Topic 4: Barriers to Mentoring

When organisations are starting to implement mentoring, it’s important to understand the barriers that could stop that mentoring being effective (or taking place at all). Let’s have a look at some typical barriers, and consider which of them relate to your own organisation.

Barriers to Mentoring

ILM Level 3 Award in Effective Mentoring

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Barriers to mentoring

Explore each of the folllowing barriers of mentoring to:

Operational issues

The mentor

The mentee

Organisational issues

Activity: Barriers to mentoring

Reflective questionsThinking about the barriers you reviewed (and any others you can think of that relate to your organisation):

• How could you overcome these barriers?
• What solutions might work in your organisation?

Activity: Barriers and solutions

Example: Organisation X. The Organisational Development department is supporting the implementation of mentoring across the organisation. Senior leaders have been receiving mentoring for several years and recognise the benefits of this approach. The OD team have identified several issues and how they might address them.

Explore the following examples of barriers and solutions:

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Barrier: Organisational structure – what kind of structure does your organisation have? If it has a tall structure, a clear hierarchy with many layers of management, the culture may support a style of mentoring which is ‘do as I tell you’, rather than involving the mentee in their own goal setting, and generating their own actions. Barrier: Organisational culture – how open is your culture to mentoring conversations? i.e. how often do managers ask questions and listen carefully, rather than just telling people what to do. What opportunity is there for people to identify their own development goals, find out their preferred way of getting there, or new ways of behaving? try out new ways of doing things, new ways of behaving? How often do senior leaders talk about or model effective mentoring behaviours? Barrier: Understanding of what mentoring is – how well do people at all levels understand what mentoring is and who can access it? Does it feel like mentoring is only for people with leadership potential? Or that mentoring is only for people who are underperforming? How visible is mentoring in communications across the organisation?

Barrier: Nature of the work – hard to release staff. What does your organisation do? If the work is reactive in nature, or a certain number of people are needed on shift at any one time, it may be hard to release staff to engage in mentoring. Barrier: Volume of work issued to staff – if work issued to staff is more than enough to fill a day, it will be hard to release them for mentoring, without strong management support. Barrier: Not enough mentors – mentoring may be an essential part of supporting new starters. If there aren’t enough mentors available, this can put pressure on those that are available.

Barrier: Level of knowledge, skill and confidence – what training do the internal mentors receive? Do they have sufficient knowledge, skill and confidence to be effective? Barrier: Busy day job, struggle to find time to mentor – if there is no process in place for releasing trained mentors from their day job, the system will struggle.

BarrierMentoring isn’t widely understood across the organisationSolution

• Information about mentoring will be included in the newsletter, with a series of articles planned over the year.
• All staff will be invited to a short online session to explain what mentoring’s all about, when it’s useful and who it’s for

BarrierMany managers are keen to mentor, but don’t have any formal trainingSolutionTo make sure mentoring is of a good quality, managers can apply to complete a formal mentoring qualification, with an assessment, to make sure they’re competent and confident.

BarrierPeople aren’t sure who mentoring is for. Some people think it’s just for those identified as future leaders, others think it’s for people who aren’t performing well.Solution

• The senior team will share their mentoring stories via the newsletter, sharing how mentoring helped them throughout their career, raising awareness of its potential value at all levels, and showing their support
• Online sessions will dispel myths, explain when mentoring can be helpful and explain how people can request and access mentoring

Barrier: Assigned to mentor but unsure what it involves or what it is. For mentoring to work, the mentee needs to be fully engaged in the process, so they can be open, honest and identify their goals. If they’ve been sent for mentoring by their manager, but they’re not sure why, they are likely to struggle to engage.Barrier: Busy day job, struggle to find time to be mentored – time is a factor in many barriers. If mentees have a full day job, with no management support to be released, the mentoring is unlikely to succeed.

BarrierPeople have a high workload, and releasing them for learning is difficultSolution

• Managers have been asked to consider options for releasing people for mentoring. Developing the team is part of their objectives for this year.
• The senior team will continue to share their mentoring stories, and encourage uptake of mentoring at all levels, open to discuss any changes of process / system that might be required.