There have probably been countless moments in your life where you’ve leaned on someone you trust for advice or assistance, this person or persons are referred to as mentors.

Whether the person you turn to is a professor, friend, family member, athletic coach or other, the importance of mentors is undeniable. These people can help to guide, direct, and shape your present situation and future opportunities for the better.

Mentorship can be a significant part of your overall career success, both early on in your career and even late in your professional life. A strong and trusted mentor is someone who can provide you a solid baseline of career support, someone who will keep you grounded, and someone who will help you remain self-aware throughout your entire career journey.  

As you think about finding a career mentor for yourself, here are some things to keep in mind in order to ensure your mentorship relationship is a valuable and sustaining one.   

• What is the Importance of Mentors and Coaches?
• Why is having a Mentor Important to your Career?
• What is the Importance of Coaching?
• What is the Role of a Mentor?
• What are the Key Principles of Coaching?
• What are the Advantages of Coaching Classes?
• What is the Difference Between a Mentor and a Trainer?
• Where can you find your Mentor?

What is the Importance of Mentors and Coaches?

Coaching and mentoring an employee makes them more valuable to your organization by developing and enhancing their skills—both professionally and personally. By being interested in the growth of your staff, you’re showing them that you care about their progress. And this can increase their loyalty to you.

Read Also: Starting a Career in Corporate Leadership

Some businesses coach and mentor. Some choose one method over the other. So what’s the difference?

Generally in the workplace, coaching an employee is a shorter, more specific affair.

For example, you might be coaching a group of trainees on how to make sales calls in line with your company’s tone and strategy. This requires the passing on of particular knowledge—so who better than a confident speaker who has an expertise of the skill?

The benefits of mentoring in the workplace

Mentoring is a longer process than coaching.

A senior employee will attach to one or a group of junior employees, and have frequent one-to-one sessions to monitor progress over, say, a six-month period. During this time, they’ll concentrate on a range of skills—both soft and hard skills.

The mentor will form a relationship with their mentees, be available for any queries, and report to you with each employee’s progress. Observing your employees as they grow over a long period can help you make crucial business decisions, such as aligning the career path of an employee with their strongest skills for your business.

Staff with better training perform better. They bring in more revenue and make it easier for your business to pay for coaching overheads.

The benefits of coaching in the workplace

Having trained coaches in your business is a no-brainer.

A trained coach can:

1. Teach new skills with a clear learning plan in place.
2. Help staff to solve problems in new ways.
3. Answer questions that someone might have if they become confused during the coaching session.

When staff commits to learning new skills, they’re recognizing that they can increase their value to their employer. They’re working hard to become a better employee. If they’re looking to pass their probation, earn a salary increase, and progress their career, this is a great way to go about it.

By recognizing their value and their ability, they gain more confidence. This can lead to strong and competitive workplace culture.

Are coaching and mentoring just for new or junior employees?

Coaching and mentoring are great for helping staff to learn new skills or enhance current skills while increasing their confidence, too. It doesn’t matter who the employee is, there’s something they can learn.

You might be thinking that only new recruits need coaching—but what about when you or one of your other senior employees needs to learn how to use that smart new piece of technology? It might be the latest tablet, or it could be a piece of software like BrightHR’s absence management system.

Managers are senior employees, but seniority doesn’t give them a free pass for knowing how to do or use something.

It might sound clichéd, but everyone in your business still has learning opportunities ahead of them. And who better to teach you than a trained coach or mentor?

Why is having a Mentor Important to your Career?

Learning from someone who has been successful in your field of interest helps improve your confidence and will often provide you with some great strategies to deal with the challenges you might face along the way. So what are the primary benefits?

1. Learning from Real Life Experience: A career mentor will provide you with valuable advice and insight into their own personal journey in the field that you have chosen. They can help you identify skills and expertise you need to develop further – and either teach you or advise you on how best to gain what you need.

Mentors can also provide a good perspective on what they may have done differently given the chance. They will share tips on how they overcame any obstacles or challenges they faced along their road to success.

2. Connections: In addition to insight from your mentor’s personal experiences, you could also benefit from their vast network of connections. If your mentor doesn’t have experience with a particular problem you are facing, they will most likely be able to talk with someone who has.

In addition, contacts introduced to you by your mentor could provide an opportunity to build your own network. These connections could also help you in the future – by providing a potential business partner opportunity or even a future job lead.

3. Sounding Board: A mentor provides a great ‘safe’ place to bounce off ideas and help you decide which way to go in certain situations. They can also make suggestions that could help you to refine your ideas and provide more efficient or effective ways of achieving desired business outcomes – mentors can often save you from ‘reinventing the wheel’ unnecessarily.

