Light Up with Mentoring

Steve Jobs mentored Mark Zuckerberg. Warren Buffett mentored Bill Gates. Maya Angelou mentored Oprah Winfrey. Christian Dior mentored Yves Saint-Laurent. Socrates mentored Plato. Plato mentored Aristotle. Mahatma Gandhi mentored Nelson Mandela. Audrey Hepburn mentored Elizabeth Taylor. Michelle Robinson (Obama) mentored Barrack Obama. Michael Jordan mentored Kobe Bryant. Kobe Bryant mentored Giannis Antetokounmpo.

Even the most successful individuals need a mentor too! That is what made them successful.

To achieve great success in your career or personal life requires you to have great people around you. People who encourage, inspire, support, and ultimately care for your development, achievements and fulfillment.  Whether you are the mentor or the mentee, the mentoring relationship can propel your career to new heights. This relationship is strengthened when you know that your mentor genuinely cares about you. Having someone believe in your abilities, set clear expectations and provide ongoing feedback is key (1).  

So, what is mentoring exactly?

Mentoring is about learning, and it is relationship-based. The ultimate goal of mentoring is to help both the mentor and the mentee learn and develop. Of course, the main purpose is to develop the mentee, however, the mentor will often walk away having learned new skills and added more tools to their belt. A successful mentoring relationship should be mutually beneficial, but most importantly, its benefits need to be focused on building the capabilities of the mentee (2).

How to choose the right mentor?

There is no one way to choose the right mentor. A place to start is to think about what your goals may be and what are the skills you are looking to develop? For example,

• Leadership skills
• Confidence skills
• Public speaking/ presentation skills
• Work/life balance
• Becoming a better manager and building team collaboration
• Career planning and trajectories
• People skills

Once this is clear, your mentor should be someone you admire, who has demonstrated strength in the areas you want to develop. It is a relationship after all, and it needs to be built on mutual respect (3). 

Not only should you choose a mentor with a proven track record of success in the area you want to grow in. You should also consider softer skills of openness, passion and desire in developing others, thoughtfulness and consideration. Work/life balance is also key to ensure they are available to commit real time on a regular basis, as well as someone who may have been mentored in the past. A willingness to share their failures and personal experiences will also provide a good opportunity for learning. Most importantly, a growth mindset and curiosity in always learning themselves will ensure they are transferring that knowledge. 

What are the real benefits to mentoring?

Like all development, if approached with intention, the benefits are myriad. Not only does a successful mentoring program benefit the mentee, there are also many benefits for the mentor and the organisation. It has proved successful to 71% of Fortune 500 companies where individuals have achieved greater career success through promotions, pay rises and increased opportunities. These companies were rewarded with higher levels of employee engagement and retention, as well as more effective knowledge sharing (4).

Not only is the creation of relationships stimulated, the quality of these relationships deepens, and individuals feel more connected to the organisation. Mentoring also promotes career and leadership development in high potentials, as well as aids the recruitment and retention of talent (1). The time and effort in investing in a formal mentoring program to deepen the quality of relationships within an organisation is incomparable. 

How to get the best out of a mentoring program?

Whether you are the mentor or mentee, being clear about what you want to achieve in the program is essential. The mentor should be mindful of asking open ended questions to foster a coaching approach to their interactions. This will elicit deeper, more detailed responses from the mentee. Here are some useful questions that will ensure an effective start to a strong mentoring relationship.

1. What does success look like to you? This can refer to long term goals and planning or can even help determine what immediate priorities are for a project or current situation.
2. What is the outcome you want? This can be effective when the mentee is facing a complicated situation and may help them look at if from a different angle.
3. What do you want to be different in three to five years?  This will help the mentee reveal how they need to grow or what fundamental changes they need to make to achieve their goals.
4. What are the obstacles you are facing?  Although direct, it allows the mentor to explore the challenges with which the mentee is struggling and opens the opportunity to discuss the individual’s strengths and weaknesses.
5. What can you control?  This effectively shifts the mentee from a place of ruminating to thinking about what they can do about the situation.
6. What are the options you’ve come up with? This allows the mentor to facilitate discussion that ensures the mentee takes the time to give the matter some thought and come up with some solutions is a safe environment.
7. Tell me more.  This statement prompts the mentee for more details about why they have formed their opinions or what helped them reach their conclusions.
8. What are you reading? This gives the mentor an opportunity to get to know the mentee on a more personal level and may uncover more about their interests and hobbies (5).

Overall, mentoring is a great opportunity to be involved in a rewarding and potentially life-changing experience for both the mentor and the mentee. It’s one of the most important things a person can do to enhance their career. It takes time and commitment, but it’s worth the effort in creating opportunities and becoming the ‘most valuable player’ in your life. 

Consider what it will do for you and take the first step in changing one’s horizon, and your own.

To mentor or be mentored?

Either way, there is something in it for everyone. 

Article Sources:

1. Those Who Lead, Mentor. By Lois J. Zachary and Lory A. Fischler. T&D Magazine. March 2010.
2. What Is Mentoring, and What Is It Not? Mentoring Complete. https://www.get.mentoringcomplete.com/
3. How to Find A Mentor as An Entrepreneur (Plus 6 Places to Look for One). By Braveen Kumar. Entrepreneurship. August 2017. https://www.shopify.com/blog/how-to-find-a-mentor
4. Mentoring Matters: Three Essential Elements of Success. By Mary Abbajay. Forbes Magazine. January 2019.
5. The Best Mentors Ask These 8 Questions. By Gwen Moran. Career Evolution. March 2018. https://www.fastcompany.com/40543989/the-best-mentors-ask-these-8-questions