Resources

• Army Mentorship Handbook
• Best Practices: Mentoring
• DoD Mentoring Resources
• FMWR Mentorship Handbook
• SES Situation Mentoring Program
• Six Tricks to Becoming a Great Mentor
• Video - How to get a Mentor
• Video - Five things I learned from my Mentors
• Video - How to be a Mentor

• What is Coaching?
• (Video) Do I need a Coach?
• (Video) Job Coaching
• (Video) Self-Awareness Coaching
• (Video) Professional Coaching

IMCOM Civilian Career Planning and Development

Army Benefits Center - Civilian

Government Retirement Benefits Platform

• Planning & Accountability
• Employment & Compensation
• Benefits, Wage, NAF Policy
• Talent Development
• Labor & Employee Relations
• DOD Executive Resources Management Office

• Microsoft Word
• Microsoft Excel
• Microsoft PowerPoint
• Microsoft Access

• Microsoft Word Tips
• Microsoft Excel Tips
• Microsoft Excel Formulas
• Microsoft PowerPoint Tips

1. Skills Enhancement-- mentoring enables experienced, highly competent staff to pass their expertise on to others who need to acquire specified skills;
2. Professional Identity-- when younger employees are early in their careers, they need help understanding what it means to be a professional in their working environment. Professionals embody the values of the profession and are self-initiating and self-regulating. Mentors play a key role in defining professional behavior for new employees. This is most important when employees first enter the federal workforce;
3. Career Development-- mentoring helps employees plan, develop, and manage their careers. It also helps them become more resilient in times of change, more self-reliant in their careers and more responsible as self-directed learners;
4. Leadership and Management Development-- mentoring encourages the development of leadership competencies. These competencies are often more easily gained through example, guided practice or experience than by education and training;
5. Education Support -- mentoring helps bridge the gap between theory and practice. Formal education and training is complemented by the knowledge and hands-on experience of a competent practitioner;
6. Organizational Development and Culture Change-- mentoring can help communicate the values, vision and mission of the organization; a one-to-one relationship can help employees understand the organizational culture and make any necessary changes;
7. Customer Service-- mentoring assists in modeling desired behaviors, encouraging the development of competencies in support of customer service, and above all, cultivating the right attitudes;
8. Staff retention-- mentoring provides an encouraging environment through ongoing interactions, coaching, teaching, and role modeling that facilitates progression within the organization; mentoring has been found to influence employee retention because it helps establish an organizational culture that is attractive to the top talent clamoring for growth opportunities. Mentoring is a tangible way to show employees that they are valued and that the company’s future includes them;
9. Recruitment-- mentoring can enhance recruitment goals by offering additional incentives to prospective employees; and
10. Knowledge Management/Knowledge Transfer-- mentoring provides for the interchange/exchange of information/knowledge between members of different organizations.

Coaching can be used for various purposes.

- Performance coaching. Coaching activities here are aimed at enhancing an individual’s performance in their current role at work, to increase their effectiveness and productivity at work. Generally, performance coaching derives its theoretical underpinnings and models from business and sports psychology as well as general psychological theory.

- Skills coaching. This form of coaching focuses on the core skills an employee needs to perform in their role. Skills coaching provides a flexible, adaptive, ‘just-in-time’ approach to skills development. Coaching programs are tailored specifically to the individual and are generally focused on achieving a number of skill development objectives that are linked to the needs of the organization.

- Career Coaching. Coaching activities focus on the individual’s career concerns, with the coach eliciting and using feedback on the individual’s capabilities as part of a discussion of career options. The process should lead to increased clarity, personal change and forward action.

- Personal or life coaching. This form of coaching provides support to individuals wishing to make some form of significant changes happen within their lives. Coaches help individuals to explore what they want in life and how they might achieve their aspirations and fulfil their needs. Personal/life coaching generally takes the individual’s agenda as its start point.

- Business coaching. Business coaching is always conducted within the constraints placed on the individual or group by the organizational context.

- Executive coaching: One to one performance coaching is increasingly being recognized as the way for organizations and individuals to improve performance. By improving the performance of the most influential people within the organization, the theory goes that business results should improve. Executive coaching is often delivered by coaches operating from outside the organisation whose services are requested for an agreed duration or number of coaching sessions.

- Team facilitation: Coaching in its role as facilitator is particularly valuable during the budget and strategy planning season. And coaching a team before a presentation can dramatically improve performance – as well as self-confidence.

- Work shadowing: As well as being a means of identifying an individual's behavior and performance, work shadowing is an excellent method of getting immediate feedback on behavior, with a discussion of alternative ways of handling future such situations.