How Becoming a Mentor Can Benefit You
Most successful people will tell you that they didn’t get to their current position without any help. Receiving support and guidance from someone that they trust and respect has driven lots of people to achieve great things. If you’ve ever had a mentor yourself, you will know how invaluable their advice can be.
Mentors can help to bring out the best in their mentees, boosting their confidence and offering career advice to guide them on their path to career success. There are certainly many advantages that can be gained from having a mentor. But how about being a mentor yourself? Mentoring can seem like a one-way street, with the person who is being mentored experiencing all of the benefits. However, this is rarely the case. Most often, the mentor themselves gains a lot from the mentoring relationship, too. Here are some of the ways that becoming a mentor can benefit you:
Enables You to Make Further Connections
Getting noticed and recognised for doing a good job is something that everyone wants to achieve. However, sometimes it’s easy to feel overlooked. Often, knowing the right people and fostering relationships with others within your organisation is helpful in encouraging more opportunities to come your way.
Putting yourself forward to become a mentor will instantly increase the amount of connections you make within your company. Your organisation may have a mentorship scheme in place which you can sign up to, this will help you to instantly connect with others that share the same passion for sharing their experience and knowledge.
Throughout your mentoring journey, you will establish many new connections. So, as well as helping your mentee to develop, you will also help yourself to engage with a larger number of colleagues in your company.
Your mentee themselves can become a valuable connection for you to make. As they develop and grow, they may introduce you to further connections to expand your network even more. The more people you mentor over the years, the more connections you will make, allowing more opportunities to come your way in the future.
Enhances Communication and Interpersonal Skills
Having excellent communication skills is vital when you become a mentor. However, this isn’t something that comes naturally for everyone. As you settle more into your role as a mentor, you should find that your communication skills start to improve as your professional relationship with your mentee develops. You will soon learn which communication methods gain the best response from your mentee.
The relationship between yourself and your mentee is actually an excellent opportunity for you to focus on your communication and interpersonal skills in the workplace and to build on them. This can be of great benefit for yourself in all future communications not just with your mentee, but with all of your colleagues.
Provides Opportunities to Gain Extra Qualifications
Becoming a mentor can seem like a daunting prospect at first. You may concerned that you don’t know the best way to mentor someone, or that you don’t have the required skills to be a successful mentor. However, becoming a mentor actually provides you with the opportunity to further your own professional development.
To confidently become a mentor and to boost your leadership skills, it’s wise to gain a qualification in this area. But first, you need to find the best course for your needs. The Benefits of an ILM Coaching & Mentoring Qualification stretch beyond simply gaining another professional qualification. The course provides you with professional credibility and opportunities for ongoing CPD opportunities to ensure your skills are constantly kept up-to-date.
Having extra skills to add to your CV is always a huge advantage, and becoming a mentor will ensure that you have a highly marketable skill to discuss at interviews. Being a mentor should provide you with many demonstrable examples to talk about when answering interview questions and shows how you apply your skills in real-life situations.
Raises Your Profile Within Your Organization
Becoming a mentor is about supporting your mentee and helping them to develop and thrive. This demonstrates your willingness to step up and out of your comfort zone and shows a true dedication to the business and your colleagues. However, by becoming a mentor, you will naturally raise your profile within your organization.
Taking on the role of a mentor instantly commands respect and demonstrates that you are someone who is well thought of and trusted within your company. As your mentee progresses their career and discusses the support you provide with others, you will be viewed in even higher esteem by your colleagues.
You may soon discover that you are invited along to more meetings to discuss your role as a mentor, and to offer advice to other would-be mentors and mentees within the company. This is especially beneficial if you hope to develop your career in a coaching capacity and make developing others a central part of your role.
Encourages Reflection
One of the most surprising things that many people discover when they become a mentor is the impact it has on their own career and the way they view it. Working with a mentee provides you with the unique opportunity to view work life from an entirely new perspective. This fresh perspective can help you to re-assess the progress you are making at work, and to chart your achievements so far. This can be an eye-opening experience, as you may not realise just how much you have managed to achieve and the level of work you have put in to make these achievements happen.
Working with as a mentor with someone who is just starting out in their own career can reconnect you with your own goals and dreams. Having this opportunity to reflect is an excellent way to ensure that you are on the right path at work, and help you to set new goals to aim for and work towards. This chance for reflection will help breathe new life into your career while you support someone just starting theirs.