MENTOR THEM TO KEEP THEM

From: KA-CHING
BY BEVERLY KAYE AND SHARON JORDAN-EVANS

Believe it or not, this mentor stuff is not complex. What employees want in a mentor is often precisely what they want in a manager who cares. So here are some recommendations for mentoring behaviors that you can start implementing now. The more you act like a mentor to your direct reports, the more they will give second thoughts to leaving.

Take Mari, for example:
"I was keenly aware that my company didn't pay the highest wages for the job I do. At times it nagged me. I would say to myself, 'You know, you could get much more money for this job somewhere else." One day, I decided to draw up a chart of the pluses and minuses of my job. I started to realize how many opportunities I had to learn. My boss was really good at knowing when I was ready to go to the next level, and she always offered the next step of learning, even before I would think of it. I was able to get exposure to other divisions and serve on multifunctional task teams. My manager took time to talk with me about success and about how to do things better. When I made my list, I realized how far I had come in a couple of years. I decided to stay because I didn't believe that all this would be easy to find in another company."

So What's a Mentor to Do?

Model
The best mentors serve as models for their employees. Be aware of your own role-modeling, plus point out others who are good role models for your people. Be authentic. Let people see you handling situations - both good and bad - under both great conditions and poor ones. It takes courage to show the real you, but it does pay off.

Encourage
Support your people in the risk taking that is essential to their growth. Encouragement truly is "all-in-the-eye-of-the-perceiver." An employee says, "He never encouraged me." Meanwhile, the manager says, "I encouraged her all the time." Find out if your employees are feeling encouraged or discouraged by you and your actions. Then shift your behaviors to support employees more, and cheer on those talented people you can't do without.

Nurture
Get to know your people, including their unique skills, talents, and capabilities. Show them you care. Support their ideas and encourage them to become creative problem solvers. Nurture the relationship you have with them. Have coffee and find out how their families are, or learn about their favorite sports or beloved pets.

Teach Organizational Reality
Everyone knows at least one sad story of a brilliant employee with everything to offer who derailed because of political blunders, poor interpersonal skills, or ignorance of the unwritten rules. You can effectively mentor and prevent those missteps by telling it like it is. Your people want to know your point of view. They want to know your take on how people get and give resources, what kinds of influence strategies work and don't work, what certain senior leaders want and don't want in their reports, their presentations, their meetings. And they want to know this before they walk into a minefield, or, at the very least, they want to be able to look at something that didn't work and understand why.

The Bottom Line
In all our travels, we have never heard of a manager who mentored too much and thereby lost an employee. We've never heard of a manager who coached too often and thereby lost someone's trust. We've never heard of a manager who talked too frequently about how he or she saw the organizational world and failed to retain talent for that reason. Your employees want you to teach them the ropes, and they know their careers will suffer if you don't. The manager who is able to adapt mentoring behaviors as part of her everyday work will find that there is a strong payback in employee loyalty and retention.
Beverly Kaye and Sharon Jordan-Evans are the authors of "Love 'Em or Lose 'Em, Getting Good People to Stay". Visit their Web site.