Mentorship is a kind of a widespread word nowadays. Many people use it during their employment and business practice. But, the true essence of this word is not always explored well. If you are a person who wants to discover the core meaning of this term, keep going with your reading. And we will start from the basics.
What Is Mentorship? In a Nutshell
Many sources that mention this, a bit mysterious word, exist. Who is a mentor, and what its main purpose is? To make a long story short, this is a person who possesses industry-specific experience and transfers such through direct communication with the representatives of a younger generation. This person can guide and help people on their pass of becoming professionals too.
What is the purpose of a mentor? It is not limited to sharing valuable experiences only. It is also focused on pointing out the right direction to young professionals, guiding them, and also preventing mistakes when this is possible.
Does Career Mentorship Is a Really Necessary Thing?
The answer here depends on your priorities. If you are an independent person, having a mentor may distract you. But, you are risking losing valuable time finding out how things work at the same time.
A mentor can facilitate your life by simply guiding you through the process and giving valuable feedback on what mistakes you have (even if you don’t notice such) and how to prevent those.
A good mentor may help you with setting goals and expanding your network of professional contacts. Working with a mentor may speed up your professional (and even personal) growth. Do you still want to skip mentorship if you have such an opportunity?
Signs to Recognize a Good Mentor among Others
Who can be a good mentor? It is very difficult to give a single receipt in this case. But, there are some general points to pay attention to while choosing a mentor.
First of all, this person should possess expertise in the field where he/she works. This should be obvious from the results of one’s work. They are not always associated with different awards presented nearly in each industry. The tricky thing here is that not always a person who gets some award is a good mentor.
For instance, such awards may be given to a person who is very keen on competition games but not so good at making tasks that are directly associated with one’s profession. He/she may probably help you with learning skills of competition games, but it is hard to imagine that such a kind of a person may start mentorship activities for obvious reasons. So, choose better a person who is skilled at doing tasks directly related to one’s profession. This person has something special to share with. If you admire the result of work, that may be the exact person.
The next thing you should pay attention to is the person’s ability to share such knowledge, explain those in an easy manner. A person may know a lot but experience difficulties with explaining such knowledge to other people. This can lead to wasted time from your side (and the other’s person, too) and also to a wave of anger from the side of your mentor. Yes, it is not enough to have lots of experience only. It is extremely valuable to be able to share with such in an easy manner.
The last point to pay attention to is the flexibility of a mindset and approaches to work a mentor has. This is especially important for a business mentor. Employment and business processes are sometimes similar, but it is more than not desired to follow templates in each case. A mentor should have industry expertise, of course, but review each situation on a case-by-case basis and create respective decisions or solutions. A mentor should be able to explain the basic or common approaches and also provide reasons for choosing alternatives for it in a concrete situation.
Why Mentorship Is Useful for Business?
You may naturally wonder why mentorship is important in the case of business, as this sphere nearly always requires competition. That is true, but to participate (and form) truly interesting (and efficient) competition, ensuring proper knowledge exchange is necessary.
The true point here is that during mentorship activities, not only mentees learn, but mentors are also able to revise or adapt existing approaches. They can also add new knowledge to the industry. This knowledge can work twice better, taking into account the fact that such is based on the previous tested experience. The business can only benefit a lot from such exchange of knowledge and its upgrade.
So, mentorship is a useful thing both for the personal growth of a single employee and the growth of the entire organization, or even sometimes an industry. That is another sort of corporate culture that creates a favorable environment for knowledge sharing, testing, and increase. Find opportunities to enjoy mentorship of such kind.
