What is mentoring?
Mentoring is considered as a transfer of knowledge within an environment and a relationship that is personal, especially between a person who has greater knowledge and experience in a particular topic (mentor) and another who has a desire to learn about it and develop new skills (mentee).
What are the benefits of being a mentor?
The main benefit of being part of a mentoring is directly related to a deep sense of belonging and reason of existence for the mentor. That is a desire to help others, who are probably not in the same place personally and professionally, but who seek to develop new skills to achieve it. This is not from one point of view of “I have more knowledge than the other.” If not from “I have made mistakes, I have learned from them and I’m willing to share my experiences.”
The mentor mainly seeks to find a person who requires this support to contribute to society and, consequently, to generate a sense of well-being for himself and others. This goes beyond themselves wishing to continue their training, is to have a motivation to help students, institutions or the same people who are part of their immediate environment. Finally, doing this can result in a chain of knowledge in which the mentee then becomes a mentor and so on.
What are the benefits of being a mentee?
Anyone seeking to grow either professionally or personally with the support of a mentor is considered a mentee. They are the ones who have doubts, concerns or preparation plans based on their environment.
Mentors are experts in problem solving, giving mentees the ability to learn how to ask the right and more challenging questions to extract as much knowledge as possible and the right accompaniment to their needs. Thus, in obtaining soft and hard skills that will make the mentee stand out in a widely competitive world of work. In addition to understanding the path and process that needs to be followed to reach an expected outcome, while their own decision-making criteria are formed. While also going through a process of introspection in which it is decided how the advice and guidance of the mentor can be applied for the fulfillment of the objectives set.
Who else benefits and in what way?
Mentoring programs have been around for many years, and it is not a question of replacing the teachings of schools, but of enriching them with the development of new skills that allow us to have a global vision about our life and career plan.
For entrepreneurs, a study by Forbes shows that 92% of small business owners agree that mentors have a direct impact on the growth and survival of their business. Mentoring works as advice during all stages of business creation. Ranging from the development of an idea to the subsequent effective decision-making.
While, for schools, it allows coordinators to be trained to develop new teachers and to teach students. For whom, eventually, a mentor can be a guide to career selection and advise on the steps to take when entering the world of work efficiently and making the most of their potential.
For companies, 71% of FORTUNE 500 companies have been found to use mentoring to ensure knowledge transfer exists. This is also something that is very present today to encourage employees to have ever-higher positions, encourage the growth of professionals, seek development within the same company and talent retention to grow.
A study by Youthmentor shows that mentoring reduces “symptoms of depression” and increases “social acceptance, academic attitudes, and qualifications.” Above all, in situations like the one we live in today, where our physical social interaction has been limited, mentoring has become essential to have constant contact with a person with different areas of experience and knowledge than our own, continue our constant learning, generate a base of contacts and be guided in the steps we must take to achieve our personal goals, academic and professional.
