Definition of Mentoring

Mentoring the 2nd career

Definition of Mentoring

What is Mentoring ?

Introduction to Mentoring.

 

Mentoring is a relationship between two individuals, where one person (the mentor) provides guidance, support, and advice to another person (the mentee). The mentor is typically someone who has more experience or knowledge in a particular area, and the mentee is someone who is looking to learn and grow in that area. Mentoring can take many forms, including one-on-one meetings, group sessions, or online interactions. The goal of mentoring is to help the mentee develop new skills, gain new insights, and achieve their personal and professional goals.

Mentoring is an opportunity for a more experienced individual to guide and share their knowledge with a less experienced person. It allows them to discuss career development, work challenges, personal growth, and other areas that have the potential to enhance career success. Mentoring can also help mentees make better decisions by providing advice and support while they are handling tasks they may be unfamiliar with or anxious about.

As the mentor has more experience than the mentee, they can draw from their own past experiences to provide invaluable advice. These relationships are usually longer term because it takes time for the mentor’s influence to affect meaningful change in the life of their mentee. Some types of mentoring place more emphasis on developing skills and framing career objectives in an effective way while respecting the wants and needs of both parties involved.

 

 

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Mentoring is a powerful tool to support people in their learning and development process. It  involves establishing an effective trusting relationship between the mentor and mentee, aiming towards personal growth with opportunities for reflection and improved understanding of challenges faced as well as successes enjoyed.

A mentor will help identify development goals individually suited to each mentee, preparing them with the necessary knowledge or resource tools they need to successfully engage in their organizations’ activities or they future career while fostering self-determination and autonomy within learner’s competency set.

Ultimately it is believed that mentors deliver professional values such as accountability, responsibility and respect for others without fail enabling the mentee to become well equipped in achieving success both professionally and personally.

 

 

 

Unlock the Power of Mentoring:

Discover Why It’s a Game-Changer!

 

Mentoring involves not just sharing experience, but also active listening, reflection, encouraging and support, empathy, friendship., teaching, coaching and everything that mentors find useful for their mentee.

It’s a supportive relationship between mentor and mentee. Mentors provide guidance, support, and feedback while also creating a safe space for open communication and exploration. Mentees benefit from having access to an experienced person who can help them tackle challenges in their lives, such as career changes or personal development.

The mentor has an active part to play by offering advice and guidance from her personal experience at the same time using they experience just to help mentee to find his own way.

The significance of mentoring in organization is widely acknowledged.

 

It is common for employers to use various approaches to mentoring based on the mutual needs of mentor and mentee.

Mentoring plays a key role in the recruitment and retention of talent within an organization. It helps an organization to identify suitable candidates from internal sources, who are able to fulfill job requirements while also exhibiting appropriate behaviors, attitudes, and goals. By developing and nurturing mentoring relationships, organizations can foster trust and comfort that help connect prospective employees with their new workplace culture.

The importance of mentoring goes beyond the initial recruitment stage. Establishing a mentor-mentee relationship can enhance establishment of sound professional and personal relationships with organizational members which strengthens collaboration, communication, influence and respect among staff members. Mentoring brings out the best potential in team members by helping them understand their roles better so that they can perform at their best level towards the achievement of organizational goals; it also serves to reduce turnover rate by creating long-term employee loyalty. Ultimately such long-term positive relationships between managers, mentors and mentees will help create a vibrant work environment where employees keep evolving through shared experience and learning opportunities.

 

 

 

Can you explain the distinctions between mentoring and coaching?

Mentoring is an important aspect of professional growth in the business world. Different formal mentoring programs provides a platform for managers, executives and emerging professionals to gain skills, knowledge and an understanding of their current and future roles. The mentor serves as a guide throughout this process by providing advice on how to stay successful, offering helpful guidance and introducing contacts that may be beneficial to the mentee.

In contrast, coaching focuses more specifically on enhancing the performance of employees within their current role. This can include identifying strengths and weaknesses in performance, helping individuals develop strategies to improve their results or training that helps them build key competencies needed for their profession. Coaching also works towards helping foster confidence within employees so they can take on additional responsibilities. Whereas mentoring provides continuous guidance over an extended period of time, coaching is usually short-term support used while working on specific goals within a particular job function.

Why to be a Mentor? Benefits of Mentoring for you.

