Senge The Fifth Discipline - Becoming A Learning Organization Through Mentoring Programs

In his writings The Fifth Discipline, Peter Senge speaks about the process of creating a learning organization. He describes five disciplines that must be mastered at all levels of the organization: 1. Personal mastery;

2. Shared vision; 3. Mental models; 4. Team learning; 5. Systems thinking

As more and more organization today are shifting to a continuous learning and growing model, it is significantly impacting how they function within. To better manage the knowledge base withing their organizations for effective growth, many leaders are shifting their focus to internal coaching and mentoring programs, here is what you should focus on as a leader, and what you should be aware of with this transitional process.

As various organizations are reorganizing their priorities and the way they do business in this shifting and volatile business market these days. One of the ways they are doing this is by focusing more of their resources on developing their people, through internal coaching and mentoring programs

If your organization is involved in this process of increasing its focus on internal coaching and mentor-ship and you are caught in the midst as the manager or leader, here are a 5 things you need to focus on to help make those initiatives effective and successful.

1. You need to focus in working to align your corporate culture, your internal processes and procedures to support such programs in-house

2. You need to focus on redesigning jobs so that the coaching / mentoring function is integrated into the individual's role (those who are leaders/managers/supervisors, and then give this process sufficient time and priority

3. You need to focus on the various skills and abilities of you coaches and mentors by doing a skills assessment, then makes sure your are providing these individuals with appropriate ongoing training and development so they can stay current with your industry, and can keep those they train current.

4. Within your corporate culture, you need to work to ensure that these staff members who you are using as coaches and mentors, fully appreciate the responsibility they are taking on for their colleague's professional development, and more importantly, that they indeed are suited to this role in terms of their attitude, emotional maturity and motivation.

5. There must be a process for monitoring, measuring and recording effectiveness at both the individual mentors and coaches, as well as the program itself, through implementing comprehensive feedback and review procedures.