Finding a Great Mentor
Are you feeling less than certain about your career, how to achieve your goals or what your goals are?
Have you plateaued in your career?
Maybe it’s time to find a mentor, someone that can help you to the next level.
But how do you find the right Mentor?
A mentor doesn’t have to be someone from your chosen field, it is not essential to have similar personalities or backgrounds, they can come from anywhere. Evidence shows that successful relationships occur when mentors and mentees share values.
What makes the right Mentor for you?
You may want to think about the following before seeking out a Mentor:
- What are you hoping to achieve through mentoring? What do you need a mentor for? How will you know you have achieved your outcomes?
- Is mentoring the best way froward for you? Will it meet your needs?
- Are you prepared to commit to a mentoring relationship, do the work, be accountable? What sort of relationship do you want with a mentor?
- What experience, knowledge, skills, are you looking for in a mentor? Is this someone who can help you advance your career, introduce you to their networks, help you move in a different direction? What sort of person would be best to be able to meet your development needs?
- What can you bring to the relationship? A mentoring relationship is 2-way, the mentor needs to feel that they are getting some benefit from mentoring
- Who do you already know that could become your mentor? Think beyond the workplace. What networks do you belong to?
- How will you approach a potential mentor?
How to find a Mentor
- Target one or two people as potential mentors. Talk to people who know the mentors, what is their reputation? Are they interested in developing other people? Do they have time?
- Make yourself visible. You have to make potential mentors aware of your existence. Can you join mutual networks?
- Show you have ambition and want to improve your abilities
- Ask the potential mentor, formally, in person, to be your mentor. They will either be positive, flattered even or they may make helpful suggestions as to who else might be more suitable.
- Look for someone who enjoys sharing knowledge and is delighted to impart skills, contacts and expertise – not someone who hoards them as a way to maintain power.
- Look for someone who is a good listener. Great mentors tend to be people who listen to understand. They ask follow-up questions and they make sure they’ve understood before they react.
- Seek someone with a network that may be useful to you, you’ll be introduced to a world of contacts it would otherwise take you years to develop.
- Seek out someone who take joy in the success of others and want them to get ahead. Self-absorbed people never make good mentors.
- Look for someone who’ll give you honest, constructive feedback, your best mentors will be the people who pull you aside and tell you what you need to hear – even when you don’t want to hear it.
- Lean toward finding someone to follow whom others admire and respect. Sometimes, these are not the most popular people, but there’s usually a reason for universal admiration and respect.
Once you have found a mentor and benefitted from a mentoring relationship, pay it forward by becoming one for others.
Next Steps…
If you would like to explore mentoring either for yourself or your organisation, please get in touch.
More information is available at: www.fptrainingltd.co.uk or email me at: Fiona.porter@fptrainingltd.co.uk or call me on: (+44) 07711 967649