 

For the mentor, there are many rewards to providing guidance and support. Not only can mentors help others develop their skills, but they also benefit from companionship and mutual connection through shared experiences in work or other aspects of life. By expanding generational and cultural perspectives, mentors can gain new insights from those different from themselves— potentially inspiring them as well. Furthermore, mentors often report strengthening leadership skills, technical capabilities as well as interpersonal connections through serving as a mentor for someone else. Lastly, mentors find great satisfaction in knowing that someone was able to learn something valuable from their experience and knowledge sharing activities.

Could you provide an explanation of the purpose of mentoring?

The purpose of mentoring is to facilitate growth and learning. By providing guidance, mentors can support a mentee in their professional development while also passing on the wisdom they have gained from their own experiences. Mentoring challenges mentees to evaluate themselves and determine what knowledge and skills are needed for successful career advancement.

One of the greatest benefits of a mentor-mentee relationship is that it can help reduce an individual’s sense of uncertainty about approaching a new situation or confronting a difficult decision. It creates a beneficial form of accountability between the two participants – where both sides can learn from one another and provide support throughout the process. Moreover, having someone with more knowledge and experience available to give valuable input opens up unique opportunities for new ways of thinking; helping the mentee develop intellectually, emotionally, and professionally as they advance further in their career. Sometimes mentors help you identify your mentoring goals, learn how to be a mentee and benefit maximum from it, create a successful mentoring relationship, and identify a potential mentors for the next step. 

 

 

 

Various forms of mentoring relationships.

Mentoring relationships can take many forms, and it’s important to understand the various types in order to choose the right one for you or to create a successful mentoring program. The most common formats are those of traditional mentor-mentee pairings, along with group mentorship and peer mentoring partnerships. Each has its own advantages and disadvantages. Traditional mentorships involve older mentors sharing their knowledge with younger protégés through consistent guidance and teaching. In group mentorship, multiple mentors teach a larger group of participants at once, creating an opportunity for more individuals to gain insight from faster. Peer mentorship involves two people who can relate as both peers in a certain field as well as providing help here and there, ideal for close-knit networks. Lastly, reverse mentoring focuses on having junior workers share their expertise in specific areas they excel in while still learning from their more experienced colleagues.

In any type of relationship that involves being a mentee, it’s important to understand the responsibilities associated with this role. First and foremost is to learn and grow – after all, the role of being a mentee is what makes being part of this experience so enjoyable!

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Mentorship relationships come in a variety of shapes and sizes, ranging from informal career mentoring/coaching to more formal programs. Each type of mentoring program provides its own unique opportunities for growth and learning, depending on the individual needs of both mentor and mentee. Generally speaking, however, all mentoring relationships involve two essential parties: a mentor and a mentee.

The role of the mentor is to provide guidance and support in various areas such as career development, educational exploration, professional development, emotional well-being and so on. Meanwhile, the job of the mentee is to be present in meetings with their mentor; actively listen to their advice and to decide is it fits to them; put it into practice; reflect on successes or failures; set personal goals as well as create a vision statement, which outlines how they want their future to look. Doing these activities empowers the mentee to take ownership of their development while allowing them to learn from the tactical advice provided by their mentor.

Which types of mentoring to choose?

Mentoring is a powerful tool used to offer guidance, impart knowledge, and build skills. There are different types of mentoring techniques that organizations may employ including one-on-one mentoring, group mentoring, and peer mentoring.

One-on-one mentoring occurs when an experienced individual works closely with a less experienced counterpart. This type of relationship allows for personalized attention towards the needs of the mentee so that he/she can get the best learning experience possible. Moreover, it also gives mentors an opportunity to share their experience and cultivate greater understanding within the pair.

Group mentoring is a more widely applied model utilized by schools and youth programs as multiple people can be involved without needing extra resources (time or money).

Using peers mentoring,  peers from the same role or department or with shared experiences come together in order to receive and provide support for each other’s growth and development. This helps in creating an overall positive atmosphere as well as especially building confidence in those who are partaking in this mentorship technique.

There exist various mentorship models that extend beyond traditional one-on-one relationships, providing comparable learning opportunities while also advancing larger organizational goals. For example companies could be interested in to use Shadow Boards, Speed, Cascade or Network mentoring. If you want to know if it would be useful for your company – let us know contacting our experts on mentoring.

