5 Benefits of Being a Mentor

“Anyone who stops learning is old, whether at twenty or eighty. Anyone who keeps learning stays young.” – Henry Ford

Mentoring has been around since the dawn of the human race. Without it, there would virtually be no progress as each of us would have to invent and learn everything there is to know on our own. The passing of information from a mentor to a mentee is what opens the door for rapid progress and skill development.

Today, mentoring takes many forms. It can be as simple as a father teaching a child how to make friends or a colleague showing you a new skill. This productive form of human interaction has been modernized and integrated into modern organizations to boost member development and engagement. Powerful technology and software (like Wisdom Share by Mentor Resources) allows organizations to facilitate and supervise thousands of mentor and mentee relationships simultaneously.

Something that often goes overlooked are the benefits mentors receive from passing on their knowledge. It’s obvious what a mentee gains from an veteran mentor - knowledge, advice and access to years of experience. But the gains of the mentor can be equally great.

One - Learn new things

Mentors learn from mentees. In any educational situation, the teacher is also learning even though they are the one relaying the information and knowledge.

Usually, mentees are younger than their mentors. There is a lot of culture and technology that younger people are exposed to that older people aren’t familiar with. For example, a Baby Boomer could take on mentoring a Millennial to groom them for a future management position. The Millennial does have knowledge that is useful to the Baby Boomer such as how to leverage social media and technology.

Every generation has its strengths and mentor relationships are perfectly poised to step through generation gaps and achieve an exchange of knowledge in both directions.

Two - Share your knowledge with a young professional.

Not everyone wants to be a teacher. With mentoring, you don’t have to teach as a career but can still be empowered by passing on your knowledge.

Helping other professionals avoid the mistakes you may have made in your career can mean all the difference to a young mentee. Seeing someone else succeed as a result of your guidance can be an incredible feeling.

We often feel that we have a duty to humanity to pass on what we know. Mentoring provides the opportunity to do that.

Three - Develop leadership and management skills.

Mentors are generally skilled at their position, otherwise they wouldn’t have much value as a mentor. Being a skilled technician or specialist in some field allows a mentor to pass those skills onward to a mentee.

In the process of educating a mentee, leadership and management skills can be gained. It’s one thing to be good at a job, it’s a whole other realm to manage a team of people. Mentoring provides the perfect stepping stone for future leaders and managers. It is much easier to work with one person and ensure they are doing well as opposed to say a team of thirty.

Four - Build professional relationships

If you are in the position to mentor, you likely have a healthy network of professional relationships. But, it never hurts to expand your network even further.

Mentoring provides a unique opportunity for two people to connect on a level that isn’t strictly professional and, oftentimes, mentors and mentees merge their groups or networks with one another. This can be empowering and help mentors grow through acquiring more connections.

Five - Give back to the industry.

Most mentors got to where they are because someone helped them. They were mentored once too.

Mentoring gives you the opportunity to help a young professional continue their education, improve in the workplace and develop as people. This can have a positive impact on your industry.

It simply feels good to help someone else and give back to a professional community that helped you.

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 Free Demonstration of our software.