Skip to main content

Why Mentoring Matters to Me

[PLACEHOLDER]

Many of us will manage other people at some point in our careers and mentoring is a huge aspect of managing fellow colleagues. Like any other skill set mentoring requires practice and if done correctly can yield benefits for both the mentor and the mentee. 

Photo by Tim Umphreys on Unsplash

 

Personally I have always loved interacting and working with people. However I was always skeptical about my abilities to manage others. I felt it was a lot of responsibility to motivate and mentor others to succeed in their roles. It all changed about a year ago when my company started building an offshore capability. I was christened into a mentoring role to groom our offshore talent pool. By nature I am someone who likes to help others. I strongly believe that it’s our fundamental duty to help those we can to the best of our abilities. Thus my eagerness to help others provided the initial fodder to really take up the challenge. 

There were times when I would go to the office very early in the morning so that I could get enough time with our offshore team in eastern Europe and then I would stay back late so that I can prepare training materials for the team. And I would do this while managing my own workload. I must say that it was very challenging managing and mentoring team members who are in a different geographic location and whose first language is not English. I would spend hours on the phone with my offshore team members trying to understand their concerns and challenges and work with them to resolve those challenges. 


Initially it was just a job for me, but it all changed when one of my Toronto colleagues told me that he was very impressed by the work of one of the offshore team members I have mentored. This made me feel very proud. It was very fulfilling to know that I helped someone grow in his role and played a small part in his success. That was my first foray into mentorship. 

This event encouraged me to become better at mentorship and I decided to take up mentoring roles at my local Toastmaster club. And nowadays it has become a passion for me - something I thoroughly enjoy. It brings me boundless joy to see my mentees flourish in their respective roles and succeed in their goals.

Mentoring others have helped me improve myself and has set me on a path of continuous growth. Here are few of the benefits of mentoring that I have come to notice in my own personal experience. 

1. Achieving our individual goals can bring a lot of joy to us like when we get a promotion, buy our first car or buy our first house. However when you mentor others you play a part in their successes thus sharing in the subsequent joy from their achievements. For example each time my mentee gives a speech at our local Toastmaster club or takes up an important role at a Toastmaster session it brings me great joy to help them achieve their leadership goals. Similarly at work when I see one of my mentees getting promoted or moving to a better opportunity it makes me extremely happy knowing I played a small role in their success. 

2. You learn a lot from your mentees. There were numerous times when a mentee will ask me questions that I never thought about or provide insight in a discussion that never crossed my mind. It only broadens your horizons as you participate in helping others. They can also challenge your long held beliefs and help you adapt to changing times. 

3. It teaches you to be patient and listen. One of the key components of good communication is active listening, and mentorship is a great way to improve your skills as you need to be a good listener to be able to understand and address your mentees’ challenges.

4. It also teaches you to effectively provide constructive feedback to others by building empathy. A major part of mentoring is communicating feedback to the mentee and ensuring that the mentee benefits from it. 

5. It helps you to become a better leader. As you mentor and coach it teaches you to learn how to motivate and energize others which is essential in a leader. I personally feel teaching someone to use a particular tool or technique is the easier half of people management. It’s the ability to motivate and excite others to succeed in their respective roles is the main challenge and it requires practice.

As I have grown in my role as a mentor I have to take a moment to appreciate the mentorship I received from my past and present managers at work. I have learned a lot from them and my goal is to emulate them and become a beacon of light to my fellow mentees. 

In conclusion I highly encourage everyone with leadership goals to develop their mentoring skills. It’s a great way to help others, to improve communication skills, to learn new perspectives and to become an inspiring leader.

Trending posts

AGILE For DIGITAL AGENCIES

Introduction Some Digital agencies have a project process where waterfalls still plays a big part of it, and as far as I can tell, the tech team is usually the one suffering as they are at the last part of the chain left with limited budget and time for execution. I do believe that adopting an Agile approach could make a Digital Agency better and faster. In this article I’m presenting you just another point of view of why it make sense looking at Agile Methodology.  Why Agile for a Digital Agency? The Agile movement started in the software development industry, but it has being proven to be useful in others as well. It becomes handy for the type of business that has changing priorities, changing requirements and flexible deliverables. In the Digital Agency of today you need a different mindset. Creative will always play a huge role (“the bread and butter”). But the “big guys” need to understand that without technology there is no Digital Agency. Technical resources are

Democratizing AI

Democratizing AI is all about empowering others to use it, by making it available to them. Audiences, such as marketers in a company, will be able to access AI capabilities as part of their MarTech solutions, without the need of being technical. It could also be schools, where the younger generations are learning how to use it in responsible, secure, innovative, and creative ways. This is the year where companies, after discovery phases and teams experimenting, are looking to activate and take advantage of the AI advances. Generated with Microsoft Designer   And so, questions emerge, such as “What to democratize when leveraging AI?” There are common scenarios, as well as specific ones, that will depend on the company, and the industry they belong to. A common scenario, seen in many industries, when democratizing data is the data visualization and reporting . In digital marketing, as an example, data scientists and data analysts can automate reporting, making them available to the clien

Productivity framework for 2024

Recently I was at a Christmas party and I found myself giving advice to a friend on being more productive. I shared the approaches that I take which helped me become more productive at work and in my personal life. The conversation with my friend inspired me to share my approaches in this blog .  Photo by Moose Photos from Pexels   My productivity framework has five key pillars and to remember them I use the mnemonic, POFOR = P lan your tasks, O rganize yourself, F ocus on your tasks, O ptimize yourself with habits and R eflect to ensure you are being productive on the right tasks. Plan Planning is very crucial as it sets the tone for the rest of the pillars. I always found I was more productive when I planned my tasks compared to when I didn’t, and hence planning has become my rule of thumb. I recommend taking 30 minutes at the end of each day to plan your next day. This means prioritizing your tasks and blocking your calendar accordingly. By not doing so, you are at risk of others

Take a break on zero emission day 2024

 Do you know how much you contribute to the daily emissions in your city? How much does the city you live in contribute within your country? How much does your country contribute to the emissions on our planet? Do you know its impact? Do you know why we have a zero emission day? Photo by Pixabay via Pexels Let us start by getting our acronyms right, shall we? You may have heard the term GHG emissions, wondering what that means. GHG stands for Green House Gas. These gases are part of the cause of the rising temperature on Earth. What is interesting about them  is that they absorb infrared radiation resulting in the greenhouse effect. Within the greenhouse gases you find carbon dioxide, methane, nitrous oxide, ozone, water vapour. The vast majority of carbon dioxide emissions by humans come from the burning of fossil fuels. Key sectors to consider for GHG Fuel Exploitation Power Industry Transport Waste Agriculture Buildings Industry combustion and processes Top GHG emissions’ contrib

This blog uses cookies to improve your browsing experience. Simple analytics might be in place for pageviews purposes. They are harmless and never personally identify you.

Agreed