In Greek mythology, when Odysseus left his kingdom to fight in the Trojan War, he entrusted the care of his household and his son to Mentor – an older, wise servant.
3,000 years later, we’re still using that name to denote an employee who acts as a guide, role model, and sponsor to a less experienced protegee (usually a high-potential team member). Mentors provide knowledge, advice, and support to help their mentees advance their career.
If you take part in your organization’s formal mentoring program, then you know what this is all about.
So in this article, we’ll focus instead on informal mentoring. And of course, we’ll put a safety spin on it.
Is Mentoring the Same as Coaching?
The short answer is no.
Coaching is a developmental process in which a coach works to pass on a specific set of skills to a protegee.
Mentoring, on the other hand, has a wider and more generic scope. Rather than being focused on a specific skill, the aim is to help the protegee navigate the organizational environment.
Where coaching is focused on technical skills, mentorship involves bettering the mentee for the benefit of their career and the organization. From a safety perspective, that means instilling them with a set of values that are conducive to a care-based approach that will help the mentee keep themselves and their team safe.
Are Mentors Born or Made?
During the 1800s and much of the 1900s, the great man theory was still making the rounds. With it came the idea that leadership skills are innate.
Thankfully, we’ve mostly moved past that theory. In doing so, we’ve come to see that leadership skills, like any other skills, are a matter of learning and practice and are not reserved for the lucky few who were born with the right genes.
Mentoring is not analogous to leadership, but we can nevertheless think of mentoring as limited-scope leadership, where a one-on-one developmental relationship emerges.
From this, we can deduce that safety mentors are also made. Their ability and willingness to mentor is rooted in appropriate safety and operational knowledge, supported by a good understanding of learning strategies.
How to Become a Better Safety Mentor
If your organization doesn’t have a formal mentoring program, don’t let it discourage you. According to Hughes, Ginnett, and Curphy (2015), informal mentoring approaches are actually more effective than formal mentoring when it comes to improving the mentee’s compensation and promotion.
But without a formal process in place, how do you place yourself in the position to be someone’s mentor?
Let’s start with the basics. According to the same authors, “informal mentoring occurs when a protegee and mentor build a long-term relationship based on friendship, similar interests and mutual respect.” This gives us our first indication of what it takes to be a safety mentor. You need to be an experienced safety professional who builds connections, gains respect, and makes people want to learn from you.
Your ability to be a safety mentor originates from your record in interacting with and developing employees. Having some common interests will help make the connection, so you have to learn about your potential mentees and also share what makes you tick.
The informal mentoring relationship originates at the intersection of the mentee’s need for guidance and the mentor’s willingness to provide support. To be a mentor, let alone a good mentor, you have to signal that you’re open to sharing your knowledge. That is, when safety questions come up, you should put your hand up and volunteer your experience in an approachable, non-pedantic way that people can understand.
Mentoring Prerequisites
Mentor Development
Mentors, especially informal mentors, often take on that role due to accumulating technical experience and becoming adept at using and deploying structured and unstructured learning methods. They are safety professionals with a wealth of experience, good communication techniques, and who meet the prerequisites of being a safety mentor.
If they lack any of these competencies, they will have to enroll in formal training to develop them. Absent a lucky set of circumstances, mentors have to be developed and should always be attending development courses, be it for technical or soft skills.
Mentor Resources
Mentoring is an intensive process, with substantial time demands for both the mentor and their protegee.
Safety mentors are generally accomplished professionals, which means they tend to have many assignments and busy schedules. Thinking that you will simply “find the time” to mentor someone from your team is short-sighted. Mentoring is intentional, and can’t be left dependent on the availability of time.
To be useful and effective, mentoring activities have to be formally quantified and included in your schedule. You will also need to communicate the time you need for mentorship to the organization and discount that time from your production and operational time.
Mentor Benefits
Given the time commitment, many wannabe mentors might feel that it’s simply not worth the effort. While mentoring is primarily for the sake of the protegee, the mentor has to benefit from the process as well.
So, what would it take to transform this from a burden into a worthwhile exercise?
First, you need to derive intrinsic satisfaction from being able to foster somebody else’s safety expertise. You have to be dedicated to your protegee growth and their changing attitude to safety. That’s essential to believing that you’re doing something meaningful and beneficial to both the mentee and the organization.
