Creating a Mentoring Culture: The Organization's Guide (Paperback)

by Lois J. Zachary (Author) "AN ORGANIZATION'S CULTURE profoundly influences its people, processes, and business practices..." (more)
Key Phrases: mentoring culture, mentoring excellence, mentoring implementation, John Wiley, Zachary Copyright, Ideal Organization (more...)

Editorial Reviews

Product Description
In order to succeed in today’s competitive environment, corporate and nonprofit institutions must create a workplace climate that encourages employees to continue to learn and grow. From the author of the best-selling The Mentor’s Guide comes the next-step mentoring resource to ensure personnel at all levels of an organization will teach and learn from each other. Written for anyone who wants to embed mentoring within their organization, Creating a Mentoring Culture is filled with step-by-step guidance, practical advice, engaging stories, and includes a wealth of reproducible forms and tools. 

From the Back Cover
Creating a Mentoring Culture

In order to succeed in today's competitive environment, corporate and nonprofit institutions must create a workplace climate that encourages employees to continue to learn and grow. From the author of the best-selling The Mentor's Guide comes the next-step mentoring resource to ensure personnel at all levels of an organization will teach and learn from each other. Written for anyone who wants to embed mentoring within their organization, Creating a Mentoring Culture is filled with step-by-step guidance, practical advice, engaging stories, and includes a wealth of reproducible forms and tools.

"This is a must-read for anyone seeking a rich understanding of how the spirit of mentoring can be truly integrated into an organization. I know of nothing like this book on the market. Zachary has scored another first!"
—Laurent A. Parks Daloz, associate director and faculty of the Whidbey Institute

"Successful, sustainable leadership cultures are grounded in a strong, thriving culture of mentoring. This book provides leaders and organizations the tools and inspiration to achieve just that."
—Pernille Lopez, president, IKEA North America

"One-stop shopping from A to Z if you want to launch or scale up a mentoring initiative. . . .This guidebook shows how different kinds of mentoring work together for individual development and organizational change. Wisdom and experience are embedded in a wealth of guidelines, checklists, and other tools to walk you through everything you need to know and do to be organizationally successful. Zachary becomes your 'virtual' consultant for scaffolding an effective organizational mentoring culture, infrastructure, and practice."
—Victoria J. Marsick, professor, adult education and organizational learning, and codirector, J.M. Huber Institute for Learning in Organizations

"Even mentors need mentoring. Mentoring supports employees in realizing the need for and meeting the challenge of being more productive as a result of successfully balancing work and family life. Zachary offers a much-needed just-in-time resource for helping HRD directors, CEOs, and organizational leaders expand and enhance the possibilities for elevating mentoring within their organizations."
—Susan Ginsberg, editor and publisher, Work & Family Life newsletter, and author, Family Wisdom

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Product Details

• Paperback: 336 pages
• Publisher: Jossey-Bass (April 8, 2005)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0787964018
• ISBN-13: 978-0787964016
• Product Dimensions: 10.8 x 8.5 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #83,776 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The healthiest organizations have a mentoring culture, June 7, 2005

By	Robert Morris (Dallas, Texas) - See all my reviews (TOP 50 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

In an increasingly competitive business world, the need for having what Peter Senge describes as a "total learning environment" is greater now than ever before. With all due respect to formal training programs, my own experience has convinced me that on-the-job training (especially cross-functional training) remains the most effective means by which to create and then sustain such an environment. Hence the importance of mentoring relationships which, Zachary correctly points out, "offer an opportunity for individuals to nurture seeds in others so they might become blossoms, and blossoms might become fruit, which then nourishes others." Moreover, "When mentoring relationships are rooted in the fertile soil of a mentoring culture, they also enrich the quality of organizational life."

Zachary carefully organizes her material within two Parts. First, she explains what effective mentoring involves, how to embed it in a culture, how to integrate mentoring within that culture, and then how to implement mentoring initiatives. In Part 2, after identifying the hallmarks of effective mentoring, she focuses on key components: infrastructure, alignment, accountability, communication, value and visibility, demand, multiple mentoring opportunities, education and training, and "safety nets. " What we have in this single volume is a cohesive, comprehensive, and cost-effective system rather than a kaleidoscope of data, anecdotes, personal experiences, bromides, simplistic observations, and all manner of disjointed recommendations. That said, it would be a fool's errand to try to implement all of Zachary's system as is. As she would be the first to point out, all organizational cultures are different and many of them consist of several sub-cultures. Therefore, it remains for each reader to read and then re-read this book, complete the "Mentoring Culture Audit" (Appendix A), and (if possible) check out at least some of the resources recommended (Appendix B).

Regrettably, formal education often fails to help students to "learn how to learn." As a result, many people either do not realize what they don't know or, worse yet, think they fully understand what in fact they do not. My own experience suggests that, in general, people do not fear change; rather, they fear the unknown. That same experience also supports Derek Bok's observation that "If you think education is experience, try ignorance." Effective mentoring, therefore, requires humility and patience as well as knowledge and competence. The best mentors sincerely care about serving the best interests of those with whom they are privileged to be associated. They are passionate life-long learners themselves. Their enthusiasm is often contagious.

Obviously, I think very highly of this book. Zachary combines all of the skills of a cultural anthropologist with those of a clear thinker and eloquent writer. I also appreciate the CD-ROM which the publisher provides with it. Those who read the book can then review its key points while completing interactive exercises. The multiple templates can then assist the necessary modifications of the core concepts when applying them.

Those who share my high regard for this book are urged to check out Zachary's The Mentor's Guide as well as Senge's The Fifth Discipline and then The Dance of Change, Carla O'Dell's If Only We Knew What We know, David Maister's Practice What You Preach, and Gary Harpst's Six Disciplines For Excellence.

3 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Start-up help for mentoring programs, June 13, 2005

By	Cindy Walsh (Scottsdale, Arizona) - See all my reviews

Dr. Zachary's book plots the entire process for creating a mentoring culture in the organization. Her book offers clear steps to identify all the issues that need to be addressed prior to a program design and implementation. The book provides insight into the levels of buy-in and commitment needed for mentoring to be successful and imbedded in an organization. Mentoring is a powerful way to engage leadership in their personal growth and development and the advancement of the organization.
This is an easy to read and use guide. The CD is a great gift offering the forms for the exercises.

3 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Breadth and Depth, June 8, 2005

By	M. Cunat - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

"Creating a Mentoring Culture" goes well beyond traditional guides for designing and implementing mentoring programs by touching the core of an organization's capacity to embed learning and leadership development throughout its structures and processes. Dr. Zachary's strategies and tools for bringing people together to have deeper conversations about organizational learning will not only help sustain its mentoring efforts; they will help an organization revitalize its values and its focus on human development.