How to set up a mentoring program?

Have you ever heard of mentoring? It has been spreading within the organizations when the subject is to spread the knowledge. But do you really know what a mentoring program is? What are its advantages and how to implement?

If you do not know the answers to these questions, keep reading this article and find out.

There are several types of mentoring programs, with the most varied range of topics, in this article we will talk about all these questions and also present a step by step guide on how to develop it in your company.

What is mentoring?

The mentoring program is a professional development tool and consists of an experienced person helping others less experienced.

Master Black Belt, for example, is responsible for mentoring Black Belts and Green Belts in their projects, contributing methodological support and their experiences to improve and achieve results.

But then, how to set up a mentoring program? It is of utmost importance that the entire program is thoroughly thought through in all its stages, from beginning to end.

The Steps to Implementing Mentoring

To succeed in the program it is essential that your goals are well defined. For example: the goal may be to promote a faster integration of new employees, such as simply spreading the knowledge of a particular person or area of the organization.

You should also define relationship supervisors. They accompany the interaction of people throughout the mentoring program.

Once you have the team set up, you should thoroughly prepare the program planning, i.e. how many pairs mentors and apprentices will the program have? How to identify them? What is the work plan? How will the program communicate? At what points in the process will be made an evaluation of the effectiveness of the program?

Apprentices are easily identified in the organization, they are the people who want and need to develop in a particular area of knowledge. Since mentors are not so easily identified, they must be sought after in the organization according to the needs.

The training of mentors and apprentices is not the same, mentors must learn techniques and tools to assist them in the transmission of their information, while the apprentices are trained to make the most of the training.

The formation of pairs is a very delicate and critical step in the success of the mentoring program. A very interesting technique for this selection is the application of forms and interviews in order to identify their behavioral characteristics and what each one can offer to the program.

This creates a database with enough information to be cross-referenced to form mentor and apprentices peers where the mentor meets the apprentice's needs and vice versa, thus mitigating training mistakes.

After that, all the employees involved must be trained to relate in the most productive way to the organization, in order to meet the goals set.

At this point, the team of supervisors defined at the beginning of the program should oversee the whole mentoring process so that they can more conveniently make the necessary adjustments to the success of the program.

Finally, it is necessary to evaluate the moments previously defined. Ideally, everyone should individually measure the effectiveness of the program.

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Mentoring in Lean Six Sigma

Remember the example of mentoring I mentioned earlier in this article? That&rsquos what we will apply this whole step by step to set up the mentoring program for Lean Six Sigma projects.

We must always keep in mind the objective of this project, to assist the belts in the realization of their projects. In this process, the mentor will be the Master Black Belt, and the apprentices will be the other Belts.

The Master Black Belt should then build on the steps of the DMAIC method to establish periodic encounters with the Green and Black Belts, always keeping in mind the purpose and duration of each encounter.

The mentor should schedule all of these mentoring meetings in advance with their apprentices and set assessment criteria to follow each step. The Master Black Belt must take care to keep the meetings productive, thus contributing to the improvement of the projects.

To help you set up your own mentoring program, we've developed a step-by-step mentoring approach for Lean Six Sigma programs using the DMAIC method, check it out.

Definition

The meeting focused on assisting the first phase of the method, aims to analyze if the steps of this stage were fulfilled, that is, to evaluate the existence of a clear definition of the scope of the project, evaluating the history of the problem, the process where it occurs and agreeing on the main points of the project through the project contract.

In order to guide your meeting, we make suggestions for questions to ask:

1. Does the project leader understand the impact of this project on the organization?

2. Was the history of the problem analyzed?

3. Has the earnings calculation memory been approved?

Was the project contract prepared and approved?

Some referrals should be attempted by the mentor, such as reviewing with the mentor the steps of the next phase and presenting improvement points according to what has already been implemented in the project and has been presented so far.

Measurement

At this moment it is necessary to analyze if the steps of this stage were fulfilled: analysis of phenomena and the process, knowledge of the current state of the process, a survey of the potential causes of the problem and quantitative analysis of the database.

The main questions to be made at this meeting are:

1. Was the process map/flow chart created to be analyzed?

2. Have the variables that influenced the process been identified?

Have you evaluated the alternatives for collecting new data or using existing data?

4. Were the problem data stratified according to the variables raised (X's)?

5. Have the descriptive statistics tools been used correctly?

Analysis

To assess whether the steps in this part have been completed, it should be noted if the root causes that affect the process significantly and generate variability in the result of interest have been identified. They need to be proved, with facts and data, using graphs, statistical analysis, and qualitative tools.

The main questions to be asked at this meeting are:

1. Are the root causes of the problem adequately identified and prioritized?

2. Were the statistical tools used the most appropriate?

3. Do the root causes identified support the goal?

Improvement

The objective is to analyze if the steps of this stage were fulfilled: proposition, prioritization, test and execution of solutions to the problem. In addition, start the process of evaluating the results that the project has been generating.

The main questions to be asked at this meeting are:

Have the solutions to eliminating root causes been prioritized?

2. Have the stakeholders been informed about the implementation of the project?

3. Have experiments been performed to test the identified solutions?

4. Have the proposed actions been implemented?

5. Were the proposed actions effective in solving the problem?

6. Has a new Process Map been drawn up?

Control

At this stage, the objective is to analyze whether the steps of this stage have been fulfilled: monitoring the results achieved after implementing the improvements, establishing controls that guarantee the sustainability of the results, defining the "owner of the process" and how the process will be monitored on day a day.

The main questions to be asked at this meeting are:

1. Was the monitoring and sustainability plan established and implemented?

2. Have the process&rsquo improvements been standardized and incorporated into the routine?

Have the people involved in the process been trained in the new standards?

4. Was the project's financial impact validated?

Was the project outcome validated by the project owner?

6. Was the executive summary of the project developed and documented?

It is worth remembering that in addition to all these suggestions of questions presented for each step of the DMAIC method, it is of the utmost importance for the mentor to leave each meeting with a clear question: What should be done until the next meeting!

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