Denver, May 14, 2015—In his new book Modern Mentoring, released today through the Association for Talent Development (ATD), Randy Emelo provides a new view of the age-old practice of mentoring that modernizes the approach and brings it into the 21st century. He also incorporates real life examples of modern mentoring in practice from leading organizations such as Xerox, Hewlett-Packard, Sodexo and AT&T, sharing the tactics and success companies have had with this new way of doing mentoring.
“The need for mentoring has not decreased over the past few decades when it really started to take hold in corporate settings; however, the need for a fresh approach to mentoring has been desperately needed for some time,” said Emelo, who is president and CEO of River, a Denver-based software company that makes a mentoring and social learning platform for businesses.
Drawing from a rich career, Emelo uses Modern Mentoring to explain why organizations should consider all employees potential mentors, making everyone both advisors and learners. The book offers a blueprint for success with a model that benefits more than the select few and steers clear of forcing connections between people.
“We need to do away with the barriers that surround the current or traditional corporate practice of mentoring,” Emelo states in the book. “We must force ourselves to ditch the spreadsheets, forget the limited populations we designate as being special enough to participate, and abolish the idea that any of us could broker relationships that have productive learning value for every single employee in our diverse workforces. To release the transformative power of mentoring from the narrowly conceived box in which mentoring currently resides, leaders from all areas of an organization—business units, HR, talent, learning, and diversity—must embrace a new mindset about mentoring.”
Modern Mentoring is garnering praise from some of the top names in the field as well as from practitioners.
“It is no secret that organizations are spending money and time to find ways to improve employee performance, teamwork, and productivity. Modern Mentoring offers a simple and practical approach to how an organization can dismantle the traditional mentoring practice in order to achieve improved productivity,” said Sheila Forte-Trammell, co-author of Intelligent Mentoring.
“I applaud Randy Emelo for suggesting that mentoring is appropriate and necessary at every level. He spells out the way mentoring is done today and how and why it is critical to business. If you implement just a fraction of what he suggests, you’ll not only improve the ROI of your mentoring initiative, but you’ll increase retention in your organization,” stated Beverly Kaye, Founder and Chair of Career Systems International and co-author of Love ‘Em or Lose ‘Em.
“Blending vision with practical tips that make Randy Emelo’s concepts relevant and actionable, Modern Mentoring is a must read for those who lead talent development strategies for their organizations,” said Rohini Anand, Senior Vice President and Global Chief Diversity Officer at Sodexo.
Emelo will be presenting at ATD’s International Conference & EXPO in Orlando on May 17 on the topic of modern mentoring, and he will be signing copies of his book during the conference. He can also be found at River’s booth at the conference, #436.
Books can be ordered online via ATD at www.td.org/modernmentor or Amazon. Read a sample chapter here.
About the Author
Randy Emelo is President and CEO of River (www.riversoftware.com), creators of an award-winning social learning platform.
Randy has more than 25 years of experience in management, training and leadership development with military, profit and nonprofit organizations both nationally and internationally. He spent 10 years in the United States Naval service, then moved on to work with profit and nonprofit organizations in North and South America.
Named a 2013 CEO of the Year by the CEO World Awards, Randy is a prolific author, speaker, and thought leader on topics related to collaboration, mentoring, social learning, and talent development. He has worked with hundreds of clients showing them how to blend formal and informal learning into an interactive, relational, and measurable process with social learning and modern mentoring. Modern Mentoring is his first book.
About River
River (www.riversoftware.com) is an award-winning SaaS social learning platform that supports modern mentoring, coaching, and peer learning relationships. River uses a proprietary algorithm to make smart recommendations about the right people, content, courses and conversations employees should be connecting with to improve their skills or share their expertise. The software filters these recommendations through the lens of an organization’s competencies and other factors so that learning is targeted and personalized. Matching can be done by individuals or administrators, and people can create personal learning networks for the purposes of mentoring, learning groups, coaching relationships, and performance conversations. Used by such companies as Xerox, Sodexo, AT&T, and Wide Open West, River can easily scale to fit organizational needs; provides purposeful learning centered on goals; includes reporting and metrics to assess impact; and offers integration options with leading content, metrics, and courseware providers.
Media Contact
Laura Francis
Director of Marketing
River
303-707-0800
lfrancis [at] riversoftware.com
