There will come a time, when you will get to meet a new colleague. The new colleague is willing to learn, expressed strong interest in staying long in the company and is determined to prove their performance in the company. You have been assigned to be a mentor, and are accountable for her to adjust to the new environment.
However, repeated questions keep coming and you suddenly feel that the new entrant might not be the most suitable for the role. You really want to help her, but you remain clueless how.
Here’s How.
Understanding the root of the problem
Different people come in with different learning capacity. Some people have a preference over a learning style over the other. It is important that you understand that fact and respect the fact as well. If you feel that your training is not effective, you might want to understand further with regards on how else the person can be more receptive to it. You can instead ask “I understand that you are still experiencing some difficulties with regards to learning. Is there any other way I am able to better help you with?”
Sometimes, the problem could be you. You could have been a terrible person to instruct, or you do not explain to them the rationale of why things are done in a certain manner. If you are a terrible trainer, you could get someone else to do the coaching and guiding.
Training Evaluation
It is always a good idea to evaluate your employee’s training to understand which of the parts of training did your employee understand the best, and which one is not the best. Through understanding that, then you could cater your subsequent training to emphasize on the one that the employee might not be unsure of.
Encourage Questions
The worst thing you would want to do is to discourage an employee from asking questions. If employees are unsure, it would be good for them to clarify by asking questions. If your culture discourages questions, employees would deem what they deem fit which could result in operational errors. With operational errors, you would then encounter all the difficulties to rectify the errors over the long run.