Cometsa Professional Mentoring & Coaching Programme

Session Nr: The number of the session as per the Protégé‘s Coaching Plan (usually a year plan)

Joined: The date when the protégé joined the company

Position: The protégé’s position in the company

Date: The date on which this particular session is held     

Time (and duration): The date (duration) and time at which this particular session is held

Venue (internal or external): The venue at which this particular session is held

Mentoring & Coaching Programme Value Proposition

1.      Performance improvement with Mentoring (Ref: Handbook of Human Performance Technology, Editors: Harold D. Stolovitch, and Erica J. Keeps) a Publication of The International Society for Performance Improvement, ISPI. Publisher: Jossey-Bass Pfeiffer

1.1.Process, Roles, and Tasks of Mentoring

·         Tutoring

·         Coaching

·         Listening

·         Counseling

·         Teaching

·         Modeling

·         Giving Feedback

·         Demonstrating

·         Guiding

·         Giving Information

·         Facilitating Desired Performance

         1.2.Value Added Through Mentoring

·         Career Development and Succession Planning

·         Cross-Cultural Awareness and Valuing Diversity

·         Transfer of Professional or Technical Skills

1.3.Unique Benefits of Mentoring: Perceptions & Reality

1.3.1.      Benefits for Protégés

1.3.1.1.The feel good benefits

ü  Availability of a sounding board

ü  New avenues for the information

ü  New friendships

ü  Fun

ü  The feeling that the organization cares

ü  A feeling of being welcome

ü  Greater feelings of loyalty

ü  The opportunity to receive honest feedback

ü  Being believed by another person

1.3.1.2.Benefits identified through analysis of development plans, checkpoint surveys, and self-reports of participants

ü  Greater Comprehension of Business Objectives: Increased organizational awareness and a clearer understanding of corporate culture and goals are often cited as gains by participants in mentoring processes. The protégés describe a deeper sense of accountability, as well as feeling that their contributions matter

ü  More Focused Development: When learning activities are focused on specific diagnosed needs, skill development is far more effective and efficient.

ü  Increased Sense of Safety While Learning: Fear is a fierce obstacle to learning. Few of us will tell our bosses about all our weaknesses or lack of experience. Mentors provide a safe environment in which to practice skills.

ü  Higher Productivity and Evaluations: These increases may be partly attributable to protégés improved skills in planning, negotiation, and feedback, improvements that show up when they are interacting with their supervisors.

ü  More Possibilities for Advancement: Advancement can be accelerated by a guided career path, without the need for time-consuming, irrelevant assignments. With clarity of direction, people are more likely to develop the skills necessary for taking on greater responsibility.

ü  Greater Political Awareness: Participants have reported gaining greater insight into the maze of politics in their organizations. This increase in insight has made them feel more confident and powerful because the mentoring process accelerated their acceptance as insiders.

ü  More Career Resiliency: When changes in markets, products, services, or the economy cause some functions or entire jobs to disappear, people with broad experience and multiple skills will land on their feet in different functions or new organizations.

ü  Increased Visibility: Given the hectic pace of their demanding jobs, line managers are perhaps understandably lax about giving their subordinates the individual visibility and exposure that may be beneficial. Mentoring expand the protégés’ network, as they become visible in the organization.

ü  Greater Teamwork Skills: Learning to work closely with another person tends to make it easier to be a contributing member or a leader of a team.

1.3.2.      Benefits for Mentors (Internal and/or External Mentors)

·         Enhanced Influence in the Organization: Mentors are respected for the value they add in the development of future leaders of the organization. Through their protégés, mentors extend their influence on the mission and direction of the organization.

·         Attention to Developmental Needs: The mentor’s skills in coaching, performance planning, and feedback are honed by working with protégés at varied levels of skill and experiences. Protégés often teach their mentors new skills as well.

·         Professional Assistance on Work Projects: A protégé may have a technical skill relevant to a project the mentor wants to have done. When a task can be taken as a learning experience by the protégé, additional work is accomplished for the mentor. Such tasks must be relevant to the development objectives of the protégé, however.

·         Maintenance of Motivation: A protégé’s fresh viewpoint can spark the mentor’s enthusiasm and motivation. Renewed enthusiasm is an antidote to burnout.

·         Access to New Perspectives on the Organization: Often managers and executives are shielded from problems at the operating levels when there is fear that the messenger will be shot. Problems and issues are discussed more openly, however, when there is a bond of trust with a mentor. Once again, the protégé’s fresh point of view is a contribution in itself.

