Training and mentoring programs are great ways of getting new and less-experienced members up to speed. Training involves relaying specific skill sets to others, whereas mentoring is more of a structured support and guidance role to help mentees with a range of questions. Here are a few ideas to help implement both.

Training and mentoring can be effective ways of teaching skills to new members and getting new members acculturated to life within student project teams.

Mentoring

Mentoring involves formally designating a one-on-one professional relationship. Usually this is done between someone with experience and a new team member; however, mentoring can be quite effective and similarly necessary for experienced team members moving to new levels of responsibility such as team leadership or subteam leadership.

The mentoring relationship is relatively unstructured compared with more formal professional development mechanisms like training. Generally, the mentor has no specific deliverables, nor does the mentee have any specific take-away lesson. The relationship is meant to be a productive social one in which the mentee learns through engagement in the mentor’s tasks. The mentor can also provide information regarding the team’s culture, history, and standard practices and help guide the mentee through any problems he or she may have fitting into the organization. The effective mentor tries to develop the mentee as a peer and maximize his or her integration and growth in the team environment. Really effective mentors may even find their mentees becoming more skilled in particular domains in the long run. So, the mentee’s main responsibilities are to learn, ask questions, make mistakes, receive feedback, and generally soak up as much expertise and experience from their mentor as possible. Mentees should also feel free to ask critical questions and challenge the mentor’s knowledge or skill, particularly later in the mentorship cycle. Mentees aren’t necessarily wrong, nor are mentors necessarily right.

Although the relationship between mentor and mentee is unstructured, there are some good guidelines to consider when implementing a mentoring program:

• Try to choose compatible mentors/mentees. Compatibility can be by field of interest or by perceived social fit. Inevitably, those who are good social matches will hang out anyway. Starting that through a formal process can be effective for new recruits in particular.
• Integrate mentor/mentee responsibilities into the team structure. Mentors and mentees should not be assigned and forgotten about. The responsibilities mentors have for their mentees (e.g., checking up on progress, working on collaborative projects) should be integrated into team organization so feedback from mentees can be acted upon. Mentees should also have the ability to comment on mentors so that they can learn from their mistakes.
• If a mentor/mentee relationship is not working, disband it and start again. After some time, it might become clear that, for personal or professional reasons, there is little contact between mentor and mentee. Most of the time, this is simply because of laziness or lack of understanding of the responsibilities of either party. Sometimes, it is due to an intractable personality issue that threatens to jeopardize the mentee’s integration into the organization. In either case, it is best to reassign mentees to other mentors if the relationship looks like it’s going nowhere fast.

Training

Like mentoring, training involves skilled team members teaching less-skilled members. However, training is usually limited to areas of specific skill where there is a precise goal and progress that can be monitored and evaluated. Training is particularly handy with respect to basic skills (e.g., how to purchase items on the team’s account, learning to use basic machining tools such as the mill and lathe) but also could be extended to more complex skills (e.g., how to weld, how to use a particular CAD program).

What is important to consider in training is what goals are to be met, what activities are best suited to relay the skills required to achieve those goals, and how attainment of those goals can be measured. This is especially important to consider in complex training where the deliverables may be more complex and harder to evaluate.

Wright & Belcourt (1995) offer six steps to on-the-job training that are quite clear and effective.

• Show the trainee how to perform the job.
  -Be sure to break the job into manageable tasks; present only as much as can be absorbed at one time.
  -Remember that individuals learn at different speeds; some may absorb six or seven concepts at once, others two or three.
  -Tell why as well as how.
  -Point out possible difficulties as well as safety procedures.
  -Encourage questions.
  -Repeat as necessary; be patient.
• Repeat and explain key points in more detail.
  -Safety is especially important.
  -Take the time to show how the job fits into any larger systems.
  -Show why the job is important.
  -Show why some key points are more important than others.
  -Encourage questions.
  -Repeat as necessary; be patient.
• Allow the trainee to see the whole job again.
  -Ask questions to determine level of comprehension.
  -Encourage questions.
  -Repeat as necessary; be patient.
• Ask the trainee to perform less difficult parts of the job.
  -Try to ensure initial success to increase confidence.
  -Don’t tell how. If possible, ask questions, but try to keep frustration low.
  -Encourage questions.
  -Repeat as necessary; be patient.
• Allow the trainee to perform the entire job.
  -Gently suggest improvements; keep feedback positive.
  -If necessary, repeat until the trainee becomes more comfortable.
  -Encourage questions.
  -Repeat as necessary; be patient.
• Trainee begins to work alone.
  -Tell when and where trainee can find help if required.
  -Supervise closely at first then taper off as the trainee gains in confidence and skill.

As you can see, two major points are repeated in every step: be patient and encourage questions. Too many trainers refuse to do either and frustrate themselves and the learner.

Resources

Wright, P.C. & Belcourt, M. (1995). Down in the trenches: learning in a learning organization. The Learning Organization, 2, 1, 34-38.