Seeking benefit from mentoring organizations indeed have to think about structured mentoring programs, management of all mentoring process, not to forget any parts of the mentoring cycle and mentoring skills of their mentors. Only then will the organization benefit from an effective mentoring relationship between their employees and reach engagement with mentoring requires from both sides.  

 

 

 

Consider the appropriate circumstances for implementing mentoring.

Mentoring is a powerful tool for any organization striving for improvement and a better working environment. It helps ensure that employees stay engaged, motivated, and have the support they need to succeed. This method of providing structure and guidance through professional relationships can be especially beneficial when introducing new initiatives or bringing about cultural changes. Furthermore, mentoring can also help promote ethical behavior in an organization by setting expectations at an individual level.

When assessing whether or not to launch a mentoring program, organizations should start by considering about the readiness of organization for Mentoring.  Is the organization ready structurally, culturally and financially to embark on such an initiative? Additionally, organizations may want to turn to online resources like blog posts or webinars with more information on launching successful programs tailored to both mentors and mentees. Leveraging these resources can equip leaders with knowledge about best practices for developing effective mentor/mentee relationships.

 

 

 

 

Developmental mentoring is one of mentoring approaches.

 

Developmental Mentoring, mainly used in Europe,  is an approach to professional development that focuses on the personal growth of the mentee, regardless of their hierarchical status in comparison to their mentor. A mentee may receive guidance and advice from someone higher up in the organization or they can receive support from peers who are on a similar career trajectory, such as in peer-mentoring. Such dual-mentoring can help mentees to hone valuable skills and widen their perspectives. Additionally, reverse-mentoring offers opportunities for mentors who are lower down the org chart to share knowledge with those higher up and develop themselves in the process. Thus, developmental mentorship allows for unexpected learning opportunities even when hierarchy works against knowledge exchange.

This newfound flexibility means that consultancies can foster a variety of unique relationships between mentors and mentees by emphasizing mutual growth. Mentors no longer have to be found at higher positions but from any level or area of expertise despite their rank within the company. What’s more, cross-mentoring could open doors for greater diversity behind successful leadership which may result in more innovative solutions given a wider range of thought and experience.

How can I increase my chances of being promoted thanks to mentoring?

Mentoring Culture

How can I increase my chances of being promoted thanks to mentoring?

Who is your mentor?

A decade or so ago, my position got me to attend many events related to research funding.

In these events, also often participated one female scientist. She would speak up or ask questions whenever she had the opportunity.

 The area she represented was relevant then and is now – gender equality in science. The only problem is that every time we listened to the same questions, the same reproaches and suggestions repeatedly.

 

I told myself then that I would NEVER become like her. Because when she stood up or raised her hand, everyone around her wanted to scream in despair that they would have to listen to the same thoughts AGAIN.

Now I often wonder if I have become like her because I see mentoring everywhere! 

When I study the situations mentioned in the articles and posts, I keep thinking that:

  • the solution is just about finding a good mentor!

  • this organization needs to sort out its mentoring program because they forgot a critical point 😊

  • etc.

Today, reading articles in the “Harvard Business Review,” I wrote down how simple mentoring would solve the identified problems in four separate places!

I remembered that researcher who talked about gender equality because one of my highlights today was reviewing a study about risks to women’s careers.

The study shows that more women than men who have young children would choose to work full-time from home in recent years.

According to the study’s authors, this is a worrying finding, given the evidence that off-site employees have lower rates of promotion.

What did I note in my review of this study?

The question “How can I increase my chances of promotion through mentoring? “. Even if you work not in the office!

And some answers like – Mentor your colleagues and find different mentors within your organization.

This way:

  • Expand your social network.

  • You will have more “warm contacts” within the organization.

  • There will be more opportunities to develop your competencies. Especially those that are not reflected in your current work.

  • You’ll be more involved in the organization, even if you work from home!

  • You would learn new things, even if you didn’t expect to.

  • You will develop your leadership skills.

The list goes on and on, but you get the idea 😊.

 

Successful organizations are no longer asked, “DO YOU HAVE A MENTORSHIP PROGRAMME?”

 

Asked -” What mentoring programs do you have?”

 

Successful professionals are no longer asked, “DO YOU HAVE A MENTOR?”

 

 

Instead, they are asked, Who is your mentor?

 

 What is your answer?

Can computers (artificial intelligence) be Coaches or Mentors?

