Someone once said: “You have to learn from other people’s mistakes … you don’t have time to make them all yourself.” Yet mentoring is much more than learning from others.
People often quote the 70/20/10 model of development. They say only 10% of workplace learning comes from formal education and training; 20% comes from observing, emulating and talking with other people; but a whopping 70% comes from experience.
But experience is the worst teacher! She gives you the test, then the lesson. That’s why we say: “I wish I knew then what I know now!” It’s hindsight, 20-20 vision in the rearview mirror!
Learning from experience only happens when you stop. Reflect. Get the lesson from the experience. That’s called insight. Without it, the person who says they have 10 years experience may really only have 1 year’s experience, repeated 10 times.
What mentoring does is use hindsight to create insight and turn it into foresight.
And that 20% observing, emulating and talking with other people? What if they are the wrong people?
When my youngest child was a teenager, I met a couple who told me they built a fire pit in their back yard. On Saturday nights their teenage kids and their friends would come around, everybody was welcome. They’d put on a BBQ for all of them and afterwards sit around the fire pit with the kids, getting to know them, telling stories and just talking, while they toasted marshmallows on the fire. The dad said: “I want to know where my kids are and who they’re with. If you want them to fly with the eagles you don’t let them hang out with the turkeys”.
You must choose who you’ll hang out with and pick your mentors.
Finally, the 10% formal education and training? This is the biggest investment for organisations and individuals, in terms of money and time and lost productivity. Sending people off-the-job in the hope that they will return and apply learning on-the-job is delusional.
Don’t get me wrong! I believe in life-long learning and I know the value of training and conferences. But I also know this: 80% of learning is lost – never gets applied – unless there is on-the-job coaching or mentoring[1].
The learning environment has evolved and mentoring is the key. Mentoring leverages the 70, the 20 and the 10. It adds value, extends and enhances all types of learning and when managers also mentor their people, learning can be applied on the job to make a real difference. That’s how mentoring works.
Source: Mentoring Works
Reference: [1] Jefferson, A., Pollock, R., & Wick, C. (2009) Getting your money’s worth from training & development. John Wiley & Sons, Inc. CA
A note from the Careers Service
The Careers and Industry Mentoring Program will be running this year between May-October 2015. Keep an eye out for information and registrations in March.
