Leadership, mentorship and coaching share a rich overlap of skills, and leaders at all levels have much to gain by developing a mentoring mindset. Learning and development (L&D) professionals can harness the power of mentorship to develop and engage leaders across their organizations, with benefits that extend to every team member.

Leadership and Mentorship Skill Sets

The similarity in skill sets needed to be an excellent leader or mentor presents a cross-training opportunity. Any individual looking to develop as a leader will naturally tap into mentoring and coaching skills. Those looking to grow as mentors will develop leadership as well. What are the overlapping skills of mentorship and leadership? Consider below:

These mutual skills can be developed across the leadership development spectrum. L&D professionals should incorporate the mentorship mindset in a variety of settings — early and often.

As you encourage the mentorship mindset within your leaders, it is important for L&D professionals to guide their teams on when they need to switch their mentoring or coaching hats. Mentorship is typically long term and development focused, while coaching is often short term and performance focused — and leaders will need to do both. Outline clearly for your leaders when to act like a coach, and when to act like a mentor.

Let’s consider the roles of both mentors and coaches in more detail:

Many leaders are likely to have a mix of new and experienced team members, including team members with more tenure than them. Equipping leaders with both mentoring and coaching skill sets allows them to support the unique development needs of every team member.

Benefits of Developing Mentor Leaders Across the Business

Growing a mentoring mindset in leaders creates benefits that are experienced by individuals, teams and the whole organization.

Mentor leaders help organizations identify, foster and retain talented team members by investing in long-term growth. A mentoring mindset encourages self-awareness and self-development, as well as enabling a culture of continuous learning. Mentor leaders help their teams navigate change, encourage innovation and creativity, and build trust through authenticity and connection.

While a mentoring mindset will enhance a leader’s individual and team relationships, encouraging and enabling managers to be formal or informal mentors to those on other teams generates additional benefits. Leaders build cross-functional awareness by mentoring across teams. They can build their own systemic thinking skills, learn new things about the business, and bring that knowledge and appreciation back to their own team. Mentorship also gives managers a way to connect differently with team members that are not their direct reports. The opportunity to empower and guide may be a breath of fresh air that a manager needs. Finally, cross-functional mentoring may help a leader identify and recruit talent to their team, enabling career growth and promotion.

Ways L&D Professionals Can Enable a Mentorship Mindset

L&D leaders have many opportunities to encourage leaders to adopt mentorship skills. Formal leadership programs may include workshops on core competencies such as professional communication, talent development, and engagement that include role-play and scenario-based discussions. Practice allows leaders to feel more prepared to employ mentorship tactics.

At ConstructConnect, our Leadership Pathway programming weaves scenarios and breakouts into group workshops for emerging, new and advanced leaders. Being mentored or acting as a mentor after any of these pathways is highly encouraged as well. This enables leaders to continue developing, build confidence, apply leadership skills and grow in mentorship practices.

Ongoing peer learning sessions allow leaders to swap best practices and crowd source challenges they are experiencing. ConstructConnect’s monthly Leader Lab sessions allow us to explore timely and relevant topics while practicing active listening and providing advice. These are great settings to dive into tough conversations, coaching, motivation, recognition, authenticity and empathetic leadership.

L&D leaders should also provide tools and resources that are accessible in the flow of work or in the flow of mentoring. Both leaders and mentors will benefit from having quick access to content and conversation guides to help individuals accomplish tasks such as:

• Building connection and trust
• Setting effective goals and action planning
• Structuring meetings
• Connecting to resources
• Monitoring progress and providing feedback
• Overcoming challenges and staying motivated
• Reflecting, documenting and celebrating success

These guides or forms could be housed on an intranet or learning management system. Ensure these materials are easily discoverable and frequently communicated.

Finally, L&D professionals themselves can act as models of the mentoring mindset and set an example for leaders to follow. We are professional listeners, need analyzers, and problem solvers. We can demonstrate to leaders how to provide clear guidance and connect others to relevant resources. In everything we do, we can show leaders the power of mentorship.

Conclusion

L&D leaders have an amazing opportunity to build strong and effective leaders by integrating the mentoring mindset into leadership development. Blending leadership, mentoring behaviors, and allowing practice within a variety of settings ensures that leaders will feel confident guiding and supporting their teams, and team members will feel heard and empowered to accomplish their goals.