Organizational Development Article: Intervention Round Up-Mentoring

During an Organizational Development class, it was asked about our take on models that seeks to engage stakeholders within a corporate environment and during the class we needed to interact via an online discussion. Every once in a while, we have to pose questions to one another, in this post I have posted the question and my response to that question. I hope the interactions below assist in research, or even understanding the concepts of the different models that engage stakeholders in a positive manner and what from some academic sense future practitioners think of these concepts and the arenas it can be used in.

Mentoring is an interesting intervention because much like other intervention like 360 Feedback (my choice) it can be used in a positive manner or with a negative connation for corrective action purposes. Through my professional experiences I have had great mentors and terrible ones, usually the latter I had to deal with supervisors or management that were busy trying to teach me how to disregard procedures to complete activities in order to raise overall productivity percentages.

However, it made them look good to upper management, this type of mentoring caused issues with the task completion when the completed activities were quality checked or needed to be replicated.
Keeping this in mind, in your experiences with mentoring have you encountered any ineffective mentors that simply stunted your professional development? Were there times in the mentoring process that you received duplicate training for two different individuals to the point it seemed repetitive?

Organizational Clarity: Organizational Development terms

As in many fields, OD has acquired its own language. There are many terms, ideas, and concepts that may be new to you. Here you will have the opportunity to begin to master "OD" speak. Below are a number of common practices in OD. Some are theories, some are practices, but all are part of the field.
Create a thread and put the name of your term in the subject box. In your post, define one term and add at least one link to a site that corresponds to that particular term by cutting and pasting the URL (website address) and placing it in your post. Review the posts and links of others asking questions, adding supportive comments, and offering new ideas.

Choose one of the following terms or another term of your choice.

Action Research
Appreciative Inquiry
Team building
Search Conferences
Strategic Planning
Learning Organizations
Knowledge Management
Process Consultation
Open Space Meetings/Conferences
Resistance
Whole Systems Change
Coaching
Mentoring
Myers-Briggs
Data collection methods
Qualitative analysis
Quantitative analysis
Systems Theory
Change Models
Culture
OD Ethics
Confrontation meeting
Workout

For this forum OD Speak I chose the term Myers-Briggs (Type Indicator) or MBTI this is an engagement assessment based on the theories of Carl Jung that broke down personality types in to sixteen various categories. The questions are divided even further into different groups of questions such as Favorite world, Information, Decisions, and Structure how the individual answers each of these questions shapes the assessment of their personality (Myersbriggs.org, 2017).

This is a great tool usually for personal usage but also for use in professional settings by consultants to gather a vague idea of individual viewpoints and personality types. Although it is not a strict, detailed assessment of an individual’s personality it can give the consultant insight of how to address individual tastes and tailor organizational programs to increase retention and cooperation. The results of the MTBI may also assist the consultant in addressing such aspects as roadblocks to team building, assist in one on one coaching sessions, and getting a better understanding for conflict resolution purposes.

The high reliability of the test makes it a great tool for professional usage, but should only be “loosely” used so that individual test takers are not “pigeonholed” as one personality type and eliminated by the consultant from programs or activities that may be apathetic to the personality classification (Anderson, 2013).

This is a link that discusses briefly about the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator:
http://www.myersbriggs.org/my-mbti-personality-type/mbti-basics/

You can take the personality assessment here:
https://www.mbtionline.com/TaketheMBTI

References
Anderson, D. L. (2013). Organization development: The process of leading organizational change. Sage Publications.
Myersbriggs.org (2017) “MBTI Basics” The Myers & Briggs Foundation Retrieved on March 22, 2017 from: http://www.myersbriggs.org/my-mbti-personality-type/mbti-basics/