Business Bites: Getting ready for mentoring

You’re never too old or to young to be mentored

One of the great tools that you can access as a member of ABDO is our mentoring programme. But what exactly is mentoring?

The primary role of a mentor is to use the experience and knowledge they have gained in their career to help guide a mentee towards their future career ambitions. A good mentor should be unconnected with a mentee’s day-to-day work, in order to provide objectivity and a bring a focus on the future and the mentee’s personal development.

You are never too young or too old to be mentored. A good mentor can help keep a career challenging and fulfilling, even for those in the later stages of their career. No matter where you are in your career, there is always someone who knows more than you, who can help you gain a better understanding of yourself and improve your skills.

Long-established tradition

The art of passing knowledge and expertise from one person to another through a mentoring relationship is not new, it’s a long-established tradition. A mentor can help in many situations, including moving to the next career level or overcome challenges in an existing role, helping discuss different alternatives, ideas and plans. They may just be able to suggest different options and give a different perspective that may not have been considered. The mentee is the final decision-maker, but having a mentor to consult with can give more confidence in making decisions.

Working with a mentor is a chance to:
• Make time for personal learning with someone more experienced
• Work on career progression
• Gain impartial advice and an alternative perspective
• Have a non-judgemental sounding board for ideas
• Focus on overcoming challenges and developing new skills and knowledge

Benefits for mentors

People often think mentoring is only one way traffic, but don’t underestimate the valuable insights a mentor can gain while helping a mentee find their path and the opportunity to learn from them.

Here are a few of the many benefits for those considering becoming a mentor:
• Being able to pass on personal knowledge and experience to see others grow
• Having the chance to “give something back” and to provide support to others
• Gain the chance to work on new and exciting challenges

Before embarking on a mentoring relationship, there are a few things to consider to determine if it is the right path for you.

When to seek a career mentor

Although any time can be a good time to enter a mentoring relationship, it becomes more meaningful when you have a career goal in mind and/or want to pursue a career challenge or opportunity. Career goals can include many things; overcoming knowledge or skills gaps, clarifying career choices, or simply to achieve a better work-life balance. Our mentoring platform contains several tools to help you identify your key needs and set achievable goals. Once you identify your motivation(s), you will feel more prepared to enter and progress in a mentoring relationship.

Purpose

The first thing to consider is why do you want to be a mentor/mentee and what specific skills can you offer/do you need? The more carefully you consider what skills and experience you are looking for/can give then the better the mentoring match will be. During the first stage of the mentoring process, you will be asked to complete a profile that will be used for matching and as part of this you will need to be clear on what skills, knowledge, and expertise you are looking for/can offer.

Mentoring is like any journey, if you don’t know where you want to end up when you start the journey, how will you ever know if you have arrived? For this reason, it is important that you consider what it is you are looking to achieve from the mentoring relationship. Being clear on your purpose will help you to find a mentor who is best placed to help you. Once you have done that, the next stage is to clearly define the challenge(s) you are facing.

Where are you now?

Within our mentoring platform we have inbuilt needs analysis tools that you can use ahead of your first mentoring conversation:
• The SWOT tool will help you identify Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, Threats
• The GSTAR tool will help you identify goals, the situation you are currently facing, current thinking, actions you are considering and the results you are expecting

Where do you want to be?

Once you have completed your needs analysis, you can work with your mentor/mentee to set Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic, Timebound (SMART) goals, which will help you to give a real purpose to your mentoring relationship and help you get real results. Our mentoring platform has a goal setting tool that will help you to set SMART goals.

So how does our mentoring platform support your mentoring journey?

The mentoring platform has been designed to make finding, connecting, and communicating with a mentor as easy as possible. Alongside the tools to help you define and set your mentoring goals, the platform allows the mentee to search for mentors who would be the best match for them in terms of the skills and experience they are looking for. Mentors can choose to accept or decline requests from mentees and can switch their availability for mentoring on and off.

The platform has a recently introduced an in-built meeting tool that allows you to arrange meetings, set agendas, record meeting notes, and action points and a video chat tool to enable you to conduct virtual meetings from within the platform. Finally, the platform is packed with videos, guides and checklists to guide you through your mentoring journey.

If you would like to find out more or to join our programme, simply click here.

For more great mentoring resources visit the ABDO Business Support Hub Leadership section.