“Quick Start” Mentoring Certification (August 2010)

For the past two plus years our Mentoring Partnership Program has demonstrated a high degree of success in accomplishing our mentoring tasks with our mentored partners. During that time, our certification process has been a 12-month exercise, where a portion of the certification was accomplished each month, so as not to take time away from the important work that was being accomplished.

We have seen our mentoring work make dramatic changes with our mentored partners by the increase of time that is spent mentoring rather than doing the partner’s work. When we did our initial study we found that circumstances required us to spend 65% of our time to, literally, “do the partner’s work” rather than mentoring the partner on the skills and techniques to adapt universal concepts and principles into their operations.

Since establishing the Mentoring Partnership Program we have seen our mentoring work rise from 20% of our time to an average of about 45% of our time and the “partner work” drop to an average of about 20% of our time. This is an excellent trend as it shows that our mentored partners are becoming more involved in the mentoring process and that changes are being made in a consistent manner.

Because of this success, we have received numerous requests to increase the opportunity for mentoring certification. As the certification process is still a “self-initiated” program, we determined that for those who desired to spend a little more time enhancing their already excellent mentoring skills earlier in their assignment that we could modify the certification process into a 60-day period.

We have found that this 60-day period has been generally accepted as the optimum time that we initiate the mentoring process and assist our mentored partners. We have recognized that 60-days in generally the amount of time that our uniform partners expect newly assigned personnel to be up and running with their missions. We feel the same based on the survey’s that we get back for the field that indicates that 60-days are the make or break time for our efforts with our mentored partners. After 60-days we have pretty much determined the course of our actions for the next 180+ days.

As we send more mentors to the field, there has been a desire to obtain certification earlier so as to better perform their mentoring responsibilities. Beginning this month, we have established our “Quick Start” program to facilitate a more rapid certification process. Upon completion of the “Quick Start” checklist (which is attached) mentors will be certified. The process still takes about 12 hours of personal time to complete. This is well above the standards of mentoring certification found in most organizations, which only average about 5 hours of mentor preparation.

The key element in the certification process is the 60-day survey and the mentoring project paper. For those who have completed 60-days on assignment, you are encouraged to complete the mentoring process. If you have any questions on the certification process, please contact me at joseph.allred@L-3com.com.