Mentoring benefits all the parties involved including the organisations, the mentored individual and the mentor. Mentored individuals report having more career mobility and opportunities as a result of mentoring relationship. They receive more recognition, promotion, positive reinforcement and greater visibility by top management, than non-mentored individuals. Mentored individuals also get access to mentor’s network and opportunity to acquire new skills and knowledge. Mentored individual also experience faster career growth.
How does Mentoring help in Developing Competencies?
Mentoring process will be helpful in developing all the six types of competences. Meta-competences are generic competence, which includes interpersonal and conceptual skills. The mentor can serve role model and mentored individual can learn vicariously from mentors. Mentors also provide opportunity to metored individuals to use newly learned behaviour.
Mentoring will also positively influence industry knowledge as the mentor can transfer industry competences quite fast, for which non-mentored employees may take very long time. Supportive climate provided by the mentor while mentee is in familiarisation phase enhances the pace of learning. Mentoring will positively impact intra-organisational competencies. Since intra-organisational competences are linked with organisational culture of firm, this competence is acquired through observation of day-to-day behaviour of colleague and through interaction with people working within organizations. Mentors serve very powerful source in socializing the mentees, hence, transferring the intra-organisational competencies. Similarly technical trade, standard technical competence and unique competencies can be developed through mentoring process where mentors demonstrate skillful performance and then ask mentees to perform using newly acquired competence. Mentors provide feedback and support on performance, thus these competencies are developed through iterative process. Apprentice scheme, coaching schemes, job instruction training etc of various organisations will also have elements of guidance in performance, hence, subsumed in mentoring process.
Job Instruction Training (JIT) has been found effective in building competence. JIT include following steps(Bryan,Jr.,1990)
1. Preparing the trainees by telling them about the job and overcoming their uncertainties.
2. Presenting the instructions, giving essential information in clear manner.
3. Asking the trainees to trying out the jobs to demonstrate their understanding.
4. Placing the employee in the job, with a designed resource person.
Table2. Types of Competencies with Relevant Methods of Competence Building
1. Meta Competence – Traditional college training- Socialisation- Apprenticeship – Work Experience- Management Development Programmes
2. Industry Competence – Mentoring- Experience with industry- Attending Seminars and Conferences- Interacting with colleagues in other firms- Aligning with external consultants
3. Intra Organisational competence – Mentoring- Socialization, Initiation Scheme- Interaction with colleagues- Job rotation- In-house training programmes
4. Standard Technical Technical – Mentoring- Vocational training- General training programmes- Supplier of the technology
5. Technical Trade Competence – Vocational education limited industry only- Mentoring
6. Unique Competence – Mentoring apprentices, informal learning, in-house training programmes
Studies suggest that JIT had positively influenced employee morale and reduced accident rate and turnover.
(b) Seminar and Conferences
Seminar and conferences bring people from the industry closer. Seminar and conferences are helpful in broadening the knowledge base of attendees by sharing of information / and transfer of learning from one expert to another. This kind of process will be very helpful in developing industry competence. Seminar and conferences may also be useful in developing meta-competencies as while discussing about one’s own experience about various issues the presenters develop communicative competence.
( c ) Job Rotation
Job rotation involves moving employees to various positions in the organisation with a view to expand their skill, knowledge, and abilities. Job rotation can be vertical or horizontal. Vertical job rotation means putting employees in a new job through promotion. Lateral movement of employee may be in the form of transfer to a new position. Job rotation provides opportunity to develop new skills / competences required to perform well in the new position, thus making the employees versatile. Job rotation may be used to enhance intra-organisational competence, technical trade competence and unique competence. Job rotation provides hands on on-the-job training, thus all the varieties of technical competence can be developed through this methodology.
(d) In-house Training Programmes
In house training programmes normally organized to generate fit between the individual and the organisational needs. In house training programmes for newcomers address issues of organizational culture and norms, thus can be considered socialization programmes and are important for developing intra-organizational competence.
In house training programmes are also useful for strengthening unique competence and technical trade competence, since these issues are specific to firm and trade; only internal people will in better position to impart competence. Sometimes, external specialists are involved in transferring technical trade and standard technical competence.
(e) Management Development Programme
Management development programmes conducted by outside agency normally address generic issues pertaining to industries or non-specific to industry. If they relate to specific industry, they help in developing industry competencies. If these development programmes address generic issues in administration and management, they are helpful in developing generic or meta-competencies. Management development programmes that not are tailor made to the needs of enterprise or particular trade and job may not be very helpful in developing standard technical, technical trade or unique competences.
(f) Vocational Training Programmes
Vocational training programmes can be used to develop standard technical competencies and industry level competencies. Engineering colleges and technical institutions provide such kind of training. These institutions train people for particular profession, and many times for specific industries. Vocational training would also include independent learning projects. This may be very useful to certain vocations such as teachers, nurses, computer experts , lawyers where members must update their competence through courses of independent studies, and learning from others experiences.
(g) Informal Interaction
People learn a lot unconsciously. Example of unconscious learning is socialization processes that all employees experience within an organization. Cognitive maps, models of reality that are commonly shared by the members of the organizations, are predominantly picked up unconsciously. People also learn consciously during informal interactions. Much of on- the job training happens without any formal design thus can be subsumed under this category. Here people observe display of competent performance and pickup the competence. Many times learning happens through informal chatting.
Conclusion:
Competence is a very critical variable in individual, team and organisational performance. Competence conceptualised at sub-individual level in this paper helps us to visualise competence pool with in a department, group or team, and organiszation. This conceptualisation also helps human resource managers to specify what competencies will be required in future for effective performance rather than the number of heads required .
It is further argued that ability to learn is central to the concept competence building. Organizations need to provide conducive climate for learning. Current thinking of bringing out fit between job requirements and competencies is only creating static fit, which will not be sufficient for high performance, as the environment is constantly changing. Instead of giving high emphasis on intra-organizational competencies, industry competencies, more emphasis may be given on developing meta-competencies. The presumption is that persons with high degree of meta-competencies will be able to respond to the changed requirements more confidently and skillfully as compared to persons low in these competencies. Methods for building competence may vary according to competence to developed, persons’ readiness, and the context of learning. Methods may be planned and formal, they can be unplanned and informal. Experience suggests that most of the learning in organisations happen in informal and unplanned manner during informal interactions on- the- job. It happens through peer interaction. It happens vicariously by observing others performance. Informal mentoring relationships is a great source of competence building in indian organizations. Organizations also utilise conscious effort to develop competence through job rotation. Formal learning opportunities are provided for developing competence in the form of seminar and conferences, in-house training programmes, and management development programmes conducted by internal or external resource agencies.
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