Supporting mentoring programs is hard. One of the biggest problems faced by those trying to run them is that by the time you find people who are good in a lot of things who are willing to be mentors, and you train them, they often move into new roles. Or, there are so few of them, there simply aren’t enough mentoring hours to go around.

Why competency modeling helps mentoring

Enter competency models. If you enable people to perform a role-based competency assessment, you can uncover pockets of skill-based strengths across the organization. How does that help? Well, imagine if instead of having 10 people who can serve as skill-based mentors, you identify that almost every person has at least one skill in which they excel. If you have the ability to identify these people, and pair them temporarily with others who have skill gaps in those same areas, then you can literally apply mentors at scale across the organization. 

Consider the impact of applying mentors in this manner across the organization.

• If I’m a high performer with few skill gaps, I have the opportunity to improve my level of proficiency by mentoring others, so I can continue to grow. And I learn more by creating new tools, templates and processes to help others consistently apply my techniques.

• If I’m an average performer with only a few expert skills, and would not normally be tapped for a traditional mentoring program, I have the opportunity to experience the impact of mentoring others on my own capabilities. It provides employee recognition for what I do well. And this may increase my drive for higher levels of proficiency in other areas

• If I have a skill gap in some area which may or may not have many formal or informal learning identified to help me close it quickly, I can work with a task-based mentor on a project intimately related to my role, so I can quickly learn, apply, and practice in a safe and relevant environment.

• The entire organization builds its bench strength as a team, working together to pull each other up with little to no cost.

• With the speed of change, and the impact of digitization, automation, and AI on jobs, it’s highly likely that a few would have the capability to begin teaching the many, even before formal learning can be created.

• Creating informal skill-based mentoring relationships helps people build their internal networks, create stronger internal personal connections within and across departments and regions, which breaks down silos and makes the company more effective.

• As each person gets tapped for “something” they are really good at, they become increasingly engaged as they see their value and purpose grow within the organization. In fact, being assigned as a task-based mentor becomes both recognition and a reward.

Successfully implementing task-based mentoring

• To implement task-based mentors, you need to have a role-based competency model, and each person must self-assess against it with a competency assessment system.

• The competency assessment tool should make it easy for managers to identify their team members’ individual skill gaps and locate potential task-based mentors across the organization so they can be temporarily paired.

• Both the mentor and the mentee should understand the scope of the relationship – to help increase one particular skill.

• Time should be set aside for the two to work together on shadowing and practicing the specific behaviors that demonstrate the required proficiency for that skill, which comes directly from the role’s competency model.

• The mentee should reassess on that skill following the opportunity to practice, in order to demonstrate a change in skill… which becomes a positive reflection on both the mentor and mentee.

• The mentee’s manager should reassess them, to confirm the target proficiency was indeed achieved.

If you want to leverage the expertise you know exists within your organization and engage each person to apply their strengths, while driving employee engagement and building internal relationships, take a look at competency model benefits.