Business of Well-being

Wellness Mentoring is Your Company's Competitive Advantage

There is an old Chinese proverb that states, "No matter how far you've walked down the wrong road, stop!" It is time for companies to stop squandering away their competitive resources and true business advantage. It is happening right under their eyes and in most cases they are unaware of it. Harsh words but as a business consultant for over twenty years I have witnessed the waste of intellectual talent in both the public and private sectors.


Wellness experts must also recognize this dilemma. Today, building a competitive organization that regularly produces maximum results requires two main elements; employees with their collective experiences that make up an organization and the employees' untapped or dormant skills. Successful organizations are collaborative, focused and adaptable.


So what does wellness mentoring have to do with all this? It has been my experience that each company I have worked with has not analyzed their work force in three key areas, the untapped skills employees have, who are natural teachers, and how to bring all three of these areas to benefit their workgroups. The role of the wellness coordinator is to help create a mentoring organization.

Creating a Mentoring Company

"A man who carries a cat by the tail learns something he can learn in no other way." - Mark Twain

As a wellness advisor you have to examine how the company looks at leadership, and get involved. Old thinking about leadership has to radically change, sure managers and supervisors are still responsible for a myriad of tasks but they must adjust to the new reality that it gets harder and harder to compete with fewer and fewer tangible resources.


That means a whole new perspective on the organization's infrastructure and the role of leadership. The new leader has to be a mentor capable of developing within each employee, no matter what they do, the ability to anticipate and interpret and share what they are hearing and observing in the marketplace. Every member of the team must become a learner and teacher and share in real time unfolding trends, client observations and wishes.

The Role of the Mentor Leader

As a wellness mentor leader your task is to build a shared recognition of evolving roles and skills within the organization and their implications for the future. Get started by validating social media as tools make it open to all employees. Send a loud clear message that employees, opinions and experiences are critical to the success of the group.


Create a mindset which focuses on self praise for discovery of new critical information rather than just simply doing one's job. Be a visible champion of social media mentor use it, and share what you learn. Share what you have learned from whom you learned it from and what might be the implications for the future. Find your natural teachers, they come in all shapes and sizes they are the first role models that you can build a sharing team with; discover who is using social networking in your team and platforms they are using.


As a wellness mentor develop a set of questions that should always be in the forefront of employees mind and have them share their experiences with each such as: What are people telling you not just about our service or products but things in general and how can we take advantage of that knowledge? What talents are we not tapping? Who is helping you do a better job?

Mentor wellness leaders know their colleagues and employees

Today's worker is more sophisticated, technically aware, and is redefining their lives around not only work but their own personal needs. The best news for employers is that social media is empowering today's employees to take control over what they learn, how they learn and when they learn. The trick is to keep them involved and interested. The concept of down time must be eliminated; you can do this by making sure they are posting observations they are learning through social networking.


People in real time can focus on collaborative problem solving and information sharing. Such social media conversations help individuals understand that there is a collective wisdom which is non judgmental and available to them which can be as important them as to how they work independently. Have leaders adjust employee time to meet the changing conditions and needs of the organization as a whole.


They give adequate time for employees to surf the Internet, find colleagues in other business knowledgeable about things they are working on collect information that allows them to perceive what they need to adjust or adapt to enable the organization to stay ahead of competition.


Suggest supervisors throw out performance appraisals which only measure current work accomplishments; sure individual performance remains critical, but it only measures past performance you want to now need to measure employees future contributions to your team.


There is no excuse if an employee is not vibrantly contributing new information to their colleagues they are functioning below what you need. Remove any barriers that prevent individuals from using any and all social media. I mean any social media trends come in all sizes. Just look at how fads appear and disappear.


Run in-services on social media including evaluations of sites. Remove any roadblocks and minimize and delays that prevent information sharing. Create and underline the expectation that each individual is responsible to directly collaborate with each other. Record and praise what individuals are discovering and report back to the organization what the implications might be to the future of the organization.

Conclusion

"A man content to go to heaven alone will never go to heaven." -Boethius

Creating a shared understanding among all employees of the changing nature of your organization and the business climate, and its' implications is imperative to your organization. Only an organization that devotes itself to mentorship will be relevant to the business tomorrow.


Give your team the gift of validation by recognizing their skills, talents and accomplishments, but also recognize what they have taught their colleagues. Never allow employees to be bored; there is a world of opportunities out there makes sure they are plugged into it.

About The Author

Dr.  Wayne Weiner is a man of many talents and Interests from history, health, to state of the art business and communication technology. He is the co-founder of Bella Business Solutions, developers of innovative products and services. He has won awards as an innovative strategist and motivational leader and is nationally recognized as an expert change agent who propelled hundreds of for profit, universities and public organizations into exemplar organizations.


Dr. Weiner works with many Native American Tribes and is totally dedicated to improving the life of the tribal members. He is an organizational visionary whose analyses and recommendations have successfully fundamentally redesigned the culture of some of this country's leading organizations. He has a dynamic track record of charismatically influencing change in many people's poor health habits. He is also an avid writer and author of a science fiction Trilogy and three spy novels.

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