Making reverse mentoring work
20/Jul/2018
Practical guidelines for programmes Reverse mentoring (or mentoring up) is a practical way to enable senior people in organizations to learn from more junior colleagues. There are two main contexts for this: technical and diversity-focused. Technical reverse mentoring emerged in …
Read blog
Mentoring and coaching CEOs
20/Jul/2018
A recent article in Harvard Business Review[1] proposes six dimensions that define how CEOs exert influence. All of these also seem highly relevant to other leaders – indeed to anyone, who has a large span of control and authority. For …
Read blog
Coaching and mentoring people on the autistic spectrum
20/Jul/2018
Autism is a badly misunderstood condition. While extreme autism may be disabling, it’s a mistake to think of all people on the autistic spectrum as disadvantaged. In reality, high functioning autistic people have significant advantages over people in general. They …
Read blog
The pivotal role of mentoring and coaching in health services
06/Jun/2018
The health sector has a long history of involvement with mentoring. The first supported mentoring programmes in Europe took place in the UK’s National Health Service (NHS), aimed at supporting the integration and retention of young graduate recruits. The NHS …
Read blog
How much coaching should line managers give direct reports?
16/May/2018
It’s a natural assumption that, the more coaching a line manager gives his or her direct reports, the greater the positive impact on performance and engagement. In reality, however, according to a study by Gartner[1], there is very little correlation. …
Read blog
Coaching and mentoring as conversations about context
11/May/2018
If coaches and mentors rarely, if ever, offer advice, what do they do? They offer context. Context is “relevant information, which the learner does not hold, but which may have a significant effect upon the quality of the decisions they …
Read blog
The role of wisdom in the coach/mentor – AI partnership
05/Mar/2018
In all the major models of human maturity, two qualities recur constantly: wisdom and connectedness. Wisdom, as exemplified by the original mentor, Athene, relates to the process of reflection upon and learning from experience. The scope of wisdom is therefore …
Read blog
A glimpse into the pre-history of teams
29/Jan/2018
The ability of humans to collaborate in teams on large-scale projects goes back thousands of years, according to theories emerging from the evidence of excavations of ancient monuments. Ancient monuments like Stone Henge, the Egyptian Pyramids, the statues of Easter …
Read blog
Coach versus bot: how do they compare?
03/Jan/2018
The issue of coach versus AI became one of the hot topics in coaching for 2017 and looks set to continue to generate interest, debate and – hopefully – some research. As yet, there is little evidence that existing coaches …
Read blog
The Coach-AI Partnership
03/Jan/2018
If coaches are to benefit from the rise of Artificial Intelligence, then they will need to embrace the new technology and integrate it with their practice. But what does that mean? The coach-AI partnership fulfils several functions: It provides real-time …
Read blog
What if the coachee or mentee appears delusional
24/Nov/2017
Although only one person in 500 is receiving treatment for a delusional disorder at any time, the rest of us are much more susceptible to bizarre and irrational beliefs than we like to admit. A recent study asking people about …
Read blog
FKT isn’t mentoring
24/Nov/2017
In recent months, there has been a spate of articles and webinars extolling the virtues of “speed mentoring”, “flash mentoring” or similar means of fast knowledge transfer (FKT). We have also seen the rise of “Mentoring Lite” from major dot-com …
Read blog
Keep your Mentoring Programme fresh and vibrant!
17/Nov/2017
The Mentoring Expert Webinars with David Clutterbuck and Lis Merrick are designed to provide continuing support and development for mentors. They are available to any mentoring programme, whether in-company or for a professional association or not-for-profit. Each is designed to last for 60 …
Read blog
The linguistic origins of mentoring
09/Nov/2017
An eminent US scholar in mentoring recently said at a conference “There is no such word as mentee!”, arguing instead for the word protégé. By the same logic, of course, there is no such word as protégé (French, from which …
Read blog
What’s the conversation you need to have
16/Oct/2017
We all have conversations we avoid. We can wall these conversations off to the extent that we are not even aware we are avoiding them. In helping someone get to know themselves, a coach or mentor can encourage them to …
Read blog
