Till recently the most popular mentoring program followed by companies was the one-on-one mentoring program in which a mentor (an employee with expertise in a specialised field) imparts their knowledge to a mentee (an employee who seeks to understand this field). Nowadays however group mentoring is gaining in popularity across companies. Here we will take a look at the two forms of group mentoring and the advantages they offer, first however let us take a look at what group mentoring means.
Group Mentoring
Group mentoring is the process of imparting specialised knowledge and skills from one or more mentors to a group of mentees.
Why Companies are Increasingly Opting for Group Mentoring
Nowadays companies are rapidly expanding their operations not only within India but all over the world. This expansion brings with it an exponential increase in new employees spread across different nations. In these situations traditional one-on-one mentoring is not feasible, hence companies are increasingly opting for group mentoring.
Types of Group Mentoring
While group mentoring usually takes on two forms, some companies have also come up with a tailored version best suited for them. Let us take a look at the two basic forms which constitute the most prevalent group mentoring programs.
- Group Mentoring (also known as Team Mentoring)
This is the classic group mentoring we looked at above. Many times in a company’s group mentoring program there is more than one mentor to guide the group of mentees in their learning objectives. Having more mentors gives the mentees the added advantage of drawing on a more varied specialised knowledge pool. In this way mentees learn so much more.
The mentees may belong to varied departments of the company, so they bring their own areas of knowledge to the group mentoring discussions. In this way mentees also get to learn from one another and widen their scope of knowledge.
- Peer Mentoring
In this type of group mentoring peers from different specialised areas of work form a group to facilitate mutual learning. They share their knowledge with each other and in this way the peer group gains a more comprehensive perspective of the company as a whole.
Advantages of Group Mentoring
- Mentees gain diverse perspectives from the different mentors and this gives them a broader viewpoint.
- Since mentees may belong to different departments, they learn so much from each other also.
- Working together to understand the various concepts helps develop a sense of team spirit among the mentees, this will stand them in good stead in their future projects.
- A wide range of expertise is made available to mentees which would not have been otherwise possible in a one-on-one mentoring program.
In this way group mentoring which has grown out of the changing requirements of today’s companies ensures participants get to enjoy the benefits of one-on-one mentoring with the additional benefit of varied specialised knowledge.
