With the tremendous growth of the lodging industry over the last two decades, the industry's ability to develop competent management staff has been severely strained. 

The educational facilities that focus on the industry, whether they are four-year or two-year programs, cannot keep up with the growth rate and never have been a major contributor of entry level management. 

The most significant source of the future leaders are line level employees or people moving into this industry from others. This means that company training programs and OJT (on the job training) are really our keys to developing managers with technical and leadership skills that will contribute to the success of the organization. 

Informal Mentoring 

Regardless of the source of the emerging managers, they need some support and nurturing to be all they can be. Mentoring is one way to do this. Many of us are familiar with informal mentoring but formal programs can accomplish much more. 

Mentor and protege relationships generally occur on an informal basis in the hotel industry. This is typified by the general manager who takes a junior manager under his protective wing and grooms him for greater responsibility. 

The traditional mentoring relationship is based on an unspoken agreement and is subject to the availability and good will of the senior manager. 

Unlike the traditional mentoring relationship, a structured mentoring program clearly defines the mentoring relationship by ensuring that the mentor, protege, and organization all clearly understand what to expect and what is expected of them. Its goals are the same but its process is different. 

The Aim of Mentoring 

Mentoring, in its traditional or structured form, aims to accomplish the same thing-the pairing of a skilled and experienced senior person (the mentor) with a less experienced and junior person (the protege) to help the protege grow and develop under the guidance of the mentor. 

The roles that the mentor may play are those of the teacher, supporter or sponsor. As a teacher, the mentor teaches the protege the skills and knowledge needed to perform the job and provides inside information about the organization, such as politics and personalities. The role of supporter is one in which the mentor helps the protege deal with his career and personal conflicts and pressures, and helps build his self-confidence. And, as a sponsor, the mentor intervenes on the protege's behalf in conflicts that might endanger the protege's career and markets the protege to upper management. 

Is Mentoring For You? 

Although mentoring provides an attractive training and development alternative, it may not be right for your hotel. Mentoring programs work best when specific human resource needs and conditions exist. In the absence of these conditions, a mentoring program could actually hurt rather than help your hotel. 

Some basic questions need to be answered before launching a mentoring program.

• Does your organization need to prepare people within the organization to fill future management positions? Proteges join a mentoring program with the implicit promise that excellent performance will be rewarded by career advancement. If there is no room at the top for successful proteges, the organization will be burdened with a surplus of ambitious, overqualified, and frustrated individuals who will eventually take their skills and talents elsewhere. 
• If future human resource needs are forecasted, are they continuing or one-time needs? 
• Does your organization represent an expanding chain of hotels where continued growth insures an on-going need for upper level managers, or does your organization represent a single hotel dealing with attrition-related human resource needs? If this is an infrequent, one-shot occurrence, then a structured mentoring program would not be cost-effective. 
• Does your corporate culture value the veteran employee or does it prefer to buy "new blood" from outside the organization? Developing talent from within the organization takes time, resources, and long-term commitment from upper management, making their support vital to the success of the program. A high level of upper management interest and commitment is needed from the outset since mentors come from the upper management ranks.
• Does your organization have enough suitable managers available to pair with proteges? Mentors should be at least two position levels above the protege (to prevent mentors from feeling threatened by their proteges), competent, widely respected, secure in their jobs, skilled coaches, and possess excellent interpersonal skills. They should have the time and the willingness to volunteer for the job. 
• How will a mentoring program fit in with your other human resource programs? If successful succession planning and management development programs are already in place, will a mentoring program replicate, replace or enhance it? How will a mentoring program link to other training programs? Is there someone who can initiate and oversee the program? A successful mentoring program requires someone to coordinate the selection and pairing of mentors and proteges, establish orientation programs, perform periodic reviews of the pairs, and to help conclude the relationship. 

Mentoring is not a panacea for all organizations; however, given the right conditions, its organizational benefits can be enormous. 

Good mentoring programs attract the best candidates for a job, reduce turnover of talented people, help people achieve their optimum potential and productivity, assure a smooth transfer of leadership from one generation to the next, and encourage communication up and down the organizational hierarchy. 

Steps To Implementation Implementing a mentoring program requires the same careful planning, implementing, monitoring, and evaluating that any major project requires.
 

Don't be confused; a mentoring program might consist of just two or three pairs of people. 

Whether you undertake a formal mentoring program as we described above or simply take some of these ideas and improve the informal mentoring already occurring in your lodging facility, the result will be a stronger base of people. 

One of the most surprising results may be improved retention among your entry level managers and the line staff that works for them. What better assets could a lodging facility have than high employee retention with outstanding job skills and great loyalty?