Mentoring

What is Mentoring?

Mentoring is when you empower a person or a group of people by supporting them through their growth journey and imparting your knowledge about specific subject matters to them.

Who is a Mentor?

A mentor is a person who guides an individual or a group of individuals through their journey towards professional and personal growth. These people will take time to understand the skills of the individual and try to understand the basic inclinations of the individual. Mentors help the individual by directing them to a path that they will actually be able to follow.

A mentor will devote their time and energy to the improvement of the individual in all the ways that they can aid with.

What are the 3 types of mentoring?

The three most common types of mentoring include:

1. Traditional One-on-one Mentoring: In a traditional one-on-one mentoring session, a mentor is supposed to provide their guidance to a mentee either through a thought-out program or by themselves
2. Distance Mentoring: Distance mentoring, as the name suggests, is the kind of mentoring that is imparted in the form of guidance by a distance. You would find that in this scenario, the mentor is in a different location from their mentee/mentees
3. Group Mentoring: In this scenario, a mentor is supposed to provide guidance to a whole group of mentees

What is the purpose of Mentoring?

The purpose of a mentor is to help a person, or a group of people make active improvements for personal (and professional) growth. These are people who help the mentees to see clearly, push their limits and empower them so they can become the best versions of themselves.

What are the 4 main stages of mentoring?

There are mainly 4 stages of mentoring. These include initiation, negotiating, growth, and closure.

1. Initiation is where a mentor gets to know the mentee closely and understand their approach to work and life.
2. Negotiating is where a mentor helps the mentee decide goals and come up with growth strategies.
3. Growth is the phase where the mentor becomes a guide, advisor, and a friend to the mentee to help them achieve their defined goals through relentless motivation.
4. The last mentoring stage is closure wherein a mentor acknowledges that the training has been completed and it is also where they would recognize and celebrate the growth and success that the mentees have achieved during this time.

How does Mentoring work?

Mentoring is an organic approach to teaching, guiding and advising a person. A mentor is supposed to get to know the mentee, then help them understand their abilities, define a set of achievable goals, and support them through the process.

They share their learnings in the form of information they have learned through studies and past experiences. Mentorship goes beyond the jobs of a teacher and beyond that of a friend. This long-term relationship is something a mentee will look up to their whole lives. Because the mentor will invest their time, resources, and energy on the growth of the mentee.

What is Mentoring vs Coaching?

While mentoring has a more organic approach to skill growth, coaching is a more structured teaching approach. Mentoring offers the mentees a chance to grow in all aspects of life whereas coaching is tailored to help the people achieve a set of specific goals.

What are some examples of Mentoring?

A mentor can help a mentee improve some of the most basic and some of the most complex aspects of their lives. For example, a mentor will help their mentee in building up their:

• Leadership skills
• People skills
• Confidence
• Self-esteem
• Presentation skills
• Work-life balancing skills
• Career choices