Note: This article was originally published on Forbes.com

The workplace has changed drastically in the last few months; I don’t have to tell you that. People are figuring out how to manage their time, maintain personal connection and remain productive, all while working remotely. One crucial item that has fallen by the wayside is professional development – especially the development of future leaders.

Leadership skills development is most successful when it is an immersive and visceral experience. Therefore, most leadership development programs are dependent on in-person meetings and collaborative activities with others in the organization. It’s difficult, if not impossible, to teach the soft skills required of a leader via an impersonal online learning experience.

Some organizations are beginning to grapple with how to have the same success via an online format, since, for the foreseeable future that is all that is available to us. Other organizations would rather take a “gap year” in leadership development and wait for the return to their normal development activities.

An immediate solution

One thing that can be done immediately, and with great success, is to embrace mentoring.

Mentoring is the cheapest and most effective method for developing future leaders. It has always surprised me how few organizations employ it.  All it takes is time and a little bit of structure.

One benefit of most business professionals working from home is that it is easier to schedule time to work together and to work with others across the organization. You don’t have to find an open conference room, or even be in the same building or state to work with a mentor who can help you to develop your career.

With all meetings conducted online these days, the playing field has been leveled. A younger colleague can be invited to sit in on a management meeting, a sales call, or a performance review to listen and learn with less scrutiny about why they are there. “I’ve invited Shonda to sit in today,” is less concerning and more comfortable than a clearly junior person showing up to an in-person meeting. After the meeting, the mentor and mentee can discuss what occurred, why the mentor made the decisions that they did, or took control of the conversation when they did, and what might happen next with pros and cons.

Mentoring: is a system of semi-structured guidance whereby one person shares their knowledge, skills and experience to assist others to progress in their own lives and careers

Because of the convenience of meeting remotely, there are more opportunities for mentoring and learning conversations. Again, all it takes is time and a bit of structure. Here are some suggested steps to start mentoring in your organization if it’s unlikely the workplace will reopen soon:

• Assign all leaders the responsibility for mentoring 1 – 3 younger colleagues. Managers might be required to mentor one individual while senior leaders such as directors or VP’s could accommodate up to three.

• Require at least two meetings a week. One meeting is a 1:1 between mentor and mentee to ask questions and receive coaching, and the other is a meeting to which the mentee is invited to listen and learn.  The 1:1 meetings can be as short as 15-minutes. What’s important is to have a consistent dialogue based on what is currently happening in the wider organization.

• The mentor must be tasked with asking open-ended questions more than giving advice and guidance. What do you think should be our next move? Is more instructional than What I’d do next is…

• Each individual – mentor and mentee – needs to keep a journal so that they can see the progress made over time. This is also a place for the mentee to reflect on what they’ve learned (because the best growth comes from reflection and introspection) and jot down questions for their next 1:1 meeting.

If Needed, Start with Training

If your organization has never utilized mentoring, the best place to start is with training to define the role of a mentor. Most individuals in leadership positions are comfortable with assessing situations and giving answers, which is pretty much the exact opposite of what you want a mentor to do. A mentor’s role is to listen, facilitate, and gently guide an up-and-coming colleague. So, it is important to learn the role’s expectations and how to tamp one’s natural instincts as a manager / leader. This is a little easier when the mentor and mentee are in different disciplines such as finance and research; when the two are from different disciplines the conversation stays at a higher level of business knowledge as opposed to the brass tacks of the work being done.

If your organization DOES have a mentoring process in place, this HBR article offers excellent advice on how to shift the mentor’s role from in-person to online meetings, how to validate feelings of uncertainty and overwhelm, and how to authentically share one’s own experiences.

Until professional development as we know it is able to resume in-person, purposeful mentoring relationships are the best approach for developing future leaders. An added bonus is that the mentees will form stronger bonds with the organization, have higher job satisfaction, and perceive greater support from the organization[1], which are all vitally important when one is working from home, alone.

If you would like help developing leadership pipelines in your organization, please get in touch with us, at The Training Doctor. We can help to future-proof your organization. 843.647.6304

[1] https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/20401322/