How to Pick Great Mentors for Your New Hires

Humor is a wonderful thing. It can ease stress and reduce tension. Humor can also be the source of remarkable wisdom. My father often told jokes at the dinner table (sadly, I still remember a few of the real groaners.). I do too and my wife and I encourage our children to tell jokes because it's a valuable social skill and besides, we all like to laugh. Keeping up the family tradition, the other night my daughter told the following joke at the dinner table. There were a dozen muffins baking in the oven, six bran and six blueberry. One of the bran muffins remarked, "My goodness, it's hot in here." A blueberry muffin then shouted, "Holy cow, a talking muffin!"

What I like about this joke is that it hinges on the blueberry muffin being unaware of its own ability to talk. If I wanted to select a muffin to train others to talk, I wouldn't pick that blueberry muffin, no matter how tasty it might be.

A very common way to train new employees is to have them shadow an experienced employee, who is charged with "showing the new person the ropes." Done right, this approach can be a useful means of introducing someone to a new job. Two things are often missing though: systematic training in the tasks of the job and a way to convey the "why" as well as the "how" of doing the job the way you want it done.

In my view, the worst mistake in a shadowing experience is ending it too soon. Most often, the experienced employee returns to his job within a few hours and the new employee is left to struggle through learning the details of the job through experience. What the new employee needs most is a long-term mentoring relationship with an experienced employee who can share his or her hard-earned experience effectively.

Four Levels of Learning

This is where the muffins come in. Many trainers subscribe to a model of learning that looks like this:

1. Unconscious incompetence - At this stage you are not aware of what you do not know. Learning begins when you recognize you don't know anything.

2. Conscious incompetence - Now, you have learned enough to see how much more you need to know. You have much to learn and you know it.

3. Conscious competence- By this time you have the knowledge to perform the needed tasks and have developed the skills to do them well. However, doing the tasks right requires conscious thought.

4. Unconscious competence - This is the stage where your knowledge and skills are fully automatic. The skills have become nearly instinctive.

The blueberry muffin in my daughter's joke is an exaggerated example of people operating at the level of unconscious competence: the muffin can talk but is no longer aware that he is doing it.

Most trainers say the best mentors must perform at the level of unconscious competence. Yes, you want a mentor to be skilled at his or her job. But I disagree, at least in part, that being an unconscious competent is qualification to be a mentor because I don't think that's enough. Here's why.

I want a mentor to do more than talk about the job. He should be able to explain how he does the job well. In recalling experiences, he should be able to explain why any story he tells is important to understanding how to do the job well.

A Level Beyond

I think there is a level beyond unconscious competence. I call it Conscious Mastery. At this level, the top performer can do his or her job nearly automatically but often chooses not to. This person is alert and aware of his motivations and actions all the time. She is constantly monitoring her actions to see if she's using the best approach to solve problems or handle unique situations. In sales, this is the person who thinks her way through a sale so she anticipates customers' objections and answers the customers' questions before they are asked. She is thinking and acting faster than other people doing the same job. This person could be a great mentor.

As you hire new employees (I know the economy is tough, but everybody has some turnover to deal with.), make the effort to set up a long-term mentor for each one. The new employee will benefit by learning the job with less stress and in less time. The mentor will benefit in numerous ways from being a teacher. It's truly a win-win.

Just be sure to pick your mentors carefully. Find someone who is a Conscious Master and let the learning begin!

return to top