By Kristen Perez, Elevanta.
A mentor is an individual who actively and willingly passes knowledge and wisdom onto another person. Businesses are increasingly embracing this practice as a professional development tool used to internally grow their employees. Through mentorship, organizations are achieving dramatic improvements in efficiency, productivity, recruiting and retention. It also aids in helping employees navigate new organizational cultures while providing a cost-effective way to ensure the passing of institutional knowledge and leadership skills from one generation to the next.
Mentorship relationships also make people feel valued and that there is an investment in their learning and development, a trait highly sought out and valued among the millennial workforce. In a sense, mentorship, when implemented on an organizational level, increases the likelihood that a business will not only retain employees, but will also foster leaders at a more concrete rate than without such a practice.
However, like any other relationship, it takes work on both sides to make mentoring work.
How to Find a Mentor:
Mentors can be anyone; whether it be a friend, a coach, a teacher, a supervisor, someone older or younger and so on. However, the one common denominator and defining characteristic of a mentor is this: They have more experience in the specific area in which you are looking to succeed. The following lists a few key points to aid in your quest to find a mentor and remain confident throughout the process.
Know what you want. The first thing you need to know when seeking a mentor is what you’re looking for from the arrangement. Determine your specific expectations and the role you want a mentor to play in your career. Clarifying your objectives, goals and expectations will ensure that you find the right mentor and that the relationship benefits your professional goals.
Think outside of your walls. The right mentor may very well be found in your office, or they may be located several cities over. However, it helps to have a mentor you can meet in person as this allows for a seemingly more organic and intimate professional relationship, which is what a mentorship aims to foster. Seek out potential mentors at business associations, community groups such as business chambers of commerce or rotary clubs.
Set up a meeting. Set up an informational interview with each of the possible mentors you have in mind to discuss a possible mentoring relationship. The location of the meeting should be somewhere that is mutually comfortable to allow open and confident communication. Also, do not let yourself be blinded by personal chemistry versus professional chemistry and how well that individual aligns with your goals. Keep in mind that it may be beneficial to have more than one mentor. If you fear that you may be taxing on your mentor’s time, then multiple mentors may be the answer.
Be clear with your mentor. Once you have found someone who agrees to be your mentor, make sure you share the same commitment to your expectations. Be clear on the time required and the availability of your mentor, and establish a regular meeting schedule of topics you would like to discuss.
Be a good mentee. Just as there are specific characteristics of a successful mentor, there are attributes that make a good mentee. Remember, a mentor is doing this from the goodness of his or her heart, so being a good mentee is the best way to ensure the relationship enjoys a healthy, purposeful existence. A mentee needs to be committed, willing to ask for help, open and receptive to learning and trying new ideas, able to accept and act on feedback, able to communicate appropriately and effectively, able to meet on a regular basis and be personally responsible and accountable.
How to Become a Mentor:
Becoming a mentor can boost your own professional development, as well as help others. Through constant reflection on your own best practices and mistakes, your continuous self-reflective analyzation often reveals myriad characteristics that may have gone overlooked. However, good mentors, must not only be successful and experienced within their own positions, but must also desire to develop other people, seeing their growth and success as their own.
Define your Goals. Establish guidelines for the relationship early on with your mentee. They may have concerns about specific issues such as confidentiality, so talk those through in your initial meetings. Your ultimate goal is to empower your mentee and it can be more effective to ask constructive yet challenging questions. Ergo, your role is to guide, not enforce. If your mentee turns out to not be fully committed to the process, reaffirm your boundaries for the relationship. Your time is valuable and mentoring should be enjoyable and mutually beneficial.
Reflect and learn often. Being a good mentor also requires a willingness to reflect and share one’s own experiences, whether positive or negative. One of the greatest benefits in having a mentor is to hear reflections of failures so they may learn to avoid them without enduring the same setbacks. Akin to a teacher, the characteristics of a good mentor are to crave and seek out education themselves, in other words, they must desire to always learn.
Be a Role Model. As a mentor, your actions are being evaluated, so you must set the bar for yourself just as high, or higher, than you would expect from your mentee. Your goal is not only to provide direction and advice, but to get your mentee to act upon them. The greatest and time proven tactic is to act in the manner in which you want to see others achieve.
Invest Yourself. The number one piece of advice for those wanting to be a mentor: Invest yourself into the mentorship. It takes sincere interest to better yourself and your mentee. If your heart is not in it, your mentee will be able to tell and there is nothing more demotivating, causing more harm than good. By caring about your mentee and their goals, you can gain more out of the experience than you can imagined.