Sharpen your leadership skills
The 2nd Lab
Empowering the new generation of researchers for impactful careers beyond academia.
#Mentoring relationships accelerates learning and boosts #skills for any who aspire to #leadership roles.
There are many potential #benefits of having a #mentor. #Mentors help you focus and gain clarity on issues. They can inspire you and provide encouragement and moral support. They also open their networks to their #mentees, sharing the mentee's skills with a broader #community .
A mentor also provides candid feedback that others won’t. A good mentor holds up a mirror for you to see how your beliefs or perspectives hold you back. In a nutshell, a good mentor helps you discover your hidden strengths. It's akin to having a trusted friend.
An effective way of growing your own leadership skills is becoming a mentor yourself. We don't often talk about the skills we can strengthen from being a mentor. Here are five key leadership skills to consider:
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1. Active listening
For many leaders suffering from information overload, #listening is challenging. It’s difficult to give everyone your undivided attention. Mentoring gives you time to focus your attention on a single person. This time developing your focus will pay dividends in leadership development.
Ben Winn, the Manager of Community at Catalyst shares that a mentor who's a great communicator is also a great listener:
"The best mentors are excellent listeners, extremely patient, and skilled at extracting insights from conversations. They are empathetic, genuine, and truly have their mentee’s best interests at heart. Mentors need to be great listeners, because they should be spending 80% of their time listening, 10% of their time asking questions to probe deeper into important topics, and 10% of their time offering advice. They need to be patient because often the mentee needs to spend time talking through their challenges and potential solutions. The best mentors are focused on leading to the answers instead of simply providing the answers directly. This is also why it’s so critical that mentors be skilled at extracting insights from conversations. They need to be able to read between the lines, quickly gain an understanding of the situation, and then act as a helpful guide as their mentee uncovers potential solutions and next steps."
2. Broadening #perspectives .
Mentoring helps you see things with new eyes. Consider mentoring people who are different from you. This may include people in different industries, millennials, baby boomers, the opposite gender, people with disabilities or personnel with a military background to name a few.
Diversity in mentoring opportunities helps you see multiple perspectives, which in turn broadens and enriches your thinking. Appreciating multiple perspectives will enhance your problem-solving skills by helping you generate multiple solutions to a problem. It's all about developing leadership agility.
3. Sharpening storytelling abilities.
Mentoring is not about telling people to do this or that. Rather it's about showing them the possibilities. One of the most memorable ways of doing this is through storytelling. Stories are the Velcro that can help the message stick. Your experiences can fuel many stories to share in your mentoring.
#storytelling is useful in your own role as a leader. Yet many businesspeople may be reluctant to use storytelling because they feel that they lack the required skills. Practicing storytelling within a mentoring relationship may help. Such relationships provide a safe environment because they're generally based on mutual trust. Storytelling in this arena becomes a win-win for both parties.
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Good communication is also vital in #mentorships . For a mentee to learn, they need to grasp what a mentor is saying. It helps to understand different learning styles to use the best communication technique for your mentee.
For example, if your mentee is a visual learner, advising them to read five leadership books to help them grow is not effective. Rather, a good communicator recognizes this trait in their mentee and can adjust their recommendations.
In addition, there are times when a mentor needs to share difficult news with a mentee. For example, if a mentor needs to critique a mentee’s presentation or report. A skilled communicator knows how to provide honest feedback that inspires rather than degrades.
4. Developing generosity
Mentors must commit to mentoring. Learn how to demonstrate your passion for helping others. Becoming an openly generous person will show your leadership potential.
Becoming a mentor requires work. Good mentors recognize their limitations. They understand that the value of a mentorship relationship comes from seeing the value in another person. Mentees are individuals and have their own needs. Thoughtful mentors don’t compete with their mentees but learn how to support with compassion. ?
Rather, an ideal mentor can let someone else have the spotlight. A mentor who can inspire others will create an unforgettable mentoring experience.
5. Interrogation skills
Asking questions not only helps you understand but can also put things into perspective for your mentee. It can be a great learning tool to help them think of a solution to the issue. When you ask thoughtful questions, it demonstrates that you are listening and thinking about what your mentee has shared. This further builds on the trust that has developed.
Becoming a mentor is one of the most effective ways to develop your own leadership skills. It provides an opportunity for you to practice actively listening, it broadens your perspective, and sharpens your storytelling abilities. You also learn how to be more generous with your time and resources and how to better question and interrogate others. What other skills would you like to develop as a leader? How can you become a mentor to achieve those goals?
If you want to know more about mentoring follow @The 2nd lab.