4. Increase Energy & Interest: One surprising benefit of a mentor is to increase your drive to achieve in your current organisation and excite you to pursue your chosen career. Mentors can help you overcome boredom or complacency to explore new and exciting ways to contribute to your current organisation’s success and thus increase your interest in your day to day work.

They may also suggest ways to increase your involvement in activities outside of your organization that will contribute to your career success in the future.

5. Advance Your Career: A mentor helps you stay focused on your career and improve your skills, networks, self-confidence, and ultimate success along the path in developing your career. They help you to learn about yourself and work out how and where you should be headed to achieve an optimum outcome.

Mentoring will teach you what education, books and websites cannot. A mentor will help you identify areas for improvement, establish connections, and create opportunities. It’s up to you as to how hard you want to push yourself, but the insights you can gain about yourself and your chosen field from a passionate and experienced mentor can give you an unprecedented edge over others in developing your career.

What is the Importance of Coaching?

Coaching has been known to boost confidence, improve work performance, and build effective communication skills. The benefits can be even more vast and specific to an individual.

Here are 6 benefits that coaching can bring to individuals in your organization.

1. Establish and act toward achieving goals

Coaching gives the individual an opportunity to define their career goals in a realistic way. With the assistance of a coach, they can set these goals and then actively work towards them. This will increase the likelihood that the goals will be achieved. It is common for goals to be centered around two aspects of an individual’s career. The first is building skill sets, and the second is the individual’s professional behavior.

Coaching software allows the individual to record these goals and the organization to track the progress. The individual is given checkpoints through the software to manage their goal achievement and that progress is reported directly to their supervisor, their coach, and the administrator of the program.

2. Increased level of engagement

Coaching engages participants with its unique one-on-one feedback and lots of encouragement. When an individual becomes engaged with their workplace, they can contribute more effectively to the team and the organization. This engagement also helps to increase retention rates and productivity, benefiting their careers as well as their overall organization.

The level of engagement individuals reach in their coaching relationships can be supported by coaching software. This software can further increase engagement by giving the organization a way to frequently check-in on the relationship and drive the progress.

3. Safe Place to Gain Perspective

Having a coach gives the individual a safe space to go and talk through sensitive issues. The coach is a third-party participant, and their ability to remain uninvolved but give guidance allows the coachee to gain perspective without feeling intimidated by someone within their own organization.

This is only made possible if there is a secure way for the coach and coachee to communicate. Coaching software with direct messaging options allows communication to take place.

Using the safe place for encouragement and development is important. It allows for a more in-depth learning and higher levels of comfort with the skill. Once the individual is comfortable with their skills, they can begin to use them in their careers and see the advantages they are gaining from their coaching relationship.

4. Deeper Level of Learning

Corporate coaching isn’t just about improving an individual’s skills in the workplace; it takes learning to an even deeper level. Through coaching, an individual can learn more about themselves, find out how they are perceived by others, and improve on areas of their personalities that they are not satisfied with.

Further, coaching takes learning to a level beyond remembering and understanding. The individual can take the skills presented by their coach and apply them in new situations within their safe learning space. Application in various situations will solidify the skillset in the individual.

5. Build Personal Awareness

A coach can give their coachee ideas for ways to improve themselves, but more importantly they can help them become aware of their blind spots. These blind sports are areas of the individual’s work or personality that they may not see, but that need improvement. Once the individual is aware of these areas, they can work with the coach to begin improving them.

A great way to build personal awareness is through personality assessments. These assessments are easily administered, and the results recorded, using coaching software.

Through building personal awareness, the individual can turn their unknown weaknesses into marketable strengths. This personal awareness is an important confidence booster for individuals in talent development programs and can help in future roles.

6. Support for Improving Specific Skills

Having support for improving skills can be extremely beneficial. Simply knowing that someone is there specifically to help goal achievement is an important part of progress within the coaching process.

As skill-building is often the focus of coaching relationships, there should be specific emphasis on which skills to build so the coaching is efficient and directed. These skills can include communication, delegation, conflict management, team building, and persuasion, and they can be managed with coaching software. Guided support will make the coaching relationship successful in its objectives.

What is the Role of a Mentor?

Mentors can play a significant role in an individual’s personal, social and professional development. Many large companies are beginning to institute mentorship programs where senior staff help to educate and guide junior staff members. However, mentoring has been around for centuries in completely organic ways, but what really constitutes a mentor and what exactly do they do?

Create A Structured Relationship

Mentors understand the importance of established a structured relationship with the individual being mentored. Many people who have been mentors suggest that the best relationships are forged through meetings that occur at a specific place and time each week or month. Additionally, mentors establish the objectives of the relationship upfront so each party clearly understands what their expectations and responsibilities should be.

