Mentors are for life and not just Christmas!
WES London Cluster
Cluster Coordinator for London Area at Women's Engineering Society
Written by: Vince Pizzoni
Mentoring can be the key to unlocking the entry gate to your career journey and in developing a breadth of contacts that help move it forward. In this brief article I’m going to touch on why mentoring is important, some key tips, how to find a mentor and some of the more recent developments.
What is Mentoring?
Mentoring describes a relationship where a more experienced individual shares their greater knowledge to support the development of a more junior, less experienced person. It calls on many of the skills used in Coaching such as questioning, empathetic listening, clarifying, and reframing, but in contrast a mentoring relationship tends to be longer term. In companies mentoring is often used in succession planning. Mentoring works best when it moves beyond the directive approach of a senior person “telling how it is” to one where both parties learn from each other. In fact, a mentoring relationship is an opportunity for both encouraging sharing and learning across generations and career experiences.
Why is Mentoring important?
Mentoring brings many benefits including increasing professional growth, an opportunity for self-reflection and developing a strategic focus, offering encouragement, and boosting confidence, identifying strengths and areas for improvement, providing networking opportunities and improving both interpersonal and leadership skills. From a company perspective mentoring can lead to increased employee loyalty and retention, an increased internal knowledge base and an overall stronger organisation.
From a personal perspective I have seen many benefits of mentoring in my career not least business success, career growth and sponsorship into executive and board positions, developing a strong network and positive mindset open to new opportunities, handling career transitions more effectively and learning more about reverse mentoring, EDI and allyship.
How do I find a Mentor?
When you join an organisation, they often provide you a mentor. The mentor may also be someone that can support you through chartership. Of course, you are reliant on that mentor/mentee relationship working early on which is not necessarily guaranteed! I would recommend you find at least two mentors; one internally in the company and one externally. As you start networking and developing relationships you will come across people that you feel you have empathy with and have all the traits of someone who you would feel comfortable opening up to and be a source of wisdom and support. Reach out to them and ask them if they would be willing to be a mentor. You have nothing to lose because even if they say no, they might know someone else they could recommend. In some circumstances the mentor may find you! I know in my experience I have had people ask me and there have been others that I offered my services. Gut feel can be as important in getting a mentor as can taking a more analytical approach! At the Women's Engineering Society we have a mentoring scheme called MentorSET (https://www.wes.org.uk/activities/projects-programmes/mentorset/)?for women in STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) which offers cross-sector independent mentors from around the UK.
Tips to develop the Mentoring relationship.
For the Mentor: Get to know your mentee, know what you can offer, set clear expectations, deliver honest feedback, be an empathetic listener, ask relevant questions, allow them to learn from mistakes, ensure they are set measurable goals and work to deadlines, celebrate successes and be a role model.
For the Mentee: Drive the relationship, understand what you want to achieve, keep to meeting timings and commit to completing tasks, reflect on what you are doing well and improvement areas, be honest and transparent in your communication and step out of your comfort zone.
In many situations the Mentor you have isn’t for life! As the mentoring evolves it may become apparent that a different person is needed and both parties need to be open and honest to that situation. This has happened several times in my career and is totally natural.
Don’t forget as a Mentor to look for Continuing Professional Development opportunities online or in person. These sessions can be good to both keep up to date with new developments and be a source for learning best practices.
Reverse Mentoring and Sponsorship
About 30 years ago the concept of reverse mentoring was introduced and since then has become much more commonplace in organisations. This relationship stands the traditional mentoring one on its head in that a senior employee or individual is mentored by a more junior/younger person. There are several benefits associated with reverse mentoring including empowering new leaders, fostering a more inclusive culture through partnering from underrepresented groups, increasing knowledge share across the organisation, building strong connections, and improving staff retention. In my career I have found it invaluable to have direct feedback from some of my more junior staff and this has created positive change.
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While mentoring is important in developing important aspects of your career journey, the role of sponsorship is key in achieving your goals. A sponsor is generally a senior employee/executive who supports your career in an organisation through conversations and actions with other senior management. Cultivating sponsors will come through networking but may also come through a mentoring relationship as it did for me. My mentor was a senior executive who later became a sponsor and undoubtedly was a major factor in how my career developed. Don’t neglect the development of sponsors!
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Curious lateral thinker who utilises analytical skills and common sense to create simple answers to complex problems (MBA CMgr FCMI)
1 年Thank you- great article on a subject so often undervalued
Chairman’s Award GM/NED/Professor Chemical and Environmental Engineering/Mentor & Sponsor to 1000s/POWERful Women Ambassador/IChemE Davidson Medal 2024/TechWomen100 Gender Balance 2024/WES Men As Allies 2024/Gym fanatic
1 年Thanks for having me WES London Cluster. You're all superstars and changing the world for the better!