Internal Corporate Mentoring vs. Cross-Company Mentoring: Which is Right for Your Company?

Over the course of our nearly 30 years spent creating high-quality, structured mentoring programs here at Menttium, we’ve seen a range of trends come and go. Standards of productivity have shifted, as have employees’ expectations of their corporate culture. As a leader within your company, you’re likely on the lookout for ways to support your employees, improve engagement, and increase job satisfaction. But you may find that the standard developmental or training programs don’t seem to yield the results they once did. The solution? A strong corporate mentoring program that can foster the innovative, creative thinking you want to see in your employees while providing them with the tools they need to thrive as their careers progress.

 

Whether you choose to set up a cross-company or internal mentoring program, the opportunities and potential benefits for your employees are endless. But how do you choose between the two? Actually, you don’t have to choose! It’s perfectly viable for a company to offer both internal and cross-company mentoring. But if you are set on weighing the pros and cons of each option, your decision will come down to several factors. Will you have enough employee interest? What about potential mentors? Do you want your employees to learn from someone within your company or from someone externally who has a different point of view? These types of questions can help you determine which program will best fit your corporate environment.

 

Cross-Company Mentoring Services

 

For companies new to mentoring, cross-company mentoring programs are a fantastic way to expose your key talent to seasoned business executives with wisdom to share. Cross-company mentoring works as the name suggests—mentees are matched with mentors from outside their own organization, creating an exciting partnership that encourages authentic dialogues. Because the match is so vital to the mentoring experience, we never base our matches on a computer algorithm, but rather on thoughtful interviews conducted around professional and developmental goals, as well as a robust pre-mentoring assessment and profile.

 

With cross-company mentoring, we encourage mentees to learn from mentors with different backgrounds than they’re familiar with in order to provide unique perspectives and encourage innovative learning. The cross-company nature of the partnership allows for emotional safety, which enables authenticity and vulnerability in conversations as the mentor helps guide their mentee to overcome challenges as well as navigate successes within the workplace. Learning from someone with vastly different professional and life experience puts mentees in a position to think outside the box.

 

By establishing a cross-company mentoring program, you can show your employees that you are invested in their futures. And when mentees and mentors come together for honest, conversations and mutual learning, those futures grow brighter in the form of leadership development and goal fulfillment.

 

Internal Corporate Mentoring Services

 

If you are looking to implement your own internal mentoring program, our internal corporate mentoring programs and consulting services might be right for you. It’s important to consider both the mentee and mentor criteria for your program and evaluate whether you would have enough leaders in the organization to mentor. Sometimes internal mentors experience “mentor fatigue” because many leaders are selected to mentor frequently.

 

When it comes to determining the amount of mentors you might have available, you’ll need to consider the qualities of a good mentor. Younger employees or those beginning to assume leadership roles are still navigating their way through the workplace themselves, making them great candidates for being a mentee—but not yet a mentor.

 

If you determine that your company has plenty of interest and viable mentor candidates, internal mentoring could be just what you need to bolster your workforce, especially if internal knowledge transfer is important to you, as well as helping mentees navigate your organizational culture. With this type of program, you’ll be working within your own company to create a mentoring culture, rather than relying on outside mentors. At Menttium, we can work with you to develop, implement and run the program from A to Z, or you can select from our consulting services and menu of offerings to fit your specific needs. We also provide a number of resources, training, and learning sessions to help foster mentor-mentee relationships.

 

Mentoring Services from Menttium

 

No matter which route you take, giving your employees the option to participate in a mentoring program is extremely valuable. As a leader, you want to encourage opportunities for development and growth within the workplace. Mentoring programs are a great way to foster the type of culture you desire for your company. At Menttium, we’re eager to put our 28 years of success under our belt to use, helping to increase employee satisfaction and job retention throughout your company by designing, facilitating, and administering cross-company and internal mentoring programs.

 

The mentor-mentee relationship is at the center of each of our programs. We also seek to match mentees with mentors that may have a different background or professional experiences to share, in order to facilitate fruitful discussions.

Giving your employees access to professional development tools and resources is only part of the equation. With the right mentor, mentees can unlock their full potential to be able to make bigger strides. Contact us today to get started with your customized mentoring program.