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Randy Emelo is the founder and chief strategist at River, a Denver-based company that builds mentoring and social learning software. He has more than 25 years of experience in management, training, and leadership development, and is a prolific author, speaker, and thought leader on topics related to collaboration, mentoring, social learning, and talent development.Throughout the years, Randy has embarked on a military career with the U.S. Navy, led leadership development work with nonprofits in the Americas, and helped Fortune 500 companies build mentoring and learning cultures in their organizations.Randy holds a master’s degree in organizational design and effectiveness from Fielding Graduate University (formerly The Fielding Institute) in Santa Barbara, CA. Randy’s book, Modern Mentoring, is available now from ATD Press. Connect with him on LinkedIn or Twitter @remelo.

Randy Emelo

Coaching and Mentoring Can Make a Difference for Public Managers

February 2017 - The Public Manager

Agencies need flexible and effective ways to promote employee growth. A robust mentoring program can help.

Mentoring in the Middle

This podcast discusses modern mentoring, which is a new approach to mentoring that goes beyond generational and hierarchical boundaries.

Out With Traditional Mentoring, in With Modern Mentoring

People who are committed to mentoring make time for it. Randy Emelo, author of Modern Mentoring, says determining the scope of the relationship can help estimate how much time you will need.

Finding Time for Mentoring

Learn all about mentorship from this ATD's best on collection.

ATD’s Best On Mentoring (PDF)

September 2015 - TD Magazine

Embrace the New Reality

Shift Your Focus With Modern Mentoring

Your exiting employees hold a wealth of tacit knowledge and skills, and organizations need to formulate methods to tap into that knowledge before it walks out the door. With Baby Boomers getting set to leave the workforce en masse, capturing this knowledge is a critical gap in organizational learning and development schemes, and one we need to address immediately.I contend that all employees should take part in mentoring, regardless of where they fall on the employee lifecycle or what position they hold in the company. Furthermore, I believe that exiting employees should spend 30 to 40 percent of their work time on mentoring. Yes, you read that right—30 to 40 percent. I know it sounds like a lot, but some of these employees are the people who make your organization run smoothly, because of their years of experience and innate knowhow for getting the job done. Trust me, you want to capture what these people know before they leave. If employers explicitly give these exiting workers permission to use their time giving back in this way, they will have ample opportunity to share what they know with their colleagues. As a result, the employer will be readily prepared for knowledge continuity, which is critical when losing staff. Group Mentoring One of the best ways to efficiently leverage your exiting workers is to have them engage in group mentoring. By leading several groups on various topics, these workers can have the greatest impact on numerous individuals. They also can pursue one-to-one mentoring relationships if they choose, but groups are the best way to spread their knowledge to a broader audience. Here are a few ideas on groups that your exiting workers could lead. Have them identify a topic of expertise and experience, and then lead a group on that topic. For example, maybe you have an exiting employee who spent years working on a specific product or product line. These employees have been practicing their craft long enough to innately know what works, what definitely does not work, and general best practices to use in their field. Have the employee share some of the undocumented tricks and adaptations they’ve learned over the years—things that people rarely think to write down, but that they use every day to accomplish their work. Ask them to lead groups on building relationships and professional networks within your organization and with critical outside players. These employees may have been with the company for years, and likely know the ins and outs of dealing with suppliers, partners, and clients. In addition, their innate understanding of how to navigate your internal landscape is an important factor that organizations often overlook. It can be difficult to discern who to go to for support on a project or for budget approval on a critical item, but your exiting employees can share their experiences with similar situations and provide insider knowledge that can help your company run more smoothly. Encourage them to start a group that candidly looks at some past failures. We often learn best from mistakes. But if that hard-won understanding leaves with your employee, your remaining workforce may be doomed to repeat the same mistakes. Giving your employees a safe environment within a mentoring group to share these failures can help others learn from the past, so they don’t repeat the same missteps in the future. Get more ideas on how to use mentoring in new ways in Randy Emelo’s new book, Modern Mentoring, available now from ATD Press.

Before They Go: Mentoring and the Exiting Employee

In Josh Bersin’s research report, Predictions for 2015: Redesigning the Organization for a Rapidly Changing World, he states that “skills are now currency” and that “professionals at all levels have to continuously reskill themselves to stay current and relevant.” This should not come as a surprise to anyone in talent development; we know that skills must be honed, refined, and kept current, which means constantly working on them in some way. Unfortunately, the way most organizations address this need is to provide broad-based training or e-learning. Yet, as Bersin points out, two pervasive problems plague training professions: too much content and not enough context. We don’t need to throw at employees more courses or training options that do little to address their actual skill gaps. Instead, we need to provide them with tools and options that will help give them context as they learn something and help them put concepts into action on the job. Enter Mentoring Mentoring is a powerful way to provide context and help employees refine and build their skills, which in turn will enable them to put those skills to use on the job more quickly and efficiently. Savvy organizations have started using mentoring as a productivity tool, going well beyond its traditional role as a personal development tool geared toward career moves and career advancement. When mentoring is used as a productivity tool, people are able to learn from their peers and colleagues as a way to address skill gaps and learning needs. Mentoring can provide a unique way to learn that allows employees to:study a conceptask probing questions of experts and peersapply their new knowledge on the jobshare their experiences with their mentoring cohortslearn from the experiences of those around themadjust their approach as needed when applying their new skills. Ultimately, through mentoring, employees become more productive more quickly because they learn while doing. How to Get Started I’ve worked with a number of Fortune 500 companies that use mentoring to support peer learning and productivity improvement. Here are some ideas on how you can use mentoring to improve productivity among your workforce: Bring peers together from across difference departments and functions to solve a critical business problem. This problem can be large or small, just so long as it’s critical to you and your organization. Having people from different areas of the organization take part will help unique ideas form because of their distinct perspectives and experiences. Furthermore, focusing the purpose on solving a critical problem will address an important issue while also showcasing how mentoring can impact the bottom line. Form mentoring groups when you launch a new product so that the participants can learn about the product together, share stories about how customers are using your new product, gain insights into any problems that may exist with the product and how to handle them, give feedback on new ways to market the product, and so forth. Again, a blend of people from various departments and functions can make for a richer learning experience. Use mentoring to reskill a portion of the workforce to meet emerging needs, such as helping your IT team learn a new set of skills for your emerging product market, or helping your sales team learn about selling tactics that work in a different part of the world that your company wants to penetrate. Whatever the emerging skill set is that your company needs, you can form mentoring groups where peers can learn together from internal experts and from one another’s experiences. Get more ideas on how to use mentoring in new ways in Randy Emelo’s new book, Modern Mentoring, available now from ATD Press.

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