February 15, 2023 2 Min Read
The Benefits of Mentoring
You may have been asked to become a mentor and thought to yourself; “What’s in it for me?” Well it turns out that there are several benefits to volunteering your time to help guide someone’s career and goals.
Up Your Leadership Game
Being a mentor is actually a great way to practice and grow your leadership skills. In particular, it can help your coaching style of leadership, where you are helping break down barriers and motivate others to strive for their best. As a mentor, you will be called on to have difficult conversations and provide honest feedback, both valuable leadership skills.
Build Your Personal Brand
A mentor-mentee relationship is a conversation built on trust and mutual respect. As a mentor this becomes an opportunity to become recognized in your organization for your communication skills and your ability to help less experienced fellow employees advance their careers. Good communication as a mentor involves both listening and explaining. Listening skills that get honed in mentorship are open-ended questioning skills, patience and resolve not to get directive and jump to solution. Explanation skills require you as a mentor to reflect and seek to understand for yourself, in order to be able to explain. These skills describe a growth mindset, willing to be curious, learn and grow yourself, while helping others.
Speaking of growth mindset, are you open to learning from your mentee? A mentoring relationship can help the more experienced employee learn new skills with respect to technology, trends and tools. Be open to the idea that your mentee might have a thing or two to teach you as well.
Building Talent
Mentorship provides the opportunity for the mentor to give back to the company by helping train new and upcoming employees, making those around them more competent and satisfied. It’s also a great opportunity to find up-and-coming talent for promotions or special projects. Mentorship is helpful for both the mentor and mentee’s networks.
