ORGANIZATIONAL REALITY

How to Get Ahead at Xerox

The new Xerox organization rewards people on a suite of skills, not solely on either technical or managerial skills. Each employee is rated from 0 to 5 on the following inventory of skills:

Business Skills

• Business Knowledge: Understands business principles (including financial management), industry, and economic influences.
• Customer Requirements: Demonstrates understanding of customer plans, problems, processes, and requirements.
• Vision, Goals, and Objectives: Understands vision, goals, and objectives of the corporation.

ORGANIZATIONAL REALITY

Mentoring is Part of the Culture at Douglas Aircraft

At Douglas Aircraft Company in Long Beach, California, mentoring is a tradition. Two important elements have ingrained mentoring in the organization's culture. First, senior management's support of mentoring is frequent, visible, and unwavering. Second, mentoring is part of the long-term strategic plan published by the CEO of Douglas's parent company, McDonnell Douglas.

At Douglas Aircraft, mentoring is the vehicle for moving knowledge through the organization from the people who have the most learning and experience. Management identifies high-performing employees, using criteria like readiness for promotion. Potential mentors are senior managers who volunteer their time. Before they join the program, they must outline the knowledge and guidance they believe they can contribute to the program. Mentorees select three potential mentors from the list of volunteers. A steering team matches the mentorees with mentors. The team can assign no more than two mentorees to a single mentor, and the mentor must be outside a mentoree's direct chain of command. This is because managers are already coaching and mentoring employees in their own work groups, and it avoids the awkward situation of being mentored by one's boss's boss.

Another benefit of Douglas's mentoring program is that supervisors are involved. Supervisors and mentorees jointly set developmental objectives, and these objectives are used by the mentoree and mentor as well. For example, suppose a mentoree in the manufacturing group determines, along with her supervisor, that she needs exposure to the financial aspects of the business. The mentoree is matched with an executive from the finance group.

In a recent evaluation, feedback from the mentorees showed an 80 percent overall satisfaction rating with the mentoring program. The most frequently mentioned concern from the mentorees was that time constraints limited their ability to schedule meetings with their mentors.

Douglas Aircraft's mentoring program is not a static one. It is revised and improved every year. In one-year cycles, mentors, mentorees, and supervisors receive ongoing instruction, counseling, support, and follow-through.

SOURCE: A. H. Geiger-DuMond and S. K. Boyle, "Mentoring: A Practitioner's Guide," Training & Development (March 1995): 51-54. Copyright March 1995, Training and Development, American Society for Training and Development. Reprinted with permission. All rights reserved.

SCIENTIFIC FOUNDATION

What Tactics Do Protégés Use to Influence Their Mentors?

Although we know that mentors contribute both career and psychological functions to mentoring relationships, we know less about protégés' contributions to the relationships. This study investigated upward influence tactics used by protégés to preserve mentoring relationships with senior colleagues. Four types of mentoring relationships were examined: (1) protégés in formal mentoring relationships with their supervisors (formal supervisory protégés), (2) protégés receiving informal mentoring from their supervisors (informal supervisory protégés), (3) protégés receiving mentoring from other senior employees (nonsupervisory protégés), and (4) subordinates receiving no mentoring (nonprotégés).

Five groups of upward maintenance tactics were investigated. Personal tactics included informal communication such as joking, sharing personal experiences, and interaction at social events. Direct tactics involved unedited communication of personal views, such as expressing opinions, expectations, and perceptions of injustices. Regulative tactics involved efforts to limit or manage contact, communication, and emotional displays with superiors (censoring or distorting messages, avoiding the delivery of bad news, overlooking negative comments and mood swings). Contractual tactics involved formal communication such as clarifying responsibilities, sticking to agreements, sharing credit for success, accepting criticism, and showing respect. Extracontractual tactics involved a willingness to exceed supervisor expectations (finishing work before deadlines, maintaining a flexible schedule, relieving the boss of burdens).

A survey was used to measure protégé status and influence tactics, along with demographic characteristics. The survey respondents were 259 managerial and professional employees from a variety of organizations in the banking, insurance, health, manufacturing, and education industries. The median age of the respondents was between 30 and 34 years, and 60 percent of the respondents were men.

The results showed that informal supervisory protégés used a distinctive pattern of tactics to maintain stability in their mentoring relationships. They were more likely to report using direct and extracontractual tactics and less likely to report using regulative and contractual techniques than were formal supervisory protégés, nonsupervisory protégés, and nonprotégés. These results imply that informal mentoring relationships between supervisors and protégés provide a nonthreatening context in which protégés can directly challenge and question their mentors (use direct tactics) and not have to perform "emotional work" to manage the relationship (use regulative tactics). In addition, protégés in formal mentoring relationships with supervisors used the same tactics as nonprotégés, suggesting that they felt no more comfortable in the relationships with their supervisors than those who received no mentoring at all.

The study has implications for mentoring programs in organizations. First, mentoring relationships with supervisors that develop naturally provide a nonthreatening way for protégés to challenge their mentors and to exceed performance expectations. Second, protégés in formal mentoring relationships may experience relational conflicts that make them less willing to express their emotions. Organizations with formal mentoring programs can use communication training programs to help protégés and mentors alike to develop open communications in the relationship.

SOURCE: B. J. Tepper, "Upward Maintenance Tactics in Supervisory Mentoring and Nonmentoring Relationships," Academy of Management Journal 38 (1995): 1191-1205.

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