“The friendly working environment of Conneqt Business Solutions and the co-operation of my supervisors gave me an opportunity to learn and develop my skills. My contribution and performance was recognized when I got promoted, as a Quality Specialist through an internal job posting it was the most memorable moment of my life. I dedicate this achievement to all my seniors and colleagues who constantly encouraged me to work hard and perform better.”

Jyoti Singla – Quality Specialist, Media Client

At Conneqt Business Solutions just as in other organizations there is always a talent pool that can be groomed and moved up to the next level of leadership.

Effective mentoring is a formal relationship where leaders

• Identify the bright sparks in the talent pool
• Set expectations with them on career progression
• Hone skills over a period of time and out their skills put to practical test with exposure

This pays rich dividends in the long run as career pathing:

• Helps us with retention of talent pool
• The people who grow within our organization act as role models for other employees to follow
• It also helps us develop an atmosphere of trust, faith and a bond that has a positive influence on the work culture

Choosing the mentees:

At Conneqt Business Solutions every leader must have a succession plan for themselves. We have a due diligence process for choosing the bright sparks so as not to create a feeling of bias amongst the other employees. A leader identifies 1-2 bright sparks who may be natural leaders. The people who are equally or more excited to tune for self-development are finally chosen.

Key steps in mentoring:

STEP 1: Imparting Knowledge- The mentor imparts all the knowledge he/she has which is relevant to the mentee. The mentor guides the mentees to come up the curve and boosts his/her confidence with specific inputs. Constant touch with the individuals and timely feedback plays a critical role towards development of the mentees. This ideally takes 1-2 months.

STEP 2: Shadow with back up support – The mentee then shadows the mentor to see how he/she behaves, handles conflict, solves ambiguous situations, manages client expectations along with team and stakeholders demands. Here the mentee learns the practical way and is now confident to take up challenges. This takes another 1-2 months.

STEP 3: Get mentee to the forefront – Before the mentee is tested, the mentor updates the client and internal stakeholders on the move towards internal development of the mentees.

Then the mentee is given tasks, which increases in complexity as times go by. The examples could be allowing the mentee to take a lead role to handle team challenges, conflict situations, and measures to enhance performance or answer to client escalations or do the presentation in client business reviews. Here the mentor constantly keeps a watch on the acceptability of the person internally and externally, takes feedback from client and shares constructive feedback with the mentee. The mentee is allowed to make mistakes and the mentor supports and corrects. Gradually the mentee gets equipped to handle higher roles and responsibilities when the next opportunity arrives.

Reward

• Mentee: the mentee feels empowered with support from his/her supervisor and eventually progresses in their career.
• Mentor: the Mentor has created an able backup to handle the current role and hence creates the confidence for the internal stakeholders to give him/her different and bigger roles. However, as time passes the biggest reward for the mentor is the sense of satisfaction and pride to see the people he/she has groomed move up the ladder and take up bigger responsibilities and be successful.

Sandeep Dutta – A.V.P Operations
@Sandeepdutta17