Articles

by Rik Nemanick, Ph.D. This post is the first in the series The Mentor’s Way, a set of guides for mentors who want to bring out the best in others. The old aphorism, “You can lead a horse to water but you can’t make him drink,” is the foundation of the second rule of mentoring. Many a mentor has fallen into the subtle trap of driving the mentoring process, only to reach a point of disappointment and frustration when the protégé’s energy and enthusiasm begins to wane. The drive that was there at the beginning starts to give way to other... Read More

The St. Louis Post-Dispatch had a nice article on mentoring in a recent issue (click here to read it). In it, I’m quoted at saying that mentoring “shrinks the big organizations.” This quote means that a mentoring program has the power to cross boundaries within organizations, creating connections across silos and building the organization’s social capital. When links across functions are stronger, the complexity of the organization seems more understandable to both mentors and protégés. When we conduct surveys of mentoring program participants, we often hear the growth of social capital as a great benefit to the program. An example... Read More

by Rik Nemanick, Ph.D. This post is the second in the series The Mentor’s Way, a set of guides for mentors who want to bring out the best in others. One of the things that separates mentoring from coaching is the time scale in which the two operate. Coaching tends to be focused on the here and now, closing immediate gaps and accomplishing short term goals. Mentoring is focused on the long term, the protégé’s journey that may last years. Understanding a protégé’s goals and aspirations will help create a context for more meaningful conversations. Spending the time up front to explore... Read More