Encourage, Not Coddle

One of the mentor’s primary roles is to encourage. However, encouragement does not mean complete tasks or build the career of the individual being mentored. Granted, a successful mentor will share their knowledge and expertise.

That said, it is up to the mentee to apply this knowledge to their own experiences. A mentor should not correct the mentee’s mistakes or prevent them from encountering such pitfalls. The mentor’s overall aim should be to foster the concepts of learning and moving forward.

Clarify The Big Picture

Once a mentee discloses where they hope to be in a given period of time, a good mentor will clarify the big picture by offering suggestions as to what efforts will be necessary to make intended goals a reality. Most often this is done by sharing how they handled a situation or a mistake they made. It can also mean the mentor needs to be honest about what it’s going to take for their mentee to get there.

Serve As Solid Role Models

Successful mentors often serve as role models to those under their tutelage by engaging in professional, personal, and social actions that others should wish to and strive to emulate. Many successful people find themselves as mentors because a younger professional entering the industry informs them of the impact they have had on their careers.

Demonstrate A Positive Attitude

A mentee’s journey might possess snags, setbacks, and struggles. During such times, a mentor’s positive attitude and outlook can help mentored individuals overcome any self-doubt or offer encouragement to not be deterred by any challenging circumstances.

Mentors also help their mentees understand that setbacks and mistakes are not one and done. Mistakes will continue to be made; walls will be run into. A mentor can then help their mentee find ways to work through mistakes and develop a healthier mindset towards failure and success.

Is Not Afraid To Offer Constructive Criticism

Typically, successful mentors will not refrain from offering constructive criticism. Feedback, even if not always positive, is vital to the mentee’s personal and professional development. That said, mentors who can deliver criticism in a positive, encouraging manner are more likely to foster the growth of the individual under their purview. Honesty is definitely important to a successful mentoring relationship.

Value Differing Opinions

A good mentor will often respect their mentee’s opinions. Even those involved in the most successful and long-standing personal and professional relationships will periodically possess countering viewpoints.

However, good mentors realize that differing opinions will foster dialogue that could precipitate the creation of more fruitful solutions or outcomes. Understanding that seniority doesn’t always guarantee the best ideas or approaches to situations is a beautiful lesson that mentors can learn from their mentees.

Mentorship can be a rewarding way to help bright, intelligent industry newcomers develop the skills, network, and attitude to thrive. Keep in mind that a mentor is not a boss and they aren’t a friend. Mentorship is a unique relationship all of its own that is founded on the basis of encouragement, recognition, and honesty.

What are the Key Principles of Coaching?

Follow these core principles to ensure you are effectively laying the groundwork to coach your people successfully

Future state thinking

Be clear in your own mind about what you want the other person to accomplish. If you are their manager, this will typically be an easier process. Focus on what the end result should look like more than how you think they ‘might’ be able to get there.

Think about the big picture and how their success will impact both the broader company’s objectives as well as their personal developmental goals and/or desires. When you are clear, you’re more likely to get buy-in.

Build trust

The foundation of every relationship – regardless of its nature – is trust. It’s critical that you are able to establish an atmosphere of open communication and mutual respect.

A coach’s ability to be successful is predicated on how much and how quickly they can build this foundation. The foundation of any coaching relationship is rooted in the manager’s day-to-day relationship with the employee.

Without some degree of trust, conducting an effective coaching meeting is impossible. Your employees need to develop trust that you are here to help them succeed and not gather information that can be used against them.

Powerful listening

One of the greatest skills a coach/manager must practice is active listening. Fully deploy listening skills with an open mind in order to ask more effective questions of the employee/individual, and get to the heart of an issue to assist them in finding a solution.

Getting agreement

As a manager, getting your employees to agree that there is a performance issue can sometimes be an uphill battle. Overlooking or avoiding the performance issue because you assume the employee understands its significance is a typical mistake of managers.

To get an employee to acknowledge a performance issue exists, you must be able to define the nature of the issue and get the employee to recognise the consequences of not changing their behaviour.

To do this, you must specify the behaviour and clarify the consequences. Be careful not to assume that your understanding of the situation is the right one.

A coaching session is a two-way communication process. You should encourage your employees to explain how they interpret the behaviours and agree on the nature of the issue.

Be curious

Rather than just jumping in to problem-solving mode and rescuing every person in sight, first get curious about what may be causing the problem. This helps define the problem more clearly.

Some questions to ask the person you are coaching:

• What do you think is really causing this situation?
• What’s holding you back from the goal?
• What is it about this situation that is keeping you up at night?
• In what ways are you not being the person you’d like to be now? To have successful coaching relationships with anyone (especially your employees), you really need to get to know them on at least some personal level.

