Performance management is about establishing a culture in which individuals and groups take responsibility for the continuous improvement of business process and their own skills, behaviours and contributions. It is about sharing expectations.
‘Performance Management: An overview: Factsheet’, CIPD February 2008
Attending Buckingham New University has given me a chance to receive information on my performance and how I can improve my work. Being on The Human Resources Management course involves writing a lot of essays, blogs and creating financial documents. In order to ensure I’m doing well within my work and improving after every piece of work I do, lectures ensure feedback as well as grades for the work every student does. The feedback gives both positive and negative feedback, going in depth about what a person excelled in and what could be improved on the piece with an overall grade along with it. Each lecturer I have are supportive and provide extra help for a student if they struggle with their work, there is also a support system in place at the university which acts as a drop in centre. This provides students with the opportunity to have their work checked before handing it in for a final deadline. Our personal tutors are there to ensure that the students can cope with the work load and we understand what our next steps our within our degree. It is important for the individuals attending the university to feel as though they have a mentor guiding them and can be available for help at any time.
An effective mentor will be able to change the life of the person they are helping. With the abilities to be a good listener and provide support, the mentor can pass on guidance and wisdom to the person without finding themselves in a difficult situation. The opportunites created from having a mentor can be huge. Bob Garvey recently held a project which proved that having a mentor can involve benefits that “included transferring new skills and knowledge, creating better networking opportunities as well as helping them improve their product and in some cases even going into business with their mentor”.
Being a good mentor comes with the ability to pass on life experiences and knowledge. This comes from being a completely different personality type to the person you are mentoring and having lived a longer time than them and have experienced different situations. This gives the mentor the ability to talk from experience which will benefit the person the mentor is helping.
Bob Garvey was also quoted stating that a mentor must “need to be empathetic and sensitive, encouraging a solution out of the person they are mentoring rather than telling them what to do.” Thus allowing them to be capable of “improving their ability to solve problems, to interact better with other people and to cope with challenges”.
During my time at 6th form I felt I had a mentor in my Media Studies teacher. He was able to communicate with me on a friendship level as well as an authoritative level. He provided me when a lot of knowledge about his past and how I could use some of his advice and apply it to my own life academically and personally. Struggling with a hard year in my life was uplifted slightly knowing I had a person I was able to reply on for support and structure. His encouragement allowed me to go on with my education and finish my schooling year. I am thankful for the effort he put into mentoring me and I can honestly say it helped me. Mentors can be very useful in times of need and for building up new structure and learning a new
approach to take at a problem.
Referencing :
L. J. Mullins Management & Organisation Behaviour (2010) 9th Edition
‘Performance Management: An overview: Factsheet’, CIPD February 2008
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