Mentoring – what’s in it for you?
By Beverley Main
While being mentored is by no means new, it’s only recently been recognised as a great tool to fast track and get ahead in one’s career. Beverley Main, chief executive of the Human Resources Institute of New Zealand, explores what career mentoring offers to the parties involved.
Mentees
Most mentees (i.e. those being mentored) are either getting started in their career or at a point where transition to the next stage is required. For people with well-established careers, while they’ll generally not seek formal mentoring, it’s common to seek an informal peer opinion around major issues, in recognition of how valuable getting an intelligent objective perspective can be.
For those at the beginning of their career, tapping into a mentor’s sector knowledge, experience and networks is invaluable in navigating and advancing their career. Just being able to talk to them about the range of roles offered in a particular discipline, the people to talk to and paths to take provide the clues to reaching the desired result.
A mentor is also likely to know which jobs attract the best remuneration, which employers are better, where talent shortages lie and what the future might hold for the sector or profession.
However, it’s important to note that this information is shared in good faith and only for consideration, as the role of a mentor is not to give advice or coach, but to be a sounding board for the mentee to test ideas on.
Objectivity is a key factor in good mentoring. If a mentee is midway through their career and unsure what step to take next, for example, being objective and even taking on a devil’s advocate role can help the mentee gain clarity around their own abilities, the potential of the role, or organisation in question.
A mentor can also help the mentee increase confidence where lacking as they’ll be more than likely to be able to see what their subject can offer an employer. Of course this can also work conversely, which is not necessarily a bad thing.
Mentors
So what’s in it for the mentor – those doing the mentoring? Given that most mentors have busy and demanding lives, why would they want to commit several hours a month to helping someone get ahead?
Most mentors will recall challenging or difficult times in their own careers when they would have benefitted from talking to someone without a vested interest, a personal agenda or professional jealousy.
Yet finding a neutral, wise and sensible person with time to commit to helping isn’t always easy. What’s more, for many of today’s mentors, there was no such thing as organised mentoring in their day.
Other mentors will be doing it out of genuine passion for the profession they’ve chosen to mentor in. They are committed to helping sustain the profession and its skill base, and want to play a part in develop that talent base.
And, for many mentors, the attraction is an opportunity to understand how the younger members of the profession or sector think, the issues they’re facing and how they might deal with those issues. In some cases there can be a bit of ‘talent spotting’, resulting in a career opportunity for the mentee and a vacancy filled for the mentor’s organisation – admittedly, more by accident than design.
Make the most of mentoring
Membership associations play a pivotal role in the mentoring process, generally as part of the membership benefits offered, without a facilitation fee. They too see the benefit of mentoring as a tool to improve the quality of practitioners within their sector or profession.
In some membership organisations, mentoring is a formal requirement for career development; in others it can be used to help members who are struggling to reach accreditation or recognition on their own.
Whatever the reason for offering mentoring, members should be taking every opportunity to be matched to a suitable mentor as soon as possible in their careers.
The biggest barrier to mentoring is one of supply and demand – good mentors are naturally in great demand and therefore in short supply, but by raising awareness of the value of mentoring, hopefully more people will make themselves available to be there for those that follow.
Beverley Main is the chief executive of the Human Resources Institute of New Zealand; HRINZ is the membership association for those working in the area of HR and represents 50% of New Zealand HR practitioners for further information, visit www.hrinz.co.nz