Make Your Protege an Organizational Disciple
Each year organizations around the world spend billions of Dollars, Euros, and Yen, to train new employees. Unfortunately, organizations lose billions when they lose those people on whom they spent all that training time and money. There are well-documented reasons for this phenomenon and chief among them is lack of loyalty – BOSCH WLF 16060 OE organization to employee and employee to organization. There is no longer employment security – employment for life.
A 1997 figure on training costs for U. S. companies was in excess of 58 billion dollars. In September 2004, Chief Learning Officer e-zine reported U.S. companies spend an average of $2,000.00 per year per employee for training. The U. S. Department of Labor put employment for September 2005 at slightly over 150 million workers. At $2,000.00 per employee per year, training costs U. S. business $300 billion a year, almost a six-fold increase in eight years.
Training in most organizations is an abstract figure and accounting for training expenses usually becomes lumped into other expenses. Organizations recognize the need for training, allocate training money, and expense it. Training is an expense not an investment. However, the cycle of training for training sake is a trend reversing. Executives want to Indesit margin their spending on training with a training strategy to link individual capabilities with the organizations business strategy.
Most companies that send employees to training or provide tuition assistance for college degrees require some pay back in time – one month per college credit hour for example. This does assure that training dollars spent stay in the company for a known period. However, after that period a worker is no longer obliged to the organization and can sell talents to the highest bidder.
Organizations often label training as training; however, the idea stated above to link individual capabilities into the business strategy suggests something more far reaching – mentoring. Spending billions of dollars on training does not necessarily make a worker a better employee. Yet, linking mentoring and training, leaders become acutely aware of worker skill development.
Beyond Training and Mentoring
This begins the discussion on creating workers who are elevated beyond just an employee. The next level beyond training and mentoring, seen by most as a Judeo/Christian concept, is discipling. Most agree that discipling is a spiritual engagement. However, does discipling have a place in secular organizations?
Initially, defining disciple in secular terms is easy. A disciple is someone who is a believer of or in organizational vision and values. A disciple helps spread the vision and values as root doctrines of the organization. Webster’s dictionary (1913) defines disciple as, “One who receives instruction from another; a scholar; a learner; especially, a follower who has learned to believe in the truth of the doctrine of his teacher; an adherent in doctrine; as, the disciples of Plato; the disciples of our Savior.”
That definition suggests more than mentoring. One facet of a disciple is one who, when taught, accepts the teaching and buys into the vision. Upon buy in, the new disciple desires to share the learning and supreme commitment to the vision. Charlie Ragus, founder of AdvoCare International, built a distributorship by having quality products, backed by science and medicine, with a simple approach to teaching duplicated repeatedly, making AdvoCare disciples.
Mentoring and discipling are like connecting the dots. A mentor shows the protйgй a picture; however, the picture is just a bunch of numbered dots. The mentor can explain the picture and the protйgй my sense the completed picture from looking at the pattern of dots. A mentor transfers knowledge of a vision in describing the pattern or dots. Discipling occurs when the protйgй begins to connect the dots. As the picture becomes clearer, the mentor and protйgй relationship expands to one of greater understanding. When the dots are all connected and the protйgй sees the complete picture, transformation is underway.
Consider another example, Champoux (2006), describes a process of organizational socialization that fits this position well. He begins by stating the new employee goes through a process of unfreezing, to leave behind parts of an old self-image. After accepting the unfreezing, the worker goes through change. This change is mentored episodes of behavioral role development. When this learning process concludes, the worker refreezes the new image. This new image includes expected behaviors and norms of the organization. What the unfreezing, changing, and refreezing describe is metamorphosis. Metamorphosis may be abrupt or occur over time. Discipling metamorphosis is a process taking time.
A mentor with discipling as a goal, by the above examples has personal vision, ability to see potential in another. However, this means a personal commitment of time to intercede in another’s professional growth. Both audio physic kronos mentor and protйgй are encouraged to enter the relationship voluntarily or risk burdening each other.
It is important for mentors and protйgйs to recognize how discipling occurs. O’Hair, et al (1998) offers these stages. The first stage is initiation, the protйgй recognizes and
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