Mentoring the 2nd career

Can computers (artificial intelligence) be Coaches or Mentors?

Mentoring and

Technology

  • This was a question I heard one early morning when I joined a conference that had participants from different parts of the world. All of them were someway involved with mentoring or coaching.

So can they ?

We, humans, are learning:

 

  • How to be a Mentor or Coach

 

  • How to listen

 

  • How not to interrupt

 

  • How not to judge

 

 And computers don’t even need to learn any of that!

There were all sorts of opinions, and probably all of them were all right.

The discussion concluded that, at least for the time being, it can only be a great tool for self-reflection. Similar to certain coaching books that offer a sequence of questions, that we can ask ourselves.

Data protection is also worth bearing in mind:

 

  • A mentor or coach will keep all the information discussed during the meeting to himself/herself so that the risk of such information being leaked is minimal.

 

  • With computers, many more people will have access to this data. And that’s not even counting the possibility of data theft.

 

Confidentiality is therefore already considerably weakened.

Perhaps in the near future, we will have more and more of these tools, and there will be somebody who will require them. Just as self-help books are suitable at the moment.

 

What do you think about computers being mentors in our near future?

Well-being thanks to mentoring. How is our health related to mentoring?

Mentoring the 2nd career

Well-being thanks to mentoring. How is our health related to mentoring?

Have you ever thought about how mentoring and your health might be related?

 

Do you feel stressed?

 

Do you have some personal or job-related issues?

 

Are you struggling to communicate with other people? (Colleagues, family, etc.)

Mentoring may help you in all these situations. But how?

  • The mentoring relationship involves the provision of emotional support to the mentee. When you have a Mentor, they listen and give you advice. They also challenge your negative self-views. All this enhances your self-confidence and self-esteem.

 

 

 

  • Mentors may promote your physical health and well-being by engaging in activities with you. For example, if you choose “Walking Mentoring,” you will go with your Mentor for a long walk. You will likely hike somewhere in nature. “Walking Mentoring” can be a significant benefit to your physical and mental health.

 

 

 

  • Mentors may help you deal with relationships that include your parents, siblings, colleagues, etc. They can help you choose strategies to solve problems at work, home, or school.

 

 

 

  • A mentee’s experience of a trusting and close relationship with a mentor helps them create a positive relationship with others.

 

As you can see, Mentoring can be associated with positive health benefits, and relationship outcomes.

What are the similarities between mentoring and an umbrella?

Mentoring the 2nd career

What are the similarities between mentoring and an umbrella?

The benefits of mentoring

I think that everyone could find an umbrella in the house. And most of us carry it around every day, whether in a handbag, backpack, or car.

 

Well, if you don’t carry it with you every day,  you possibly check the daily weather report or look outside the window to check if it will rain or not. If you think that it will rain, you’ll take your umbrella with you for sure.

 

After all, when it’s raining outside, and you need to get from point A to point B, you probably want the journey to be as comfortable as possible. I mean, no one likes getting rain blown into your face by strong gusts of winds.

 

The umbrella may not help you avoid the rain altogether, but it can help you feel more comfortable and safe in this situation.

A mentor also won’t help you to avoid the harsh situations (how we can’t avoid the rain or snowstorms) that await when you:

 

  • Changing your job or looking for new career opportunities;

  • Creating a business;

  • Coming back to your job after a long break;

  • When problems arise in the family;

  • Encountering a difficult disease;

  • Encountering similar situations where you don’t feel good but don’t know how to change it.

 

However, the mentor can hold the umbrella over your head thanks to his experiences and knowledge!

Even if the weather outside is horrible, it is much easier to travel through it with someone who already has some experience traveling.  And with someone who can also lend you an umbrella!

 

 

  • When we are struggling with something, a mentor helps us to see the situation from a different angle;

  • When they notice that we are blinded and heading to a cliff, a mentor can stop us;

  • With their knowledge, they can show us a straight path, so we don’t go down alleyways;

  • When we feel lost and afraid (because there is “thunder, it’s cold, dark, and there is heavy rain” in our life), they show and convince us that not everything is that bad;

  • When we don’t understand something, a mentor give us a question, which takes off our blindfold, and suddenly everything becomes clear;

  • A mentor introduces us to other people who could be our next companions in the future.

 

So mentoring is like an umbrella. It makes the journey from point A to point B much easier!