You also have to believe that any mentoring process will have a reverse mentoring component, where you also learn from your mentee. This could be an improvement in your communication skills, a new insight into workplace safety, or having a more technologically savvy protegee help you get a better handle on using and integrating safety technology. Whatever this personal learning component might be for you, you should be able to identify it and ensure you get this benefit. This is one of the ways you are being paid back for your investment.
Mentoring Plan
To be a good mentor, you need a plan. You have to know what your mentee needs and understand their safety career goals. Your mentoring process will need to take into consideration the key skills and attitudes they’ll require to reach those goals.
You will have to work collaboratively with your protegee to develop this plan and establish milestones and deliverables for both parties. Be sure to also outline how feedback will be given.
Establish ways to evaluate your mentee’s progress in acquiring skills and adopting new behaviors. This will give you a clear indication of whether the mentoring relationship has been successful.
For more safety leadership advice, check out our free whitepaper, Safety Culture: How to Engage Your Workforce!
The 3 C’s – Competence, Confidence, and Credibility
To build trust and gain the respect of potential mentees, you need to be viewed as a good safety professional – somebody from who they can learn. While not the only criteria, the following are key requirements for being (and being seen as) a good safety mentor.
Competence
Competence is an obvious starting point – no one wants to be mentored by someone who doesn’t have a good understanding of safety.
The traditional definition of a mentor is “an experienced, productive senior employee who helps develop a less experienced employee” (Noe, Hollenbeck, Gerhart, and Wright, 2017). A safety mentor is an experienced safety professional who has the knowledge, skills, and experience to perform the tasks and roles related to OHS.
Occupational health and safety often involve complex regulations, procedures, and technical knowledge. A competent mentor possesses the necessary expertise and skills to navigate these intricacies. They will also keep up to date with their chosen field.
A mentor’s competence should have at least 2 pillars:
- Interpersonal skills: Being able to relate with the mentee, and understand and respond to their needs. A formal foundation of leadership and communication courses is optional but could be extremely beneficial to facilitate the knowledge transfer process. Lacking interpersonal skills will jeopardize the mentoring process, even if the mentor has great technical skills.
- Technical skills: While general safety principles and a care-based approach are essential to set the tone and expectations, technical skills in the applicable operational area are a must. For example, if the organization’s operations frequently involves work at heights, a good understanding of fall protection principles and legislation is essential. Lacking technical knowledge will make it hard for the mentor to exude confidence and be credible to the mentee.
Confidence
Confidence, by and large, means having self-assurance and believing in your abilities and judgments. Trusting your abilities will help you communicate effectively, assertively, and respectfully, as well as inspire and motivate the mentee to achieve their safety and career goals.
Confidence enables the mentor to build and maintain trust with the mentee. The mentor’s confidence and knowledge will help the mentee have confidence in what they learn and use this foundation to build further safety concepts and ideas.
A confident mentor can also handle difficult situations, such as giving constructive criticism, resolving conflicts, or dealing with uncertainty.
Credibility
Credibility is essential for gaining trust. It ensures that the mentor can influence and persuade their mentee to follow and value OHS policies and procedures, while also enhancing their reputation and recognition in the workplace.
If a mentor lacks credibility, their guidance may be questioned and their influence diminished.
In safety, credibility is closely tied to a willingness and ability to walk the walk – to do what your duty of care requires you to do, especially in cases where safety is perceived as costly or unpopular.
Credibility arises from the mentor’s track record, experience, knowledge, and adherence to ethical standards. A credible mentor demonstrates integrity, honesty, and consistency in their words and actions.
Having a strong knowledge base helps, as it allows you to provide evidence and examples to support your claims and suggestions. But credibility also comes from demonstrating a high ethical standard and the ability and inclination to do the right thing. This is often revealed under financial and operational pressures – if your standard of care and risk acceptance changes under pressure, your ethical standing will take a hit.
Summary
Being an effective safety mentor will require you to be successful, participative, competent, confident, and credible.
You will also need to approach mentoring as a development program that aims to improve your mentee’s safety skills, knowledge, and behavior.
If it all goes well, you’ll gain some insights, sharpen many of your soft skills, and your mentee should be positioned for a promotion.
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