How do you know that a mentoring program or mentoring partnership has worked?  In most cases, organisations and individuals carry out a form of evaluation - that is reviewing the 'instance' of the mentoring program and/or the mentoring partnership to assess the outcomes.

Evaluation in a mentoring context can consist of questions that assess:

• The mentoring program itself - eg. communication, support, education, administration etc
• The mentoring relationship itself - eg. what worked, didn't work, highlights, challenges etc
• The mentoring outcomes - eg. were the original mentoring objectives achieve.

For the most part - we are all familiar with the concept and need for evaluation.

However - what about validation?

Validation in a mentoring context is actually reviewing and assessing why mentoring was selected as an intervention or support system and asking whether mentoring itself has achieved the outcomes that an organisation was looking for.  Essentially - validation 'tests' the original business case made for mentoring.

Validating mentoring could be done as part of a organisation wide survey such as a people and culture survey, employee engagement survey, retention drivers survey etc.  What you are seeking to ask essentially is:

How did mentoring impact on the original business driver and what evidence do we have that it has successfully (or not successfully) achieved this business outcome?

Evaluation is review activity that should be done 'per program' and 'per relationship', while validation should be conducted each 2-3 years to ensure that mentoring is actually meeting the needs of the organisation. 

In the end - both evaluation and validation are important partners to maintaining the demand for mentoring at an individual level and the business case for mentoring at an organisational level.

Look forward to your thoughts.

Yours in mentoring

Gilly Johnson, Director