficient?” We also shared our experiences as a way to help him avoid some potholes along the way.

Peer mentoring programs allow most new employees to get a jump on the learning curve. New employees want to be productive and they want to get comfortable in their new environment, but they need insights into their teammates and all the idiosyncrasies that exist within the organization. 

Some people have a more difficult time than others reaching that level of comfort within a new organization. They need to understand where the information and resources are so they can help the team/organization succeed. A mentor can be that new employee’s advocate, someone who they turn to, even when they have a ‘dumb’ question to ask. They need to feel as though they will not be judged by asking those so-called dumb questions. 

As previously mentioned, mentors can also warn mentees about the errors they will want to avoid.  Mentors can say to the mentees, “Here are the mistakes I made, so I think you might want to avoid them in the future.” 

Organizations are, and will continue to be, well rewarded by implementing a successful peer mentoring program. These relationships can end up saving companies valuable time and resources, while developing more confident and project-management savvy professionals.

Did you know that Aristotle mentored Alexander the Greek and Johann Bach mentored Mozart? Mentoring has been around for centuries. During the Middle Ages, there was a system of training/passing on knowledge to the inexperienced, younger workers. It was known as apprenticeship. Today in a similar fashion, peer mentoring is a valuable technique used by businesses to excel professionals through the learning curve more efficiently and effectively. 

Basically, peer mentoring gives less-experienced workers a straightforward pipeline to internal experts who, in turn, share information such as professional skills and practices. Peer mentoring also helps ensure consistency with the transfer of knowledge within an organization. Effectively, peer mentoring is a valued asset to an organization because it is actually a form of coaching. In the most general sense, a peer mentoring program serves to help keep your business operations flowing efficiently so you can ultimately grow your business successfully. 

If you are contemplating a formal peer mentoring program, you will want to consider the following basic elements to make this investment worthwhile: 

1. Make sure you have support of the executive management team.
2. Involve the executive management team in the selection of the mentors and mentees.
3. Allocate sufficient time to ensure that mentors and mentees can meet on a regular basis.
4. Ensure that mentors have access to resources and guidance materials.
5. Develop an orientation program for both mentors and mentees. Program objectives should explain the process and point out the resources and benefits.
6. Include an evaluation tool that can be used throughout the peer mentoring program; this helps ensure that adjustments can be made to maximize results.
7. Finally, establish and utilize a recognition program to reward and recognize mentors and mentees alike. A recognition program serves to underscore the peer mentoring program and its importance to the development of the employees and to the company. 

Developing a peer mentoring program is a wise investment and will help ensure that important business knowledge and skills are passed along. When managed well, a mentoring program is also inspirational to all the participants. 

As with any relationship, successful mentoring is built upon effective communication skills and reciprocal accountability. By doing your homework, planning ahead and establishing boundaries, you can avoid some roadblocks along the way. 

In a future HRTools.com Insight, I will review some common missteps that can trip you up when developing and managing a peer mentoring program.

Many business owners make decisions based on their gut instincts, but this isn’t always the best way to go about it.

Fact Trumps Intuition
I’m not a big advocate of only following your gut instincts. I think it does come into play, but in a very, very small way. I think leaders opting to mind their gut feelings with their intelligence and knowledge often arrive at the less desirable option.

Unfortunately, gut feelings typically arise when you don’t have enough information, the right information,or any information at all. Our first tendency is usually to subconsciously decide what we want to do before we actually figure out why we want to do it.

The concern I have with relying only on your gut is that sometimes your gut intuition may be based on inaccurate or irrelevant information. If you don’t apply all the facts or possibilities, missing a step or process can certainly sidetrack coming up with the appropriate or right answer in the decision-making process.

I am a firm believer that fact trumps intuition. Getting information will always lead to increased success. I think gut instinct does play a role because you’re going to have to be able to emotionally back the decision. The fact-finding process will help you come up with the most successful answer.

Decision-Making Tips
Here are some decision-making tips to help you avoid making snap decisions:

• Resolve the Situation Using Research and Analyzing All Angles—Looking at the big picture is very important. Decision making can go wrong if you look at it only from a short-term focus. It should be looked at from short and long-term perspective to insure it plays a key part in meeting the company goals.
  
  
• Create an Outline—As you start to go through the decision-making process, create an outline and write down your ideas and thoughts. Keeping the ideas visual ensures that you continue to consider all the relevant information. It also helps to clarify your thinking, therefore enhancing your decision-making skills and the success you’re after.
  
  
• Step Away from the Office—As you start to gather information and input, build in time so you can thoroughly think through the situation out of the office, while you’re relaxing. This allows you to approach the decision from different perspectives and allows you to get different ideas.
  
  
• Don’t Play the Blame Game—If the decision you’re making is based on a situation where there is an issue that’s occurred, don’t play the blame game.
  
  
• Get Team Buy-In—Gather ideas and insights from experts in the area or those that are affected by the decision, get their buy-in. This will help with their ownership in the decision, and if it’s done in a group setting, it presses individuals to be creative and think out-of-the-box.
  
  
• Be the Devil’s Advocate—Have someone or a predetermined group play the roll of “Devil’s Advocate”. This can help identify problem areas or barriers that can cause implementation issues. Once you put together an implementation strategy, have all parties provide feedback so you can ensure a smooth transition for the decision that your about to implement.

Decision-Making Tips Versus Gut Instincts
There are a couple small advantages to using your gut instinct to make a decision:

• You don’t have to spend time doing research and bringing in a group for buy-in, therefore you’re going to be able to make the decision much quicker and efficiently (Although the chance of it being accurate probably drops tremendously).
• You’re emotionally tied to the decision, therefore you’re going to successfully drive towards the objective that you’re after.

