Use Facilitative Mentoring To Manage and Lead Your Delivery of Extraordinary Employee Experiences

Here is a quick definition of facilitative mentoring in connection with managing and leading.

Facilitate is to draw insights from a group and/or a person (the participants) – through questions & answers and listening to presentations – about one or more of Imagined Futures (IFS), Current Reality (CR), the perceived Gap between IFS & CR, and the Issues and Initiatives in the GAP. The insights usually inform the facilitator – more so the group – about the strategic structure and systems aspects of the organization of work. Therefore, the lens of insight is Management and aspects of leadership. Focus: To get clear and get perspective, and possibly get support.

Mentor is to engage in dialogue with a mentee. For this strategic relationship to flourish it’s important the mentee asks questions to access the mentor’s lived experience. As the relationship continues the mentee, through sponsorship of the mentor, can access the network of colleagues of the mentor to answer questions the mentor decides not to answer. Therefore, the lens of insight is Leadership with aspects of management. Focus: To get perspective, get support and get clear.

Facilitative Mentoring balances the use of facilitating and mentoring … that is, to create something of value that cannot necessarily be created individually. With reference to executive and employees, facilitating and mentoring individually result in experiences. Together, they evolve the possibility of extraordinary experiences.

As you can appreciate there is more to the dynamic balancing of facilitating and mentoring than can be covered in this post. And to state the obvious, “It does take practice to demonstrate facilitative mentoring.

A Truism

When you listen you learn,
When you share you educate.

In the widest sense of listening you are learning.
In the widest sense of sharing you are educating.
In the widest sense of learning you are listening.
In the widest sense of educating you are sharing.
Therefore, every person is learning and educating.

With reference to executives and employees, each person is learning and educating. When executives use facilitative mentoring they establish and sustain a relational structure, or if you prefer a structure relationship, for strategic, collaborative conversations.

From the employees perspective the way they experience the educator educating – the executives facilitative mentoring – influences their learning and the determination of the learning experience as good, great, remarkable, memorable or extraordinary.

Of importance to interacting with employees … this wise practice:

The more you involve the employees in their words, the more you touch their heart. And when you use your words you touch their head. Paraphrasing a Nelson Mandela quote. 

That written a better approach is the combination of head and heart. That is, use facilitating (managing) to lean into head connections and use mentoring (leading) to lean into heart. Together, they encourage and extend a collaborative relationship. Because at the end of the day it’s recommended both the mentor and mentee benefit from the time together.

Earlier a reference to task hiccup was made. When you read the title of the article and might ask, “I’m to use facilitative mentoring with all employees? No way!” And your decision might be true depending on the size of your organization.

Smaller? – use facilitative mentoring!

Bigger? … use facilitative mentoring with those you are accountable. And then encourage those who report to you to use facilitative mentoring with those they are accountable.

And as result the benefits of facilitative mentoring can be experienced throughout the workforce.

In Closing

For employees who experience facilitative mentoring the possibility exists they will participate in extraordinary experiences.

As an executive, celebrate your employees involvement and evolvement. And upon, reflection you’ll find your evolvement as well. The touch of a mentee to your heart and head via the collaborative conversations is an ever-sharing story.

And consider how the same approach can be used to create extraordinary customer experiences.