13L

February 2007

Mentoring...in a Flash

By Scott Derrick - Washington, DC

In a 2002 national poll of 2,000 adults in the United States, the AOL-Time Warner Foundation found that a projected 57 million adults would seriously consider being a mentor to youth. Of these potential mentors, 88 percent responded that they would like to have a choice among mentoring options depending on their schedules and interests. Given that the investment of self and time is a major challenge for many potential mentors, developing options that provide for short-term commitments to mentoring might indeed increase the participation of those individuals who feel that they generally do not have sufficient time to devote to traditional mentoring programs. With this in mind, perhaps the federal government might benefit from a high-impact learning experience for early- and mid-career federal employees that requires a minimal commitment of time and resources for those individuals participating in the program (i.e., both the mentor and mentee) as well as those individuals facilitating the program.

With this challenge, I have proposed that 13L initiate a pilot project to test a short-term mentoring arrangement that I have dubbed flash mentoring. Under the initial proposal, 13L would identify 20 senior-level federal managers in the Washington, D.C. metropolitan area who would volunteer to devote one-hour of their time during the next 3 months to meet one-on-one with an early- or mid-career federal employee to discuss personal growth and career development strategies. For the pilot project, mentoring would be defined as a process that enables an individual to learn and seek guidance from a more experienced person who can pass on relevant knowledge and experience. The pilot project would not attempt to replace other long-term mentoring arrangements in which the mentor and/or mentee might be participating. To be sure, most people would probably agree that traditional long-term mentoring arrangements have advantages and disadvantages compared to this flash mentoring approach.

The members of 13L are currently assessing the potential components of this proposed mentoring project, but some specific elements are under strong consideration. For example, because compatibility of the mentor and mentee is a key challenge for traditional mentoring programs, one option would be for mentors and mentees to be assigned on a first-come, first-serve (i.e., random) basis. The only criterion would be that both mentors and mentees must be federal employees. In addition, as with traditional mentoring arrangements, the mentor and mentee would agree to maintain the confidentiality of their discussions. During the one-hour mentoring session, the discussion between the mentor and mentee would focus primarily on issues related to personal growth and career development. Suggested topics for discussion at the mentoring session include:

-- identifying various learning experiences for one's own growth and improvement,

-- building credibility, trust, and respect with colleagues and supervisors,

-- meeting the expectations of a supervisor,

-- balancing work demands with personal life,

-- sharing time-saving hints and approaches that might help in managing relationships and paperwork,

-- participating in professional organizations,

-- taking personal responsibility for job satisfaction, and

-- exploring a range of career development strategies.

As the details of this important project solidify, I am optimistic that 13L will continue to serve as a catalyst in initiating innovative approaches to help in promoting effective leadership in the federal government. Expanding the array of options for mentoring arrangements for federal employees certainly would be one way of doing just that.