Top 5 Mentoring Challenges and Their Solutions

If you are reading this blog right now, you are already thinking about implementing a mentoring program for your company. And why not? Mentoring brings countless benefits to an organization and its participants.

The mentee gains practical knowledge from a more experienced mentor. Besides, being mentored by someone increases one’s confidence and professional development opportunities. The mentor has a chance to contribute to the development of the mentee. Moreover, sharing knowledge and skills offers personal and professional satisfaction. The organization develops further by nurturing its top talents.

As a manager, you definitely want all of the above for your organization and your employees. But implementing a mentoring program is not that easy. Especially if it’s your first time. The good news is, there are solutions to the problems you may face during the implementation.

Here are 5 common mentoring challenges you should be aware of when starting a program and the solutions for each challenge.

1. Motivating Employees to Mentor Is One of the Most Common Mentoring Challenges

One of the most common challenges organizations faces while starting a mentoring program is getting the right number of mentors to participate. It’s hard to find an experienced employee who wants to invest their time in shaping others’ futures. When there are lots of talented, inexperienced employees, ready to be mentored, the demand for mentors surpasses the supply.

Solution: Make sure that your employees are aware of the fact that the benefits of mentoring are not one-sided. Sharing hard-earned knowledge for the benefit of others is extremely satisfying and rewarding. 

You can set up a session with your employees to discuss the benefits of mentoring for the mentor.

2. Finding the Right Mentor-Mentee Pair

The key to a successful mentoring program is to find the right mentor for a mentee. A mentoring relationship can fizzle before even engaging in any development because of a wrong match. That’s why finding the right mentoring pair should be on the top of your priority list. Indeed, it is difficult to find the right mentor for a mentee and vice versa. Though few matches can be perfect, there is no way to get a 100% right match for all the participants.

Solution: Match the participants on the right skill traits. Collect their data that contain each mentor and mentee’s professional experience, career goals, personal interest, etc., to find out the right pair.

If the whole process is done on paper, it can be time-consuming and exhausting. We suggest, you use software like Mentoring Complete, which will reduce the manual effort.

3. Collecting Honest Feedback from Mentees

Feedback is an important aspect of a mentoring program. It helps you understand the progress of the program, and the relationship between mentor and mentee. As direct involvement of the participant’s supervisor is not anticipated in a mentoring program, the program manager should collect feedback – at least once every 3 months – from both parties.

However, getting honest feedback from the mentee is not always easy. It’s common for a mentee to be reluctant, especially when the mentor is in a higher position in the organization.

Solution: As a manager, your responsibility is to help the mentees overcome their internal challenges by providing complete support. Educate them about the importance of honest feedback. An assurance from you, that their feedback neither should nor will affect their career in the company, can build their confidence.

4. Managing Participants’ Expectations

Expectations are natural in a mentoring relationship. Be it general or specific, if expectations are not articulated, they can lead to disappointment. Unrealistic mentoring expectations, too, can be a hitch in a mentoring relationship. A report by youth.gov suggests that 14% of mentees think their mentor expected more from the relationship while 11% of mentors think that their mentee expected too much.

Solution: Try to set up expectations right at the beginning of the program. Make sure both mentor and mentee agree on the terms of their relationship. Help them communicate clearly and work together towards developing realistic expectations. If they know from the start what is expected from them, the program becomes much smoother for everyone.

5. Mentoring Challenges Also Include Tracking the Program’s Outcome

The benefits of a mentoring program are no secret. But when you have a specific goal for a program, tracking its outcome becomes necessary. According to ASCPT (American Society for Clinical Pharmacology and Therapeutics), 65% of organizations do not formally evaluate mentoring. Rather, the health of mentoring is judged by the outcome.

Because mentoring is a long-term relationship, keeping track of its success manually is an uphill task.

Solution: You can track the outcome with your mentoring software. It creates reports that help you measure the success of the program. You can also compare the outcome with the goals of your program and highlight any scope for improvement.

To conclude, there will be challenges when you want to implement a successful mentoring program. But no challenge is greater than your determination. You can overcome every challenge if you get the planning right.

Also Read:

5 Reasons Why You Need a Mentor

Top Mentoring Training Strategies for New Mentors

7 Reasons Why You Should Become a Mentor