What exactly is Mentorship?
Mentorship is a unique relationship with a person who cares enough about others to invest their time to guide them in certain areas of life and share valuable information with them. Mentors can be our family and friends, co-workers, programs offered through certain businesses/organizations, or even people you may come across once in your lifetime.
Check out the video below to learn about the impact of mentorship.
How do you find a Mentor?
Have you ever been doing something, like cooking and thought “I’m going to find someone I believe does a really good job at cooking and learn what they know and do so that I can practice and get better at it?” This is you feeling the need to seek out a Mentor (someone you can learn from).
Think about a time when someone gave you advice on how to resolve a problem you had, or how about a person you were excited to be around because you felt you learned a lot of interesting things from them whenever they were around. You experienced mentorship! Great isn’t it?
So, how do you really find Mentors? Well, it depends. Sometimes the people you are around the most (like family, friends, etc.) will naturally teach you things while other times you can seek mentorship from certain organizations that offer workshops, your employer might assign a mentor to you, online communities, or you can come across a mentor while going about your day, you can even watch inspiring videos, and listen to uplifting music and learn a lot from them too.
What is the purpose of Mentorship?
The main purpose of mentorship is for the person with experience or some form of quality knowledge, to share this information with their mentee -> (this is you) to help the mentee learn and grow either at work, in their personal life, in school, etc. Most mentors also feel a sense of accomplishment or pride for contributing to the success of others.
For a mentor and mentee relationship to work well, both parties must be willing participants. The mentee -> (you) must be open to listening, learning, and asking questions when possible (this is a natural part of the learning process). After hearing or seeing what the mentor has to share or show you, It’s important for you -> (the mentee) to practice what you have learned from your mentor.
A good mentor will be patient, understanding, and caring, provide necessary constructive criticism without being judgemental, and be willing to share valuable information because their main goal is to help their mentee do and be better in life.
A mentor can not make you successful, but they can help you increase the likelihood that you will accomplish your goals and make the journey toward doing so less challenging by providing unbiased guidance and sharing valuable information with you. Your job is to ensure you listen, learn, ask questions, and consistently apply that knowledge so that you can accomplish your goals while your mentor cheers you on.
Benefits of Mentorship
- For Mentees, mentorship is a tool that can be used to increase confidence, encourage personal growth, gain feedback and evaluation, increase skills, further professional development, build your network, etc.
- For Mentors, mentorship is a tool that can be used to develop their leadership skills, fulfill their sense of purpose to others, gain new perspectives, further professional growth, and broaden their network.
- Organizations can benefit through talent development, fostering a positive culture, identifying potential leaders, enhanced productivity, and knowledge transfer.
Conclusion
We all crave opportunities to learn and grow as individuals and there are many individuals, organizations, and other sources of information that can help us do that. Be sure to embrace these opportunities and on your way to accomplishing personal or career growth remember to give back to those who are where you were by becoming a mentor to them too.