3 Key Reasons Leaders Need Mentors

No one achieves success overnight with no help, completely on their own. In this digital age, it can often appear that an entrepreneur builds empires on his own through networking, blogging, closing deals, making truckloads of social media content while also being a real estate mogul on the side and earning an MBA online in the evenings.

This is far from the truth. Every successful leader, entrepreneur has a support system. The support system is usually a team standing behind them all the way, a dedicated spouse or, most often, a mentor to blaze the trail.

Great Leaders, great success is much easier to obtain if there is a guide to help read the map.

Oprah Winfrey had Maya Angelou. 

Mark Zuckerberg was mentored by Steve Jobs.

Bill Gates was mentored by Warren Buffet.

Without a mentor, even the most skilled leaders or talented people will drown until they find someone to show him the ropes along the way.

Here are 3 key reasons leaders need mentors:

Guidance

Whatever new paths, new technologies or new ways of doing business emerge, you need someone who has been there before. There are fundamental principles of work, experience and human relations that are timeless and these principles are best learned from an experienced hand.

Regardless of the time or technology, every successful leader had to deal the dynamics of human relations and team building. These soft skills can’t be learned from text books alone and it pays dividends to be mentored in these arts.

Every mentor will also share their journey, wisdom, hard-won lessons to make your path much easier.

Time

Warren Buffet said this about time: “It’s the only thing you can’t buy. I mean, I can buy anything I want basically but I can’t buy time.”

Time is your most important asset. No matter how many opportunities or investments get made, time is the one thing we can’t purchase or get back.

How we spend our time will make all the difference in the world on the journey to success. A mentor can share their success and failures to help you spend your time wisely. For every success a mentor has, there are a multitude of failures that go them there.

“I’ve missed more than 9000 shots in my career. I’ve lost almost 300 games. 26 times I’ve been trusted to make the game winning shot and missed. I’ve failed over and over again in my life. And that is why I succeed.” - Michael Jordan

We don’t have all the time in the world to make all the mistakes necessary to come out the other end a success. Failure is inevitable and it is a great teacher, however a mentor can drastically cut failure down and speed up the process of success.

Accountability

This point specifically applies to those already in some kind of leadership or management position. While a mentor can hold a mentee accountable regardless of where they are positioned, leaders need this more.

A team is held accountable for its performance by a leader. Their work is supervised and critiqued by a leader. Deadlines are set by a leader.

But who holds the leader accountable?

While it’s noble to think they hold themselves accountable, very few great leaders start out with this trait. It is something that has to be taught, learned and practiced. One of the best ways a leader can learn accountability is to have a mentor tap them on the shoulder and say: “You are slipping here. You need to do better. Here’s how.”

Mentor Resources can help any company to leverage technology to create tailored career development programs that are cost-effective. Our mentoring software - Wisdom Share is a cloud-based program that is simple and comes with guided workflows. Included are tools for administrators to attract, enroll, connect, and guide participants. We also provide analytics to ensure you can monitor your employee development program and easily see ROI metrics. 

Reach out to us today for a Free Demonstration of our software.