Intelligent Mentoring: How IBM Creates Value through People, Knowledge, and Relationships

How to Use Mentoring to Drive Maximum Competitive Advantage
Techniques and lessons from IBM’s world-class mentoring programs―for every business and HR leader, strategist, Chief Learning Officer, consultant, trainer, and scholar

“A crucial part of my job is to help develop and retain the more than 200,000 members of IBM’s global technical community. Over the years, I have found that the true spirit of any organization is its people, and unique, world-class mentoring programs play a crucial role in their success. What I really like about Intelligent Mentoring is that it is not an academic treatise on the theory of mentoring, but a series of practical solutions that can be used by virtually any organization to gain productivity, increase retention, and improve bottom-line results.”

―Nick Donofrio, Executive Vice President, Innovation and Technology, IBM Corporation

“We have known about the importance of mentoring in developing people for decades. Yet few organizations have successfully leveraged it as part of their HR strategy. IBM is one of those companies. Intelligent Mentoringis about more than the mentoring initiative successfully implemented at IBM. It is a guide for how companies can leverage mentoring in a way that aligns with company strategy and supports organizational and individual development. It is a must-read for any executive considering a mentoring initiative as part of the firm’s HR strategy. IBM’s mentoring effort combined the best of what we know from mentoring research, career development theory, and change management to create a highly successful effort. There is much here for practitioners and scholars to learn.”

―David A. Thomas, Ph.D., Naylor Fitzhugh Professor of Business Administration, Harvard Business School

“Performance is the ultimate driver of this company. Even back in our earliest days, one of the keys to IBM’s greatness was performance, along with top-notch technology. Since arriving at IBM in 2000, my goal has been to identify, develop, train, reward, and retain high-performing people, and one of the best ways to support these high performers is through mentoring. I believe that Intelligent Mentoringhas done a phenomenal job of capturing the innovative and varied mentoring initiatives that IBM has used over the years. The authors really take you inside the company and show how mentoring has helped IBM preserve its corporate culture by passing on knowledge, not only between generations, but in all directions throughout our global community. This book is a must-read for anyone who wants to use the powerful tool of mentoring to its best and most productive advantage, and I recommend it highly.”

―Randy MacDonald, Senior Vice President, Human Resources, IBM Corporation

For today’s enterprises, few challenges are as daunting as preparing tomorrow’s leaders. Mentoring is one of the most powerful tools at their disposal. But not all mentoring programs are equally effective, and not all companies have learned how to sustain mentoring. One company has: IBM. Intelligent Mentoring reveals how IBM has done it–and offers specific guidance and best practices you can use to achieve equally powerful results. Intelligent Mentoring shows how IBM has fully integrated a diverse portfolio of formal mentoring initiatives into both talent development and innovation promotion. Whether you’re a business leader, strategist, Chief Learning Officer, training specialist, coach, or consultant, this book presents a state-of-the-art framework for making mentoring work. Drawing on IBM’s experience, the authors demonstrate how to build a diverse portfolio of effective mentoring programs...use mentoring to strengthen organizational intelligence...build sustainable communities of mentors and mentees...promote collaboration across differences... and above all, link mentoring to strategy and use it to sustain competitive advantage.

•  Use mentoring to develop tomorrow’s world-class business leaders
Actionable solutions and best practices from IBM’s breakthrough mentoring program

• Embrace mentoring as a high-performance work practice
Maximizing, capturing, and communicating the value-added impact of mentoring

• Set the right goals for mentoring: then achieve them
Utilize mentoring to strengthen organizational learning, improve retention, promote innovation, and more

• Use mentoring to solve your organization’s most “wicked” problems
How mentoring can help you respond to complex, tangled challenges you’ve never faced before

Audrey J. Murrell, Ph.D. specializes in helping organizations better utilize and engage their human and social capital. She is Associate Professor of Business Administration, Psychology, and Public and International Affairs at the University of Pittsburgh Katz/CBA School of Business, and Director of the David Berg Center for Ethics and Leadership. Audrey also serves as a consultant in the areas of mentoring, leadership development, and workforce/supplier diversity for a number of world-class, global organizations. She is coauthor of Mentoring Dilemmas: Developmental Relationships within Multicultural Organizations.

Sheila Forte-Trammell is currently an IBM Learning Consultant and has many years of experience in human resources. She is responsible for designing and leading human resources initiatives that have global impact. Sheila’s experience includes diversity and multiculturalism, mentoring, organizational development, employee and industrial relations, compensation, and talent management. She is the recipient of several IBM awards and external awards, and was selected from a field of almost 200 professional women from Fortune 500 companies and academia to receive the 2004 National Woman of Color Award for Workplace Educational Leadership.

Diana A. Bing is recently retired from IBM. She was IBM’s Director for Employee Development and Enterprise Learning. She led IBM efforts to plan, design, develop, and deliver employee learning programs that develop IBM’s employees, both technically and professionally, to help them meet both IBM’s business goals and their own employees’ personal career-development needs. Her 31-year career with IBM included extensive global managerial and executive experience in sales, marketing, coaching, and service delivery. A certified coach, Diana is now doing professional coaching, corporate consulting, and public speaking.