In my last blog (link), we looked at the many benefits that being mentored can bring, from boosting your confidence to enhancing your knowledge and learning. But it’s not just the mentee who can reap the rewards; being a mentor can have positive effects on your own career, too.
Could it be you?
Mentoring is traditionally seen as a senior leadership role – but in the modern workplace this doesn’t have to be the case. Mentors don’t necessarily need to be senior management – they just need to possess skillsets and experience that can benefit their mentees – subject matter specialists, people with a unique background, or insight into a particular industry or culture. Mentorships can also involve peer to peer, mutual mentoring, or reverse mentoring programmes – where senior leaders learn from other employees to deepen their understanding of the changing needs and motivations of their workforce. You can mentor ‘internally’ in your own workplace, or externally, maybe through charities or volunteering organisations.
Consider your offer as being the whole person. What life experiences have impacted on your career? What insight could you bring to support others going through similar experiences? Think outside the box – there are a myriad of areas of personal expertise for mentorship –anxiety, women in leadership, parents in the workplace, grief, menopause, divorce, IVF, the list is endless… And by being visible, you’re also potentially helping others who aren’t even being mentored by you to feel comfortable in raising similar challenges with their line managers.
Why be a mentor?
It’s well-documented that acting as a mentor has the ‘feel-good’ factor; supporting someone to grow, improve and enhance their career can deliver a sense of satisfaction and pride. The mentors I work with love the positive impact they can have on someone else’s learning and development journey. But the benefits are not just altruistic. Being a mentor can help your own career and personal development.
There are many benefits that being a mentor can give you, in addition to the sense of pride and fulfilment in helping others:
- Developing your confidence
It’s not just your mentee that gets a boost; many mentors report an uptick in their confidence, too. Understanding your own strengths, seeing how far you’ve come, and recognising the value you can add are great confidence boosters.
- Reinforcing your skills and knowledge
Building an appreciation of your own strengths and areas for development is a useful benefit of being a mentor, as is the deepening of business knowledge gained through working with mentees in other areas of industry or other organisations.
- Enhancing leadership and coaching skills
Mentorship can be helpful for people who want to progress into management; developing your leadership skills, coaching capabilities, improving your questioning and listening techniques.
- Improving communication skills
Supporting a mentee can involve different communication skills to those used when you’re working with a direct report; greater levels of empathy or compassion, or more reliance on non-verbal communication, for example. Adapting your communication style for the whole person in mentorship gives you the opportunity to diversify your skills and practise in areas you may not have used through being a direct line manager.
- Bringing new perspectives
Acting as a mentor can open a window into other people’s experiences, challenges, and issues; becoming aware of others’ perspectives, ideas and approaches can offer you potentially valuable insights and the opportunity to learn from people at different life stages or from different backgrounds and career journeys to your own.
- Receiving feedback.
Whether it’s about your leadership, communication, listening skills, guidance or your adaptability, the feedback you receive from your mentee can shape your own learning goals.
- Enhancing personal brand and reputation – and that of your company, too
Being known as a subject matter ‘expert’ – the go-to person for a particular skill or knowledge areas – can help enhance your personal reputation and improve your visibility. It can also bring the opportunity of becoming part of a community of mentors, sharing ideas and questions. Your company also benefits; you are helping to create a culture where employees feel valued and supported, encouraged to grow and facilitate continued personal development.
It’s worth considering the wide scope of mentorship – the varying areas of personal experience where you can really make a difference to someone else. Being a mentor isn’t just about helping your mentee getting to the next rung on the career ladder. It can be so much more than that.
Mentoring can help people navigate life challenges that can impact their well-being – and ultimately their performance – at work. Think about your own life experiences and how those affected your career – and how helpful it might have been to have someone who had been there themselves to support you with their insight. Mentorship areas vary wildly – from returning to work after a career break, to handling grief, coping with critical illness, or going through fertility treatment or adoption, moving abroad, or menopause. The list is endless but becoming a mentor can really make a positive difference to people’s lives.
Interested in exploring the idea of becoming a mentor and discovering what it can do for your career? If you want to find out more, get in touch on 07765 894040 or email me at meg@megburtoncoach.co.uk
Featured image courtesy of Unsplash – Brett Jordan (link)
