So what is mentoring? I find that mentoring involves an experienced party (the mentor) providing both challenge and guidance to someone who has actively sought their help (the mentee) and wants to learn and develop along a certain path or in a particular direction. When we look up “mentor” in the dictionary, we often find definitions such as “a wise and trusted counsellor” or “an experienced teacher”. The similarities of mentoring skills to those of teaching are significant but whereas many teaching roles are pre-defined, the role of the mentor should always be shaped by the needs and drivers of the mentee. In practice, however, this is not always the case.
It seems we have all had different experiences of something that’s been called mentoring throughout our lives and careers. I was surprised to see from a recent straw-poll of colleagues and associates that people believe the benefits of mentoring to vary from “a waste of time” to “I couldn’t get by without it”. So why the disparity?
Firstly – certain mentoring relationships are forced upon us (for example – when moving into a new job) and don’t even consider the skills that the mentor needs in order to be able to fulfil their role effectively. Very often, we find out the mentor has had the role forced upon them too. Hint: When choosing a mentor, pick one who genuinely wants to be a mentor.
Secondly – the relationship must be driven by the mentee. Too often, we see mentoring relationships being driven by a mentor who continues to provide challenge and direction but without the buy-in of the mentee.
Thirdly – the mentor must be objective. This stems back in part to the first point. If a mentor is allocated to you from within the same workplace, they may struggle to put aside their own career ambitions and commitments when giving you the advice and counsel you need.
Where we see the most effective relationships develop are where a mentee is trying to achieve certain goals and actively seeks a mentor to help guide them along the way. That way, the mentee genuinely goes about choosing their new guide in a logical way. They will try to pick someone that is more experienced than them, who they trust and who will challenge them to succeed in whatever they choose. Relating this to your career, the right mentor can help you:
- Identify your own priorities and options
- Generate ideas about your future career direction
- Work out skills and learning gaps that need to be bridged
- Develop a career plan and a strategy of how to achieve it
- Challenge you to achieve your goals and help you to assess your progress against them
In summary, a well chosen career mentor can help you to have an interesting and fulfilling career and enable you to get what you want out of it and not what someone else wants out of you. However well chosen your mentor is though, they can’t make your career happen for you. The choices will always be yours and the relationship needs to be driven by you.