·         Opportunity to have Ideas Challenged: Experienced, competent people may become complacent about the decisions they make and the strategies they use, and for a subordinate to challenge these decisions and strategies can be a career-limiting move. Working with a protégé who asks why something is done a particular way, however, may cause a mentor to reexamine habitual approaches and find that they are outdated or ineffective. Many mentors urge their partners to challenge their thinking, and they apparently enjoy this intellectual exercise more than they enjoy hearing “Yes, boss.”

1.3.3.      Benefits for the Organization

·         Productivity: Improved performance and productivity are reported by both mentors and protégés’ skills. Protégés’ skills are strengthened, and they are able to work more effectively and efficiently. 

·         Development of Skills: When mentoring is used as an alternative training strategy, employees become competent faster and at lower cost than in classroom training. Training that is individually based and self-paced is “just in time” training.

·         Recruitment: Prospective employees are attracted to a firm that offers facilitated growth and development.

·         Retention: The best and brightest people stay with a company that cares about their development - and, with better career counseling, sometimes the people who should leave do leave, and sooner.

·         Organizational Image: Public recognition that an organization provides a caring, developmental environment that includes a mentoring process can enhance the corporate image.

·         Strategic Goals: Organizational results are better when everyone knows the targets. Sharing mentors’ experiences helps others avoid making the same mistakes. More competent and confident employees produce better results, creating a competitive edge.

1.3.4.      Benefits for Supervisors

·         Supervisors often recognize benefit associated with their subordinates having mentors. It is essential that all managers and supervisors of prospective protégés be briefed on what the mentoring process is and is not, and on the roles and responsibilities of all participants. If not done, the supervisors may easily resent and feel threatened by a third person who is involved with a subordinate.

1.4.Systematic Design

1.4.1.      Analysis: This is a readiness assessment phase, whose purpose is to determine the needs, goals, and opportunities that the organization is facing as it considers a facilitated mentoring process. Top managers, administrators, decision makers, and opinion setters are interviewed in one-on-one sessions. The objective is to get the widest possible range of opinions and expectations.

1.4.2.      Design/Production: The mentoring process should be designed to suit the unique environment and culture of the organization and the targeted participants.

1.4.3.      Implementation: A well planned programme is likely to bear the results. A critical success factor is a communication plan to make sure that everyone who needs to know about the mentoring process gets the information in a timely manner. There must be a coordination team to administer it and ensure that it is sustained as a viable strategy for improving human performance and results.

1.4.4.      Evaluation: An evaluation process for the mentoring process itself must be planned at the beginning. The following are performance measures:

·         Report the impact of the mentoring process on the organization’s business results

·         Continuously improve the design of the process

·         Determine whether the mentoring pairs are meeting developmental objectives in the transfer of skills

2.      Type of coaching, example:

·         Positioning HR as part of Senior Leadership Team (Advocacy, Value Add, Co-Determination, Relevance, etc.)

3.      Formulation of the coaching objectives, example: 

3.1. Adding value: Products, Services and Solutions (confirming existing offerings, introducing new offerings)

3.2.Change Management (Diversity & Culture, EE, Skills Dev, and BEE)

3.3. Positioning through delivery (Programme of Action)

3.4. Stakeholder Relationship Management Matrix

3.5.Local HR Strategy alignment with the Global HR Strategy

4.      Evaluation (example): How will we know if we are making a difference?

4.1. Internal relaxation

4.2.Openness

4.3. Feedback from peers

4.4.Centre of attraction

5.      Hot line coaching

5.1.Email

5.2.Telephone

6.      Pre-event coaching, examples

6.1.Board Meetings

6.2.Exco Meetings

6.3.Staff Meetings

6.4.Conflict resolutions meetings

7.      Networking coaching and actual linkages

7.1.To keep up to date and share

7.2.Advisor and educationist

8.      Reference benefits

8.1.Internal and external

8.2.Help in selling ideas

8.3.Performance Management

9.      Institutional insight coaching

Historical understanding and alignment (identify internal person to serve as source of institutional knowledge

10.  Face to Face Mentoring/Coaching Sessions

·         Frequency:  2 sessions per month

·         Days: 2 days per month

·         Duration: Minimum: 2 hours per session. Maximum: 3 hours per session

·         Venues: Office or external

·         Agenda: Determined after every session

·         Integration with formal work: Yes

11.  Unintended consequences that requires management:

·         Accelerated growth

·         Over exposure to high level stuff

·         High level network

·         Outgrowing your organization

·         Applying the knowledge and insights wrongly in family and social setups

·         Inability to tone down

·         Truly learning about oneself

·         Developing multiple interests

·         Challenging your own leaders and exposing their ignorance

·         Bonding with mentor and coaching, and over dependence

·         Curiosity from your partner, leaders, colleagues and sub-ordinates

12.  Mentoring & Coaching Programme Implementation Guideline, Topics & Tools

·         Kick off session: Formulation of the coaching objectives

·         Development exposure & gap analysis,

·         Preparing Portfolio of Evidence Exercise

·         Management Planning Templates (Multiple Stakeholder Relationship Management Matrix template);

·         Management Planning Templates (Leader  - Teams Assimilation template)

·         Management Planning Templates (Programme of Action template); 

·         Management Planning Templates (Operations Planning Conversation Messages template)

·         Understanding your Values (Personal & Business Alignment).

