Inside Intel's Mentoring Movement

Keep It Controlled ... Sort Of

The first step in Intel's mentoring program was to create a matching system that eliminated guesswork. For this, the New Mexico team turned to the employee database in order to create an intranet-based questionnaire that could match partners with the right mentor. The system works by having potential mentors list their top skills at Circuit, Intel's internal employee site. Partners click on topics that they want to master, such as leadership, Intel culture, or networking. Then an algorithm computes all of the variables, and the database spits out a list of possible matches.

In New Mexico, a team decides which mentor best suits the partner. At other Intel locations, the partner chooses one mentor from the list. "I knew that people would want instant gratification," says Kevin Gazzara, Intel's mentoring-program manager within the human-resources division. "If the mentoring database didn't match you immediately with a few potential mentors, people wouldn't be as likely to take part."

Once a match is made, an automatic email goes to the mentor asking her to set up a time to talk. At a required class, the mentor and the partner learn some simple but vital guidelines.

1. The partner controls the relationship. Partners, not mentors, set up meetings and decide what they want to work on. According to Intel, mentoring relationships that last from six to nine months work the best.

2. Put the details of the relationship in a mentoring contract. While not binding, that contract creates accountability that goes far beyond traditional mentoring relationships. "I would never have carved time out of my day to focus on something that I wanted to learn," says Stephanie Wilson, a training manager who was mentored in New Mexico. "But I knew that someone was depending on me to think and learn, so I focused."

3. Both the partner and the mentor decide what to talk about. Once formality is out of the way, candor and privacy take over. The limits of what can and can't be discussed are set by the partner and the mentor together, not by the people who run the program. "We don't have mentoring police," Ballew says. For Wilson, that "no-holds-barred" approach was as welcome as the structure. "I wanted someone outside my department to bounce ideas off of," she says. "Not to criticize my group, but we often think alike. I needed outside perspective."

Keep the Politics Out

Outside perspective -- not inside politics -- was what the New Mexico team had hoped for when it created its new approach to mentoring. By weeding out the politics, Intel is able to make use of an important asset that many companies never tap into: their employees' vast knowledge. "It's a great medium for the exchange of ideas," says Steve Backers, a corporate college-recruiting manager in Folsom, California who mentors an Intel program manager in Phoenix. "It's about what you want to know, not who you know."

Indeed, unlike many corporations that use mentoring for career advancement, Intel's style is all about learning from someone you have probably never met. That's why this voluntary program is open to everyone -- from workers on the factory floor to senior-level engineers.

Go back to Ann Otero, for example. Most companies wouldn't consider her as a mentor, and it's unlikely that she'd even have the opportunity to be mentored by a senior-level executive. But when she needed help with leadership and time management, she signed up for a mentor who could teach her such new skills. She was teamed up with a senior manager. After working with her mentor, Otero says that she now has enough leadership know-how to feel comfortable speaking up in the high-level meetings that she sits in on.

Keep Trying New Ways

While Intel has a few hard and fast rules about mentoring, the company tries to stay open to experimentation. "The great thing about mentoring is that it shifts easily to meet training needs, whether you're expanding your business or you're not hiring," Lanese says. "When you're growing, it's great to help integrate your people. When you're not, it can help people make the next leap in their careers."

During Intel's growth spurt, the New Mexico team shifted some of its focus to group mentoring, where one manager helps a small group of new recruits. The team matched small groups of new managers -- usually four or five -- with one experienced manager to work on a specific management problem.

Wilson also took part in the group-mentoring project. She says that group mentoring offered a new way to solve problems and learn management skills -- a way that is very different from management training in a classroom. "At a certain point, what you get in a classroom is academic," she says. "With a small group mentoring each other, you get the kind of deep feedback that won't happen in a roomful of people."