Have you already started looking for a mentor? 😉

What better not to do in Mentoring? Two strange mistakes that mentee’s make

Mentoring the 2nd career

What better not to do in Mentoring? Two strange mistakes that mentee’s make

How do sometimes mentees surprise Mentors?

I am connected to the TEAMS,  sitting in a  meeting alone and waiting for my mentee to join. But the mentee is not joining.  

        

There are no messages either to inform me that the mentee won’t be able to join.

I send him a message myself informing him that I am in the meeting and asking if everything is okay? No response.

1st mistake

 Mentees are not joining the planned meetings.

Yes, I know that anything can happen. If it’s a case and you can’t be in the meeting, you should call, send a message and warn your mentor that you can’t join.

 

If a situation like this occurs rarely and is not a reoccurring issue, I’m sure that every mentor will understand and reschedule the meeting time.

 

In my situation, this was our second attempted meeting. We planned the first meeting a week ago. With 11 minutes left till the meeting, I received a message from my mentee. It said that he is still not free and that we have to delay the meeting by half an hour or reschedule it for tomorrow.

 

 I couldn’t join later that day, and tomorrow was a Saturday which was not okay for me. We agreed to have the next meeting a week later.

 

Right now, I am sitting in this postponed meeting after one week and writing this very blog.

Well, of course, it’s because I am currently sitting in the meeting alone.

My mentee isn’t here. And this time, he didn’t warn me even 11 minutes before.

 

As my mentee wrote me later, he just forgot this meeting.

2nd mistake

Ask someone to be your mentor when you don’t know why you need this mentor.

Having a mentor has recently become fashionable.

It seems like some people think like that:

I don’t know why I need precisely this mentor, but I will take it if the opportunity arises. If I can participate in some mentoring program and have a mentor for free, I will do it. We’ll see what they can show me. Maybe something will be helpful in the future. ”

 

___________________

 “One day, Alice came to a fork in the road and saw a Cheshire cat in a tree.

– Which road should I take? – she asked.

His response was a question :

– Where do you want to go?

– I don’t know,  – Alice answered.

– Then, – said the cat, – it doesn’t matter.” (Lewis Carroll, Alice in wonderland )

____________________

 The provided information of what one of my future mentees wishes to achieve during our mentoring reminded me of this dialogue of Alice and the cat.

“I arrived at this program to hear and understand the opinions of different people… “

Later some interests are named – He works in a financing-focused job, there is interest in cryptocurrencies, stocks.

 And not a single one of these subjects falls into my areas of mentoring.

 

 So I continue to try to understand how I can help him.

Once again, I asked him how can I specifically help, and why he chose me. This is the answer I received.

 “One of the main reasons would be the long-term experience you have in mentoring, which by simply talking with you would positively affect my experiences. “.

 

Then he names some more fields he is interested in. Communications, marketing.

None of these fields matched up with my areas of mentoring!

 

What does he expect from me?

“It would be beneficial and nice to hear your story, your faced problems and how you overcame them, what lessons you’ve learned from life, and of course your successful strategies which helped you become what you are now.

 

I stopped asking questions and decided that we would talk everything over in the first meeting.

 

 

Of course, you can object and say that the mentee knew what he wanted from our mentoring relationship. He wanted to hear my life story.

 But mentoring is not listening to someone’s biography.

Yes, the mentor will share his experiences, which will help the mentee make their own decisions in the future.

However, mentoring is a mentor’s and a mentee’s collaborative work.

 

Sometimes, mentoring is needed just for the mentee to set his goal and learn how to be a good mentee😊. Then, for this mentoring, a goal could be to figure out how mentoring could help the mentee or figure out where the mentee wants to go. Then later, it would be easier to look for another mentor who could help them in a different field.

 

 

Let’s not be afraid to name it so like it is. In this case, a mentor is only needed to help the mentee decide what he wants and how mentoring could be helpful.

 

 

But if you expect these experts in many different fields to sit down with you and tell you their stories, share their knowledge while you sit there and listen.

 

Well, I’m sorry to disappoint you. Mentoring is not about that.

 

In mentoring, mentor and mentee are thinking partners. The mentor uses his own experiences and knowledge in a specific field to help the mentee move forward, but the mentee has to bring all the “resources” to the meeting.

When you already have picked a mentor before you even meet him, ask yourself the question, “Why have I chosen this specific mentor, and how can they help me? “

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