·         Managing Perceptions (Influencing others).

·         Building Your Self-Confidence (Improve personal performance).

·         Communicating Assertively in the Workplace (Achieving results through communication)

·         Fighting Back Against Nerves (Overcoming fear)

·         Managing Your Time. (Invest your limited time effectively)

·         Making Sound Decisions (Avoid costly and risky decisions to business)

·         Solving Problems (Problems must be resolved quickly to refocus the team)

·         Negotiating with People from Other Cultures (Diversity and Cultural Differences) Managing Meetings Effectively (Meetings should contribute to business growth, and not to cost money)

·         Giving and Receiving Feedback Well (We all want to know when we are doing well, and be told of our areas of improvement)

·         Consolidated Coaching Report Template Design

·         Completion: Consolidated Coaching Outcome Report

·         Progress review at end of the year

Mentor & Coach: Sam Tsima

Sam Tsima is the President & Chairperson: Cometsa Group, www.cometsa.co.za , Programme Manager: Broad-Based Black Economic Empowerment (B-BBEE), Gordon Institute of Business Science (GIBS), University of Pretoria, www.gibs.co.za; and Vice-President: Stakeholder Relations, Institute of People Management (IPM), South Africa, www.ipm.co.za .

Before Sam went full time on Cometsa Group in July 2009, he was Regional Human Resources Director: Sub-Sahara Africa at Motorola SA (Pty) Ltd, reporting into the Middle East Africa Region in Dubai.

He is the former Manager: Centre of Expertise-Group Diversity Management at Sasol Group, responsible for Employment Equity, Global Diversity & Inclusion, Black Economic Empowerment (from HR perspective), Accelerated Leadership Development Programme (ALDP), and Sasol HIV/Aids Response Programme (SHARP).

Before joining Sasol, on the 1^st December 2002, Sam was with ABSA Group for seven years (10/1995-11/2002) as the Group Consultant: Employment Equity.

He worked for Siemens AG (Cologne, Germany) as Corporate Trainee for two years, and Siemens Ltd (Johannesburg, South Africa) as Commercial Administrator, and later Head of Commercial Training for three years.

Sam has a strong Commercial Administration background after training and working in Germany over four years (1988 – 1992). He did his training at Carl Duisberg Gesellschaft (Cologne), Kuehne & Nagel Luftfracht GmbH (Frankfurt International Airport), Lufthansa German Airlines Aircargo Centre (Frankfurt International Airport) and Siemens AG (Cologne) in Germany.

Sam is fluent in German Language and has the following German Language qualifications: Diplom Deutsch (Studiengemeintschaft Darmstadt) and Zertifikat Deutsch Stufe 5 (Carl Duisberg Centre Cologne)

He is also qualified in Industriekaufmann (IHK, Germany), Certificate in Commercial Administration (CATS – South Africa German Training Services), Bachelor of Commerce - Transport Economics & Business Management (UNISA), Certificate in Sport Management (Allenby), Certificate in Sport Psychology (Intec), and Level 1 Soccer Coaching Certificate (South African Football Association)

Professional Membership: Institute of People Management (IPM), Southern African Society for Cooperative Education (SASCE), Arterial Network, SA-German Chamber of Commerce & Industry, Cometsa Friends & Supporters Club, and Institute of Directors (IOD)

Board Membership: Institute of People Management (IPM); Central Johannesburg College (CJC), South Africa German Training Service - SAGTS (training arm of SA-German Chamber of Commerce & Industry), Southern African Society for Cooperative Education (SASCE)

Committees Membership: Chairperson Audit Committee Central Johannesburg College, Human Resources Advisory Committee Durban University of Technology, Annual Convention Organizing Committee Institute of People Management., and Europe Middle East Africa Advisory Committee Worldwide Employee Relocation Council

Contact details: Ms Tsumbedzo Luvhimbi, STC Brands, Tel: +27 (0) 11 974 9308;
email: tsumbedzo.luvhimbi@cometsa.co.za