4 Benefits of Speed Mentoring for Your Mentee

Many people would say that speed mentoring is like speed dating, and they wouldn’t be completely wrong. Speed mentoring is a series of short, focused conversations about specific questions. These conversations involve a one-on-one interaction between a mentee and mentor. The mentee rotates to several mentors during an allotted amount of time to obtain the information they are looking for.

But how could this possibly be beneficial?

Aside from the benefits that traditional mentoring provides, speed mentoring offers a few unique advantages. It is highly flexible and easily tailored to any work setting. This makes it a great talent development choice for any organization.

Here are 4 benefits  of speed mentoring for mentees:

1. Interact with Different People

The mentee can speak with numerous mentors in a short period of time. This allows them to experience more interactions than they could in a traditional mentoring relationship. They can then receive a lot of information from a variety of people with different experiences.

Interaction with other individuals in an organization provides more benefits than you may think. In fact, a SHRM study on employee engagement reveals that 77% of individuals view coworker relationships as a priority. Fostering these relationships with speed mentoring provides an easy boost to employee engagement.

Great coworker relationships also increase employee happiness, which directly impacts the employee experience. You want your employee experience to be as positive as possible to ensure you have a good company culture. Happy employees have also proven to be 20% more productive in their organizations.

2. Assist with Mentor Matching

When a mentoring program is implemented with unsuccessful mentor matching, the program and the organization can lose credibility. The impact of bad matching is steep, but speed mentoring can help prevent bad matches.

Speed mentoring allows the mentee to go a step further than simply reading a profile when choosing their mentor. These sessions give a real-time trial to the compatibility between potential participants. This results in a higher probability of a successful match between the mentor and mentee.

It’s important to use speed mentoring sessions in an effective way to help make successful matches. Be sure to tell participants ahead of time to look for a long-term mentor. At the end of the speed mentoring session, pass out interest forms for mentees to list their mentor preferences. Once your program administrators have these forms, they can make the best possible matches.

If this type of mentoring is chosen to assist with mentor matching, consider pairing it with software. Mentoring software can show the mentee their top mentor matches. They will be able to briefly meet these potential matches through speed mentoring. This will allow them to have a deeper conversation with these people and assess who they are most comfortable with.

3. Include All Individuals

Mentoring is an investment in your employee’s career development. However, it is not limited to those who want a formal mentorship. Speed mentoring sessions allows you to include all individuals, regardless of their long-term availability.

Mentees who are already participating in a formal mentoring relationship can still attend a speed event. It will help them broaden their understanding of the subjects that may not be in their mentor’s area of expertise. This even may even spur a new mentorship in the future.

You should also consider including your leadership team in speed mentoring events. Whether they are current mentors or not, they can participate as mentors or even mentees. Leader mentees give you the ability to combine speed mentoring sessions with reverse mentoring. The upper-level mentees learning from the junior-level mentor promotes knowledge sharing both ways.

Leaders as speed mentors help you implement leadership development mentoring. This can help your high potential employees learn from individuals who already lead your organization. It can also form mentorships in the future that will develop leadership skills and help you create a great succession plan.

A huge benefit of using speed mentoring is the inclusion of your whole organization. Current mentees can show initiative at events and leaders can create good rapport within the organization.

4. Provide Networking Opportunities

Speed mentoring is a great way for the mentee and the mentor to network. Networking is an important aspect of any person’s career growth, so this is a great benefit for all involved. This is a relatively easy way for mentees and mentors to expand their networks.

Internal networking also provides excellent opportunities for employee referrals when it comes time for promotions. It also impacts work performance, as high performers have networks 36% larger than average performers.

With increased performance and excellent referrals, internal networking should be highly encouraged throughout every organization. Other opportunities to promote internal networking are alumni events that include current employees or lunch-and-learn sessions.

If you are interested in finding out more about speed mentoring and Insala’s mentoring software, please request a demo today.