Mentoring—Using the Voice of Experience

Companies crave experienced executives—so why don't they do more to make sure that wisdom is captured in the corporate DNA? Harvard Business Professor Dorothy Leonard discusses the differences between mentoring and coaching; why it can be difficult for "masters" to reach "novices" and who should be responsible for managing a corporate mentoring program.

Sometimes executive education has little to do with what happens in a classroom. Mentoring and coaching are the time-tested ways for wisdom and knowledge to be passed through an organization. Harvard Business School professor Dorothy Leonard and Tufts University professor Walter C. Swap, along with HBS research associate Brian DeLacey, are studying the processes of mentoring and coaching in entrepreneurial environments. Leonard and DeLacey discuss their findings with HBS Working Knowledge editor Sean Silverthorne.

Silverthorne: In the context of executive education, talk a little about your research.

Dorothy Leonard: There are two streams of research that are coming together here. One stream is the research that Brian and I started a couple of years ago: the use of technology in aiding learning processes both face-to-face and when people are in diverse locations.

The other stream of research, started in the year 2000, was aimed at understanding how an innovative team working together in a creative act managed the process of knowledge transfer between the more experienced and less experienced members of that team. The context was entrepreneurs learning from coaches who were either professionals in venture capital firms or who were cashed-out entrepreneurs acting as angels for small start ups. Both sets of people had certain expertise that they were trying to transmit to highly inexperienced entrepreneurs. (Sometimes the coaches were inexperienced and the entrepreneurs were experienced.)

Complete article at HBR