„‚ CONDITIONS THAT HINDER EFFECTIVE COMMUNICATION

developed and successful: How will mentors and protégés be functioning? What kind of
career progress will protégés be making?
Making the Plan Work
The six steps of creating an action plan should help to crystallize the roles and
responsibilities of mentors and protégés, the goals of the program, the philosophy that
mentors and protégés will use in working together, the skills they will try to use, the
expectations they will have, and the methods they will use to report progress.
At this point the conference participants might want to prepare a suitable form to
post to assist people in volunteering to participate in the mentoring program. This form
should include information such as name, current location, education, experience,
reasons for interest in mentoring or being mentored, type of mentoring relationship
wanted, amount of time available for mentoring activities, and any constraints (Bryson,
1988; Murray & Owen, 1991). The rewards offered for participating will have a major
impact on the success of the program. The surest way to encourage people to take the
roles of mentor and protégé seriously is to tie these roles to the performance-appraisal
process.
The conference participants also may want to have mentors and protégés
summarize their roles and expectations in a document of expectations. Although
formulating documents may sound formal and bureaucratic, such documents do provide
a framework for discussing expectations, values, goals, and roles.
Various strategies or tactics can be used for implementing the mentoring plan:
educational and training activities (in listening, problem identification, problem solving,
and so on), communications and briefings, and changes in the organizational structure
and the reward system. Generally, these strategies help to manage the process of change.
Monitoring and Evaluating the Program
Periodically it is appropriate to summarize the major outcomes and results of the
mentoring program, including problems encountered, positive aspects of the experience,
and areas in which changes might be needed. This kind of evaluation is conducted for
the purpose of improving the program as opposed to determining whether the program is
effective. It might be thought of as a series of systematic, information-gathering
activities that facilitate the organizational change to a mentoring environment. In this
sense, then, evaluation is not a separate activity that takes place after the program has
been implemented; rather, it occurs at various stages of the intervention.
When monitoring and evaluating the program, it is useful to review some of the
issues considered early in the process, before the decision was made to design and
implement the program:
1. Will voluntary participation work here?
2. Are there enough mentors?
3. How will we recruit mentors?
The Pfeiffer Library Volume 6, 2nd Edition. Copyright ©1998 Jossey-Bass/Pfeiffer ❚❘ 291