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Today, the following event led me to think about the title of this post: I was getting ready to start my day and in the meantime, I received a message from one of my mentees at work saying hello and asking me to reschedule (again) our goals-planning meeting.

My mentee, you would ask; yes, my mentee. I’m a mentor, a master, I’m the enlightened one at the other side of the screen:

Allow me to explain. At the company I work for, a new mentoring program was created. The purpose of it is to support the professional and personal growth of everyone in the company, including the managerial positions; everyone should have a mentor. On paper, this sounds great, right? The company is investing a lot of resources on a program which is exclusively focused and oriented to its employees. Now, what happens if you also have another program to promote your professional and personal growth? Does that sound good to you? Two programs in your company to promote your professional and personal growth. Who wouldn’t want to hear this during the interviews phase before getting into the company? After all, the ones that will be benefited from them will be us, the employees. Well, my friends, it seems that not too many people would want to hear this.

Before going back to what got me thinking, I must let you know the following about the program and my situation to provide a better context:

• Mentors and mentees are part of the same area.
• Mentors are supposed to be at least one level higher in the seniority scale of the company.
• Mentors should not be the mentees’ immediate leaders/bosses.
• Mentors and mentees might not even know each other.
• Mentors’ and mentees’ responsibilities might not be linked directly. Mentors probably do not know the day-to-day mentees work.
• Mentees have fully autonomy to decide what skills they want to work on.
• I was assigned 4 mentees.
• I had an introductory meeting with each of them to explain the new mentoring program and what the next steps would be.
• A second meeting was held to review what goals they wanted to set for themselves.
• Once goals have been established, a follow-up meeting would be held every quarter.
• The immediate leader/boss of the mentee should be aware of the goals set.

After I had my 4 introductory meetings, I noticed a pattern, a common feeling and reaction to the big news. There was an immediate unconscious pushback from them. I could see that in their faces along with a feeling of discomfort and nuisance. Their faces were saying: “hmm…another one?”, “really? more work?”, “I’m not liking what I’m hearing”. Their faces were basically the following one:

In addition, none of them showed any excitement at all about the program and they all asked: Don’t we have the X program (the other professional and personal growth program I mentioned) for this?

They all also mention that they felt they had too much on their plate to accomplish:

• The day-to-day work.
• The X-program goals every quarter.
• The new mentoring program goals.

If we would like to go into the details of the reactions of each one of them, we would find this:

• One of the mentees was completely honest. He told me that this sounded great, but at the moment he was focusing on catching up with the tech stack he was going to work with in his project. He didn’t have experience with most of the tools and technologies, so he needed to invest time learning and catching up. He was new, he has been working for the company around 3 months only. He even told me that he was not able to accomplish the goals he set in the X program in the past quarter and that it was a prove that he was not going to be able to handle these new goals.
• Two of the mentees were more receptive in the sense that they were willing to set the goals, but they thought it was too much considering that there was another similar program.
• Last, but not least, we have the mentee who asked to reschedule the goals-planning meeting for the second time. He also was hesitant of the program when he heard about it, you could tell that it was not going to be a priority for him.

So, why all these reactions to something that we should all be happy for considering that we, the employees, are the ones who will be benefited from? After all, anything new I learn, I will take it with me to wherever I work at.

My perception on this is that it seems that this was not well thought by Human Resources. Did they ever thought about the time people need to invest to keep up with the two employees development programs? Was this maybe an initiative from someone at the top who wanted to implement his/her own training and development project to stand out and do well, but without considering the existing projects/programs?

I do not know the answer to these questions, and I will never do. What I do believe is that on this time, HR messed up and did not think this through. People are being forced to improve at a professional and personal level without being asked if they want to do it. Actually, they should not even be asked about this. This program should be an option for them in the first place and they should decide when and how they would like to be part of it. Let’s not forget that we are human beings and there are a lot of factors to consider here. To name a few,

• Time: People have a life outside their jobs, believe it or not. If they are working hard because the project they are participating in demands so, what time are they going to work on two similar professional and personal growth programs? After work hours? are they getting paid for that? Should they sacrifice their personal time for this?
• Willing: People go through ups and downs throughout their life. How do you know if a person is emotionally available to do this extra work? What if the person is going through a tough time and the only thing which they are thinking right now is to do what they have to do at work and just leave to some have space or free time to be on their own? Also, what if I am tired of at the moment of working on myself because, let’s say, I am of those persons who demands a lot from himself/herself, and it turns out that at this precise moment of my life I have finally decided to take a break and take it easy on me? Do I have to put up with this just to not get a bad performance review?
• Personal priorities: People’ and companies’ priorities might or might not be aligned at certain moments in time. If I am hungry for professional growth, I will do whatever it is necessary to get what I want; including extra work hours and accomplishing goals of the two similar programs to get an outstanding performance review. Nevertheless, what if I just do what I was hired for and focus more on my personal interests/hobbies? is that bad? By the way, to just do what you were hired for does not mean that you will do it bad or, in a mediocre or lazy way. You could do your job in an efficient way and work the hours you are getting paid for.

I know some of these points overlap themselves, but I think you get the point on why I believe that pushing people to participate in this type of programs might not have the expected outcome. From my point of view, these programs should not be forced onto people, and I believe that they only work when it’s something you volunteer to do. Think about it. Haven’t you been in periods in your life in which you have said to yourself: “I want to earn more money”, “I need to earn more money”, “I want to get this X job position”, “I want to learn this X-Y technology”? I’m pretty sure you have lived those moments. Now try to remember what your attitude towards this kind of things was. Were you interested? Did you even ask for type of programs? Did you start asking to your leader/boss how you could start talking about your career plan within the company? Whatever you did, I’m pretty sure there was nothing that could stop you because it is what you wanted to do. You had the will, the energy, the attitude, the focus, the intention. When this type of programs exists and an employee is in this moment of his/her life, then it is a win-win game.

Also, if this type of programs is trying to encourage people to stay up to date with the market and the new technologies and, to prepare them for future promotions within the company, then, why on earth would you want to keep in your company or promote someone who needs to have some pressure to be better professionally and personally? Would you not want to have people who are hungry for bigger and better things?

To summarize and clarify, I’m not saying there shouldn’t be this type of programs. I’m saying that they shouldn’t be forced onto people. When people want something, they will go after it. What do you think about this situation?