Mentoring is also an area that is being enhanced by digital communication, with golf industry professionals able to communicate with mentors in remote locations through text messages, phone calls and video chats, or even through online communities. This can be a great benefit to PGA of America Associates who may work in non-traditional roles or at facilities that don’t have ready-made mentors for them.
Essentially, mentoring has grown from traditional one-to-one, in-person relationships to a toolbox of various ways for mentors and mentees to communicate with each other and facilitate the ongoing process of career and personal growth.
What hasn’t changed, however, is the importance of mentoring being based on trusted and ongoing relationships.
“We live in a world of wanting quick fixes, and mentoring isn’t a quick fix,” Marlatt says. “That’s the difference between mentoring and advising. Advising is a transaction, an opinion about doing something this way or that way. Mentoring is a deep relationship, where you’re helping someone grow and succeed over a long period of time.
“Mentoring does help your learning curve, as feedback and best practices from mentors can help compress years of learning into knowledge that helps PGA Assistants and Associates prepare for their next steps more quickly. We all benefit from having wise people around us, but you want to make sure a mentor is going spend the time to make a difference in someone’s life as they try to succeed in this same great profession that you’ve also devoted your life to pursuing.”
Mentoring is a key part of how the PGA of America has worked to increase the number of future PGA of America Professionals in the pipeline. Working to match PGA Associates with mentors at an early stage of their education is helping young professionals stay in the program at higher rates than in the past.
“Mentoring is a significant priority across the spectrum, but especially with PGA of America Associates,” O’Donnell says. “It’s important in Levels 1, 2 and 3 – certainly during Level 1, since you have to get through that to move forward. We are making sure PGA Associates have that mentorship guidance so they hear positive stories from the field and have resources to help them get through challenges in all of the career paths, and that sets them up for success across all points in their careers.
“We see the matriculation rate improving, and that’s a good thing for the entire golf industry.”
Nurturing young professionals creates the family environment that so many PGA of America Golf Professionals have experienced in their careers, creating the connections between individuals that lead to lifelong relationships. Programs like PGA LEAD, now in its ninth cohort of leadership training for PGA of America Members from a variety of diverse backgrounds, and the PGA WORKS Collegiate Championship are also helping to identify and prepare future leaders within the Association.
“Putting mentoring front and center is very intentional on the part of the PGA of America,” says PGA of America President Don Rea Jr. “We have 8,000 PGA Associates in the queue, and there’s nothing more important than making sure that those of us who’ve been in this business for a while are reaching down and pulling them up.
“Mentoring is in our DNA, it’s in our culture of coaching and serving the game. And it’s important to realize that mentoring is good for the mentor and the mentee. We can all coach each other up at any stages in our careers.”