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Global Mentoring creating
relationships across the borders

Mentoring refers to the pairing of any two individuals for the purpose of information exchange and learning's on leadership objectives and personal growth. There is nothing like being able to talk about your work with an experienced executive. Even a CEO can benefit from a "Mentor-mentee" relationship. Mentors help you see things in a way you might not have thought about. You gain experience as a leader, you learn to take better decisions and improve your skill-set.

Traditionally, mentoring programs centred on efforts to support mainly recruitment and retention. It's only recently that mentoring is enjoying a renewed status in corporations who feel the need to "gain competitive advantage through people development" (Kanter).

Even though different organisations may have their own set of ideas regarding competitive advantage, most agree that there is a need for global managers who can see the 'market as one'.

This change in outlook has come about mainly due to

• Economic, political and social shifts
  
• Increase in direct foreign investments
  
• Removing of trade barriers
  
• Financial services and the spread of the et has shifted markets from "local to global"
  As a result, firms are increasing their competencies in relation to their competitors. Thus the primary source of competitive advantage has become Information Exchange. A firm that "process, filter and learns from information" has what it takes to position themselves on a competitive platform by helping employees see the big picture.

Moving on to specifics, this article concentrates in mentoring issues, applications and benefits for global conglomerates.

Employee development
A company's growth is directly linked with employee development. More and more companies are turning to training programs to harness a corporate culture capable of being more innovative and flexible.

Training can be in the form of seminars, video aids or computer courses. However, most of them are way to expensive and take s a long time to materialise. To turbo charge the information exchange formal (formal because corporate sponsored) mentoring should be considered. Messmer suggests one-to-one mentoring or group project management leads to knowledge workers who can acquire "years of knowledge" within a shorter span of time than those without mentoring.

Mentoring is also seen as a "tool" for succession planning. There is strong relationship between retention and mentoring programs. Retention helps to develop the leaders of tomorrow.

Addressing issues globally
Recruitment is increasingly crossing borders. Employees are and should be viewed by all organisations as "common resource." Global approach to HRM is gaining momentum. Implementing a global mentoring program maybe a problem. Some of these difficulties may be

• Time
  
• Languages
  
• Biases (cultural)
  
• Costs
  
• Administration

Time
The time involved in a one-to-one communication is of concern to many. In reality communication can be carried on side by side along with work. The email is the easiest mode of communication. You can continue working and mentoring regardless of location.

Language
Language between mentor-mentee could be a problem and often companies are not willing to invest in interpreters. Thus matching criteria in a form must include language proficiency.

Biases
A cross-cultural protocol must be well understood by both the parties. Each country has their own set of etiquettes, which the other must respect. If a protégé from the U.S is paired with a German, he must make prior appointments before contacting his German mentor. Moreover, he should address his mentor in a formal name until he is asked to do otherwise.

Email and telephone etiquette is equally important. A small misunderstanding can fire up into a big issue due to the lack of cross-cultural understanding. A mentoring program that involves cross-cultural communication must be treated with more care.

Cost
The most significant costs involved are the cost of administering the training. Many firms find it an expensive affair to bring all the employees together for a mentoring program. For such companies telementoring or electronic collaboration rooms are an alternative.

Mentoring coaches ideally should be from diverse backgrounds. After the initial training the mentor-mentee pair can meet up less frequently. Rotation every one year is an effort to relieve existing mentor of his responsibilities and develop new trainers.

Advantages:
Goodwill and mutual trust between cross cultural mentor and mentee is the starting point of a global mentoring program. The advantages of global mentoring are:

• Initiative and support to create new strategies
  
• Mentors learn to share information better
  
• Develop acute listening skills
  
• Information/knowledge is not lost or misplaced
  
• Better understanding of the company as a whole and your part in it
  
• Develop leadership skills
  
• Keep in change with pace
  
• Help you see the bigger picture
  
• Transmission of knowledge beyond the boundaries
  
• Understanding customer needs
  
• Acquire competitor's information

Limitations
The limitations of mentoring are overlooked. There will always be pockets of resistance due to the lack of perceived benefits and rewards. For global mentoring programs, especially, the lack of vocational support and lack of organisational benefits further posses as a barrier. The attempt to impart "one corporate culture" through information exchange in order to gain competitive advantage is a difficult task. There needs to be clear support for regional goals. There needs to be further research on global mentoring so that corrective measures can be implemented.

Despite its limitations global mentoring is the best way to foster global learning and knowledge exchange helps to bridge information gap, reduce xenophobia and ethnocentricity. Mentoring programs are expensive but necessary and not only for top management, also for regional heads. Global cultures cannot be acquired by a vision alone; it can be acquired by the flow of information and the acquisition of knowledge by a concerted effort from the entire organisation.

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