You may feel much more comfortable making a decision using your gut, but I don’t think it’s the key tool that you’re going to want to use in the decision-making process. I think it’s extremely important that you use decision-making tips to make your decision because you’ll be:

• Looking at the short- and long-term picture.
• Involving the experts and the people that are going to be affected by the decision. Doing extensive research and analysis to discover and understand the best possible options.
• Bringing in group input so everybody has  buy-in and ownership.
• Pro-actively removing barriers by finding out what could go wrong.
• Putting together an implementation schedule using notes to insure that you capture all relevant information and get the best outcome possible. 

You are reading Part 2 of my Leadership Competency Training series. If you haven’t read the first part of this series on HRTools, I invite you to take a few minutes and read Leadership Competency Training: Part 1.

Part 1 reviews the first four of eight behavioral areas that are strengthened by leadership competency training: (1) vision, (2) leadership, (3) coaching/training and (4) employee involvement.

Leadership competency training applies to any business or industry, and I’ve seen it help improve employers’ growth and success rates.  For example, after participating in this training, leaders learn how to effectively resolve conflict and earn employee buy-in to their vision and company goals. By reducing employee conflicts and inspiring employee commitment to your vision, your business can only grow stronger.

Developing leaders should be a priority in any business organization. To gain a competitive edge, businesses must capitalize on the potential of their most talented and high performing employees. If you are charged with grooming the “up and coming,” you will want to have an understanding of all eight leadership training tools. To conclude this series, here are the final four:

1. Succession Planning: It’s very important for businesses to prepare for the future. One way to approach this objective is through mentoring programs. Such programs provide opportunities for the more seasoned and skilled executives to work with key managers. Mentors can provide broad insights and share lessons learned—through those trial and error experiences that help the inexperienced managers navigate the learning curve more quickly and efficiently.
2. Project Management: Managers, to be effective, must take a lead on starting projects, setting deadlines and, most importantly, ensuring that the critical goals or aspects of the project are completed on time. In addition, manager-leaders need to proactively look ahead to foresee what issues, “barriers or potholes,” problems or concerns that can surface. That way, they can work with the management team and staff to quickly find solutions to problems. Again, the most important part of this process is monitoring timeframes to make sure schedule deadlines are on track. This is the quality control objective you are looking to satisfy.
3. Cohesive Teams: High-performance teams are cohesive; a strong coordination enables them to successfully achieve their goals. Manager-leaders develop cohesive teams by first inspiring “buy-in” to their goals. Once employees’ buy-in is earned, you’ve increased your success chances by 50 percent. Even further cohesiveness is accomplished by empowering the team members to act on those goals.
4. Performance Phase: We call this the “Stormin’ Norman” tactic or the charge forward to put a plan into action. An effective leader knows how to quickly move a team into this performance phase so that everyone is moving forward to finalize the product or project development.

Most people are not born possessing leadership skills. While someone may possess the knowledge that their business function requires, subject knowledge alone does not guarantee successful leadership performance. Since leadership is a behavior, and not a position, leadership competency training helps potential leaders acquire the communication and interpersonal skills necessary to be successful.

Do You Want to Lead Your Company to Success?

Many employers are finding that leadership competency training holds the keys to successful and continuing growth. They adopt this training to help develop their employees into leaders and their current managers into even stronger leaders.

Historically, business owners and managers have understood the significance of competencies in areas such as financial analysis, marketing, strategic planning and decision-making, etc. Skills in these areas are important and necessary; however, in today’s global and highly competitive world, it takes more than just those areas to lead people in the 21st century.

Leadership competency training applies to any industry or service area. Whether you run a manufacturing company or a service-related business, you can apply acquired leadership competencies.

If you are looking to train and develop leaders, the following four areas are strengthened as a result of leadership competency training (my future insights will cover four more areas):

1. Vision: involves the ability to see the short and long-term goals for the organization. Increased abilities in this area allow you to:
   1. set and communicate goals to your team;
   2. make adjustments and corrections to firm up areas of weakness;
   3. enhance managers’ abilities to motivate and develop the team; and most importantly,
   4. reinforce the goals and make any necessary changes.

2. Leadership: involves inspiring others to follow your lead or risk getting behind you. When I was with a former employer, we used this expression, "Get on the train with the conductor." You have to build a feeling of trust and when the going gets tough, you want to raise morale and keep the team motivated in order to succeed.

3. Coach and train: involves taking time to sit down with the inexperienced or the unsure team member. You invest the time to help train this individual so they clearly understand the objectives and the skills they need to be successful. You want them to meet the goals with the utmost quality. Coaching and training is also important for preparing your team for the future. Companies should have a mentoring program in place. The seasoned executives should work with key managers to share insights and trial-and-error experiences so they can get through the learning curve much quicker. Most importantly, you want the more skilled and seasoned middle managers to help run teams and meet the company objectives.

4. Employee involvement: in the decision-making process. The key word is "empowerment." When you communicate the goals and objectives, involve your team in the goal-setting process. What are their ideas? How do we fine tune these ideas and produce the highest quality product? If your employees are involved with the process, you will also get their buy-in. Then when the final results are successful, you make it a team success---rather than just all your own.

Any business environment has conflict and certain situations foster it. It is important to also foster resolutions. You want to see conflict end positively and as a "win-win" for all parties involved. To be a successful manager, you need to be empathetic in helping your employees work through their problems. It is also vitally important to have good listening skills. You must hear them out so that they can feel and say that they have been heard. Even more important, you want to be decisive in your responses going forward for two reasons:

• To bring closure to the situation
• To inspire your team’s confidence with your decisions and for following your lead in the future.

Check out my next "Insight" posting to learn about four more areas of your business that can be strengthened through leadership competency training. My future insights will also review how managers can accomplish more when they lead by building community into their decision-making process.