Connect | Focus | Grow Enhances the Mentoring Mindset within the Workplace
February 23, 2021
National Mentoring Project, Connect Focus Grow, Workforce Development
How can we create tools and networks of support to ensure that youth professionals have what they need to thrive in the workplace and embark on sustainable career journeys? Meet the National Mentoring Project and its training curriculum, Connect | Focus | Grow. The curriculum encourages symbiotic workplace relationships between supervisors and youth professionals. Program leaders coach supervisors, helping them incorporate mentoring into their management style and illustrating how young people can build and leverage relationships to create sustainable career journeys.
“Sometimes what happens when we focus on the tactics of [youth] development is that we forget the strategy of relationships,” said MENTOR New York’s CEO Brenda Jimenez-Peralta. “One does best when it feels like a person is invested in you. We are going to have better outcomes.” Currently, eight MENTOR Affiliates have formed partnerships with local institutions to implement this project. These are companies that are interested in and are presently engaging youth professionals in the workplace. Throughout this year, we’ll share reflections from these Affiliates about the community impacts of the National Mentoring Project and the Connect | Focus | Grow curriculum. First, we’ll hear from MENTOR New York and their partner, the City University of New York (CUNY).
Why to infuse mentoring into the workplace
For companies looking to build and nurture a more diverse workplace culture featuring high-performing talent, it’s not enough to focus solely on recruitment. Cultivating mentoring relationships within the workplace can positively impact a company’s ability to retain and effectively leverage its talent.
Brenda Jimenez-Peralta expanded on this, “[The curriculum] allows them to think differently about the talent in the room and assess where the talent and nuggets of gold exist to make the work happen. What is the one thing that your staff can never get done, and what is something that these youth can help with?”
Moreover, a study conducted by MENTOR found that employees in a mentoring-friendly environment were significantly more likely to be satisfied in their jobs than employees in companies that aren’t involved in mentoring.
Where Connect | Focus | Grow comes into play
A quality mentoring relationship is one tool that we can use to advance equity in the systems in which young people exist, the workplace included. But as their professional networks expand, young people have to learn to navigate them with intention. Taruna Sadhoo, CUNY Service Corps Campus Director, explained how the Connect | Focus | Grow curriculum meets this need.
“As a CUNY graduate, I had the benefit of mentors myself. The National Mentoring Project teaches young people how to advocate for themselves and how to get the most out of a mentoring relationship,”explained Taruna Sadhoo.
In turn, these lessons support young people’s agency and leadership over the direction of their professional journey.
How strategic partnerships make it all possible
As a participating organization in the National Mentoring Project, CUNY Services Corps had the opportunity to leverage the support and expertise of MENTOR New York to strengthen the programmatic experience for both supervisors and students.
“Previously, in the Service Corps, the mentoring experience was informally managed by students and supervisors,” Taruna Sadhoo continued. “We now have structured training for students and managers and a formal expectation for them to meet regularly and track their experiences. It helps us to see if there are spaces for us to help improve the relationship.”
For Taruna Sadhoo, specifically, the partnership has made her more intentional about the tools needed to create a space for a successful mentoring relationship. For example, they created a meeting agenda for students to use during their first meeting with a mentor because it can be intimidating to start a new relationship.
What the immediate impacts of the curriculum are
The work of the National Mentoring Project between CUNY and MENTOR New York is still in progress. Yet, already we’re able to hear from supervisors who participated in the pilot program about how Connect | Focus | Grow impacts their management behavior.
“When you have people talking about young professionals, you start to demystify all the generational assumptions we make about them,” Brenda Jimenez-Peralta shares. “Supervisors discovered they were paying attention to how they show up, how they engage. When you do that, suspend judgment, that’s when you start to pay attention to talent, to the skillset, the potential.”
How you can get involved
The National Mentoring Project is managed by MENTOR National in partnership with the America’s Promise Alliance / Center for Promise and with support from the Schultz Family Foundation. Find out if this program may work for your workplace, here.