3 REASONS WHY YOU SHOULD HAVE A MENTOR
I remember hearing people talking about how important it is to have a mentor.. A career mentor, business mentor you name it. All I heard were the positive experiences from people who have had mentors before. I never had experience with a mentor until this year. I decided to enroll myself into a career mentor program where I was coupled with my mentor who had experience in the subjects I wanted to learn more about. So today I’m sharing 3 reasons why you should have a mentor.
Provides clarity
There comes a time where you can feel stuck in your career. Stuck in terms of not really knowing what your next move is going to be, fear of changing jobs, de-motivated because you haven’t made a promotion, bored at your current job. It can be all sorts of things. Sometimes you just need someone who can really listen to you to provide the best advice on which decisions you can make to reach your career goals. Please note that a mentor can help you but eventually you have to put in the work. You have to really have the desire to change you current situation.
Speaking from my experience, talking with a mentor helped me get certain things clear on what I really enjoy doing and what I’m really good at. It also helped me to focus on what I really want to put out as my personal brand. A mentor can also help you understand how to deal with office politics that unfortunately happen in almost any business. Understanding office politics is important if you want to grow within the same company. It’s not always fun but you need to have an understanding of it. Walking around with so much noise in your head can be exhausting and a motivation killer. So having someone who can help clarify things for you can be super beneficial!
New insights and out of comfort zone strategies
Before you seek for a mentor, it is advisable to know why you want a mentor and what do you need from such a person. What do you want to work on? What are some competencies or skills you feel like can be improved to reach your goals? Once you have figured this out, a mentor can help you with new insights that you might not have thought about. That’s the beauty of it. You don’t have to do this all by yourself! Be prepared to also be taken out of your comfort zone with some new strategies that the mentor can come up with. The goal is to get you from A to B and yes sometimes (most of the time) it means doing things that is completely out of your comfort zone. Doing things that kind of makes you nervous. It challenges you and these strategies makes you grow. I believe that growth never comes from being in your comfort zone.
Visibility
Having a mentor can boost your visibility either at your work place or within your network. When you create a project with your mentor ask him or her to share it on their social media pages like LinkedIn. My mentor encouraged me to create a video where I would talk about how my day to day looks like at work so that the Talent Attraction team could use it for the career page. I love creating videos so this was a way to use my expertise and get my personal brand out there. I did not ask for it, but my mentor was happy to share the project with her network which created exposure for then my manager to pick up and re-share it with the Senior Leadership team.
Even is you have a business mentor, that person can share your works with their network so that their audience get to know you as well. This visibility can help you reach people that may be inspired by your story. The visibility can help you find prospects for your business or this can be something that can be used as reference when you are applying for an internal role or another job within or outside the current industry you are working in. Also keep in mind that mentors love to share the works of their mentees because in return it gives them credits that they are doing their job well as mentors. It’s a win win!