The importance of mentoring and developing your skill goes all the way to the top of any company, when we look at Richard Branson, Tony Robbins and the like, they have mentors themselves. Mentoring is like training, we are always learning new things every day, so why do most of us not have mentors?
All team members should be mentored and helped to create a road map of their career and then have management’s support to work towards it.
Why most managers don’t mentor
Many managers see they are too busy to fit in a mentoring session either with a few of their team or to be mentored by higher management. Some will take on mentoring and not put a level of importance on it; while others don’t know what they are doing in order to lead as a mentor.
It is considered a high honour for someone to ask you to mentor them; they see you have attributes that can pull them up and also to challenge them to higher levels of thinking.
The importance of mentoring
Anyone who wants to be a better asset and learn new skills and methods; mentoring can help you to develop as an individual. Many people recommend you have a personal and a professional mentor, to help you develop the skills and attributes in those respective fields.
Finding someone who you ‘admire’; either in a professional sense or personal is the best choice and to find someone you can relate to.
It’s a big commitment from both parties to undertake mentoring together, consistency and frequency is critical. Don’t over commit or under commit, choosing the time you can stick to. It is like Personal Training at a gym; if you start by going every day for 2-3 hours you will burn out and find excuses. Ease into the time together.
Passing on the knowledge
Just like you have one, it is good to be open to mentor others; passing on the knowledge and developing your communication skills are all benefits to mentoring others.
So find someone and ask them if they can mentor you; I will provide more information about where to start etc in coming posts, because sometimes we need some guides to use to get started before we go free-form.
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