One out of 10 career moves many professionals regret is not having enough mentorship to enable them to navigate their way through their various career paths. Your personal and professional growth is crucial regardless of what stage you are in your career. And one of the most recommended ways to ascend the ladders of career success is to have a mentor. If you want to understand the importance mentors play in your career, you might need to read to the end of this educative article.
Who is a mentor?
A mentor is an experienced professional who imparts knowledge, experience, and technical skills to a less inexperienced person(mentee). A mentor could be an employee in your workplace or a professional outside your workplace that have your best interest at heart. The relationship between a mentor and mentee is often cordial yet formal so that boundaries are maintained.
How do you find a mentor?
The process of finding a mentor is straightforward. Nevertheless, you have to know what you want out of your career. See below tips for finding a mentor that will be beneficial to your career journey:
- Have a clear path: Not many know what they want from their career. If you want to be a public speaker, you should have a mentor who is more experienced in the field/sector you are in. Clarity helps you find the right mentor.
- Evaluate your core values: You might struggle with being mentored by someone whose values don’t align with yours.
- Look within your professional network: Your professional network could include your previous bosses, teachers, colleagues, friends, and acquaintances.
- Attend hangouts: Going for meetups could raise the chance of you finding a mentor who can upscale your career journey.
- Join communities: Communities allow you to access people of like mind from across the globe. Who knows, your mentor might be in the same group as you.
The Importance of Mentors in your career journey
- Guidance: A mentor will guide you to understand the ropes of your industry. The more reasons, you should find someone in your industry. Because the valuable lessons you will gain from this person will challenge your thought processes and patterns until your career experiences a new turn.
- Accountability: Having someone hold you responsible until you achieve the goals you have set for yourself is one of the essences of mentorship.
- Resources: Books and manuals that contain life-long lessons will be at your disposal; You want to take advantage of this part.
- Network: You will be privileged to have access to the caliber of men this individual interacts with. which could transcend to diverse opportunities for you.
3 Top-tier Ways to Ruin the Relationships with your mentors
Mentors put a lot on the table to ensure that you record enormous progress during your mentorship period. Unfortunately, not many mentees know this truth which could ruin their mentorship relationship or halt it completely. If you are contemplating ways to destroy the relationships with your mentors See a couple of ways:
- Disregard: The fastest way to ruin the mentorship relationship you have established with your mentors is when you begin to show signs of disregard in their presence. Remember, these individuals have prioritized your well-being and growth over other pertinent activities of theirs. The best gift you can give them is your undivided attention and showing up for meetings you ought to.
- Entitlement: This here could ruin your mentorship relationship in split seconds. Someone offering to be your mentor does not make them answerable to you anytime you need them. They have got other activities to handle. When you seek their help, and they are not responsive, kindly wait for their responses and do not make them restless or uncomfortable with your non-ever stop calls or emails.
- Dishonesty: You are embarking on this journey because you hope to seek answers from your mentors to ace your career success. Do not play the Mr/Miss. Perfect attitude to portray the impression of you have no struggles/weaknesses when in fact, you need help the most from your mentors.
How to benefit from a mentor relationship
When you have found a mentor who has got your interest at heart. You must handle this mentorship relationship properly to maximize the purpose of having such an invaluable person in your life. To benefit from a mentor relationship:
- Look for ways to him/her achieve her goals.
- Follow up consistently.
- Keep tabs on assigned tasks and ensure you follow through with them.
Be open during communication, so that your mentor will know where you need help the most. H/she does not read minds. I hope these tips will help you utilize the mentorship relationships you have and are about to have. A mentor is one the help you need to scale in the career world.
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