A pillar of the strategy to deliver OTML’s vision is to nationalise the management and executive leadership by 2023 and 2025. This requires a systematic and systemic approach to leadership and cultural transformation to achieve these outcomes and deliver sustainable performance. The Manager to Advisor Program has been designed to support Ok Tedi in achieving its vision to provide non-national managers with frameworks to transition into advisory roles and support national leaders to meet their highest potential. 

Program Objectives

To assist managers (particularly expats) in their transition to an advisory role by:

1. Providing tools that assist managers to advise rather than do it themselves
2. Supporting consistent understanding and use of development plans and monitoring progress
3. Promote continuous improvement
4. Providing training in how to advise when corrective action may be required
5. Build advisor confidence in how to avoid “stepping back in” when times are tough

What is advising? 

Advising and mentoring can be thought of as on a continuum of most directive to least directive. Where advisors provide a lot of directive advice, mentors are more likely to gently guide their mentee to solve their own problems. As a manager, you probably already provide advice and use coaching skills, but not to the degree you might if providing advice was the core function of your role. 

Coaching skills underpin the ability to ease-off outright advice giving, and ramp up the non-directive support. An advisor may spend 30-40% of their time coaching, whereas a mentor might spend closer to 85-95% of their time coaching. 

Building your coaching skills will help you facilitate the types of conversations that empower (i.e., coach) new managers to become more independent and will serve you well as both advisor and mentor.

Mentoring is a developmental relationship between a less experienced individual and a more experienced person. Mentors are people who have walked a similar path to the one the mentee wishes to follow, helping mentees by providing guidance and support to improve how they perform in their current role and life, or the ongoing development needed to follow their desired future career and life path.

Mentors may often be your manager or someone at the next level up in an organisation. They may use their own experiences and learning to give insight to the mentee and may also use models (e.g., iGROW) to provide a structure for asking questions of the mentee that can assist them to think through and take responsibility for their life and career goals. We all develop best when we take responsibility for our own development.