The Developing Leaders Program: Bring Employee Engagement to the Next Level

Engage Mentoring’s signature program is our Developing Leaders Program. This is a 12-month cohort-based leadership development program where participants (typically employees) get access to mentors both inside and outside of the company on the basis of topics they want to learn more about. Prior to starting the program, will complete a pre-assessment that determines their unique skills and abilities and what areas would be most helpful to them. Each quarter participants select a topic, and a mentor to work with, then take advantage of some of our supplemental learning on that topic.

At the end of the 12-month period, a post-assessment is done to determine how participants moved the needle in terms of their skill development. While participating as a mentee, they are also developing their leadership capacity by serving as a mentor to others in the program at the same time. We encourage employees at all levels in an organization to participate (individual contributors up through a leader) because the Developing Leaders Program does a really great job of meeting people where they are. However, in this program, we typically work with employees who cannot seem to develop fast enough, yet who are quite critical to retain.

We have employers who have used this to support their sales staff. We have other employers who have used this to support their diversity initiatives and still others who offer this to every employee in the organization as a way to allow people to take advantage of this development opportunity. This program is all about upskilling, the idea that every employee has their own unique development opportunities. This involves strategically identifying areas where the employee can really improve and then working through a series of training and working with a mentor on really moving the needle on the skill that they have identified. In addition, I would argue there’s no better way to teach someone how to be a leader than to teach them how to mentor. Ultimately, the impact on participants is teaching them the qualities and characteristics of what it means to be effective as a leader.

The Developing Leaders Program is shifting the culture, organizationally. When employers offer this program, suddenly, employees know how to access different resources and how to really pour into others as a mentor themselves. So the impact on participants is in the form of individual skill development, leadership capacity development, and also a cultural shift in the environments that they work in.

Mentoring really hits on many of the drivers that keep employees engaged and excited to come to work every day. One of the questions often asked on an employee engagement survey is whether or not you have a best friend at work. What this is aimed at is understanding if the employee feels like they’re supported, feel like they’ve developed, that they have connection, and they feel like someone at work cares about their performance and their development as a person. This phenomenal program can be tied not only to the employee experience but, again, meeting people where they are and engaging them in their work, giving them the feedback they need in a timely manner, and allowing them to really understand where their resources are.  To learn more about our Developing Leaders program, visit our website at www.engagementoring.com