Get A Mentor to Get Ahead

Hi,

I was reading the paper when i came across an article written by John Bittleston on Mentorship to get ahead in corporate success. So what is Mentoring?

Mentoring is helping people tp realise their own abilities. It is not coaching, although the two are not far apart. Coaching involves teaching techniques for achieving short-term and specific, limited objectives. At the right time and for the right purpose, coaching is an impt tool.

Mentoring takes a more holistic view of a person's career, ambitions, needs, and ultimate fulfillment. Every mentor will devote some of his mentoring time to coaching but he will look beyond the immediate future to longer-term rewards and achievements.

A good coach imparts ways of doing things. A good mentor gets his mentee to discover what he really wants and helps him achieve it, but he does not achieve it for him. As the saying goes - "If you truly care for someone, you help them to stand on their own feet, not on yours."

To be helpful, the mentor must understand something about work his mentee is doing.
Different company has adopted different models of their In-Company Mentoring. While there is no one RIGHT way to introduce mentoring, the following seems to be most efficient, effective and rewarding one.

The best mentor is one who has been selected by the mentee. Sympathetic understanding, a predisposition to listen attentively and shared interests are the basic tools of good mentoring. No mentor has the same amount of these for everyone. Good communication between mentor and mentee depends on chemistry.

Authority is generally a bad basis for mentoring because the lines of command are difficult to disentangle from an essentially personal relationship. A mentee is left in an ambiguous position as t what his response can be. Telling the boss what to do with his own ideas is still not advisable as a basis of promotion and recognition.

It follows from this that any formality or procedure is in dnager of getting a mentor/mentee relationship off to a stilted or shaky start. A company that wants to introduce mentoring has to be sensitive to the fact that personal likes and dislikes play a legitimate role, in much the same way as they do with counselling.

Rgds
Sean

How to Find A Mentor

Have you been hearing people saying that if you want to be successful in a certain field, it is important to find the right mentor in that field.

When we were kids, we looked to our parents for guidance. Similarly, a mentor at work can help ou journey to the top easier. Here's are my thoughts on how to find one:

A) Get the right mindset
A mentor is not a career fairy godmother or a babysitter. Your mentor helps you our by providing you with valuable knowledge such as sharing insights into the industry and the company (if you two happened to work in same company), and the politics involved. Armed with such information, it'll be easier for you to react appropriately when any issues arise.

B) Find the right person
Your mentor should be a person whose advice you respect. He or she must be supportive of your career goals and be willing to offer constructive criticism. It's not necessary for your mentor to be your direct boss. He or she can be someone who's more experienced. What's important is that you can communicate freely and both trust each other.

C) Set the right time
Once you have found your mentor, both of you must make the commitment to meet up regularly to assess your career. It does not have to be a weekly thing, it can even be once every two months. If your mentor is someone who works closely with you, then establish an understanding that he free to pull you aside to discuss work-elated matters whenever she sees a need to.

With the above points, i hope you can find the correct mentor to guide you towards your success. Remember not to rush into finding me thou - Find the Correct One!

Rgds
Sean