Business Mentoring Matters

There is a strong business case for workforce diversity and diversity initiatives, such as cross-cultural mentoring programs. Baby boomers are aging and remaining in the workforce longer, companies are conducting more business globally, women are playing a stronger role in executive teams, and a growing number of minorities are entering the U.S. workforce.

Today’s workforce is evolving, and the best companies are responding to it by offering and fostering diversity initiatives to expand understanding and encourage collaboration across different demographics. That’s good news, but there’s still a big problem: most diversity initiatives don’t go far enough. And companies that offer insufficient programs are wasting time and money. 

For example, a white male senior attorney attends a training class in diversity. He completes the course feeling more sensitive to the issues facing minorities in the workplace. But then he never interacts with junior associates who are different from him, so he loses the opportunity to change his behavior in a meaningful way. 

The changes that diversity initiatives aim to achieve cannot occur without real-life interactions in the workplace.

So how can your company ensure that the money it spends on diversity initiatives yields desired results?

By executing a mentoring program to supplement its diversity-training initiatives. 

How Mentoring Promotes Real Diversity 

It’s critical to create a safe environment where both individuals feel comfortable enough to honestly address the tough topics related to diversity—the obstacles, fears, prejudices, challenges, misconceptions, etc. When both individuals become engaged and feel safe in the mentoring process, they can confront their own blind spots and prejudices openly and see what they need to change. It’s common for a white male, for example, to mentor a woman and gain a greater understanding of how his wife feels, and why she feels a certain way. It’s also common for individuals who are paired with someone of a similar race or gender to make an incorrect assumption about the person based on their shared demographic. The person quickly learns the importance of not projecting his or her feelings onto someone else, just because he or she assumes the person shares these feelings. 

Mentoring allows people to take the theories learned in diversity trainings into the workplace. They practice what they learn because they’re being challenged regularly within their mentoring relationships and they know that any prejudices they have will show up.