Many believe that leaders don’t need mentoring but the fact is they do. Leadership mentoring is way different from mentoring for onboarding new employees or other mentoring programs. A leadership mentoring program focuses on developing leadership skills. The goal is to get the mentee ready for moving the ladder of success.

Preparing and training your high-potential team in the organization to make them grow and take the leadership position demand a well-crafted in-house mentoring program. This program can help in the following ways:

• Boost employee retention
• Develop meaningful relationships between leaders and those who want to learn new skills
• Increase employee satisfaction
• Encourage employees to give back

Steps To Create a Leadership Mentoring Program 

Ready to start a great mentoring program for leaders in your company? These steps will help you kickstart success:

Determine the Objectives

Like all other mentoring programs, you must start by establishing or outlining goals. Answering these questions might help:

• Why are you creating this program?
• What do your participants feel about success?

For your participants, success might mean growing into effective leaders that promote the culture of learning and change. Depending on these objectives, set SMART goals.

Define the Leadership Skills

Since it’s a mentoring program for leaders, define the list of leadership skills the mentee would like to develop. There’s a whole list of leadership skills to choose from. It’s best to be specific to the needs of your organization.

The Approach of the Mentor

The next step is to decide how the mentor is to support your employees with potential leadership qualities. Some common approaches include coaching, Peer mentoring, providing guidance on how to navigate politics within the workplace, and more. During the mentor training, let the mentors know the approach you want them to focus on the most.

Establish a Structure

There’s a whole list of items that determine the structure of the leadership mentoring program. The process is basically the same for all programs whether it’s related to mentoring for healthy company culture or leadership itself.

When creating a structure for the program, think about the following:

Mentee: What is the eligibility criteria for identifying mentees?

Mentors: How to select mentors? 

Program content and duration: What will the program entail and how long will it last?

Workshops: Will the mentees be allowed to implement the new skills they have learned?

Rewards: By the end of the program, will the mentees receive recognition?

Seek Feedback Through Survey Questions

The purpose of this survey is to find out if the mentor is helping mentees in growing as a leader. Make sure the survey is short. Based on the feedback received, be prepared to tweak the direction of your program.

Measure the Success

The best measure of success is the mentees themselves. Use mentoring software to extract reports and track the progress of each mentee. With the facts and figures, determine if the program is tracking effect. Document the progress and identify which strategies worked and which didn’t to improve the program for the next batch of mentees.