Let me stress, this is not about being friends or socialising outside of the office. Knowing a little bit about the person you are supporting can offer you valuable insight into why they do what they do.

Thinking about thinking is an important part of the coaching process so remember to ask open-ended questions.

Be flexible

Remember that each person has different motivators and communication styles. Recognise and understand that each person may have a different style of learning and respond differently to how you communicate.  

If someone is slower to speak and respond, for example, allow them time to think and process rather than interrupting with ‘helpful’ suggestions.

Effective coaching adapts to the unique style and needs of the person being coached. This is typically a learning gap for the coach who wants to jump in, create results for their employee and get back some valuable time in their day – especially when they see the issue (hopefully) from a distance with no bias or judgement.

Flexible doesn’t mean being a pushover or getting someone to like you. It simply means you are being and doing what’s needed with this individual to ensure they are moving closer to their goals while maintaining the proper level of trust, commitment, action and integrity required to move the coaching partnership forward.

Have and set goals

Discuss what you want to accomplish and be clear about your expectations. Consider giving your employees a model of what their end goal looks like or set specific criteria for what the output should include.

Coaching is focused and grounded in a future state of what’s possible – however, this is only achievable with a clear timeline. Setting milestones that build toward the end goal with pre-scheduled ‘check-in meetings’ will allow you to get together along the way in order to evaluate how things are going.

Talk about a deadline and indicate how important the timing may (or may not) be to the success of the project or performance gap. Personally, using the S.M.A.R.T. Goal framework is a great starting point for both the conversation as well as to ensure it’s achievable.

Provide feedback

As your employees work toward accomplishing the goal you set together, be sure to attend your check-in meetings at the agreed upon times. This applies to both the process but equally important is when they reach their milestones and ultimately their end goal.

Allow them to ask questions. Acknowledge them for what’s going right with the project and make suggestions if you feel they need more direction. Remember to be curious, be present, and listen and revisit the agreed upon end goals.

Alignment with your company’s core values

When possible, your coaching should be based on your organization’s core values (or the employee/individual you are coaching). This becomes the ‘why’ behind your support and coaching actions. As a result, your coaching becomes less about what you think and reinforces the culture that you want in your organization.

And when you and your employees are looking at the bigger picture together, it should help them be more receptive to you, understand how this impacts both the broader organisation and ultimately their individual goals and aspirations.

Managers who know the business case for coaching and developing others typically value the process and use it more effectively.

Collaboration is key

No matter the situation, coaching conversations should flow both ways with ample opportunity for mutual feedback and discussion. This way, you’re not removing your employees’ responsibility in the matter or doing the work for them.

When you establish great coaching relationships with your employees, it can improve every interaction you have with them and makes management far easier.

Remember, a coach is not the expert but rather a sounding board who can and should reflect back to their people what they see and hear (but not ‘feel’) regarding their performance as it relates to that important end goal.

Explore all possible solutions

With the help of your employee, brainstorm alternative solutions and possibilities to the issue. Your role is to ensure that your employees come up with specific alternatives to the existing challenges and not create broad or vague solutions.

The reason is that you need to hold them accountable to the solutions and clearly define what your expectations of the performance are.

Your focus is to help them set goals (i.e. SMART) and support them in coming up with specific alternatives to create the highest possibility of success for reaching them. You can provide your own ideas, but be aware that they will carry more weight simply because it’s coming from you.

Commitment to act

Different then getting agreement, the commitment here is around taking action and ensuring that they see what’s possible in it for them by taking action.

It does not matter how great the solution or roadmap to get you there is. If your employee doesn’t see it, get it or possibly feel it – then you should pause and recalibrate. You don’t want a false start. This also works for you, the coach.

Outlining what they (your employee or individual) can expect from you in terms of showing up, supporting them, keeping and scheduling meeting times and most importantly ask them if there is anything specific they need from you – will demonstrate the level of integrity you are seeking them to model as well.

Handle excuses

Employees may use excuses to lower your expectations of their performance or simply shy away from what they don’t know or feel is outside their comfort zone. You should acknowledge them without giving them agreement while focusing on the solutions and the SMART Goal.

There may be situational factors that may affect the outcome of their performance and as a coach, you need to take them into consideration so by all means keep an open mind. Remember to get curious and do some detective work around both the content and context to what they are sharing.

The content will be the story and where the excuses come from but the context (i.e. emotional state) is where a coach can pick up the subtle cues and clues as to why they are hesitant to move forward or commit.

What are the Advantages of Coaching Classes?

Academic coaching classes are becoming more and more popular these days as the schooling system is becoming increasingly competitive. Parents desperate to get their children into good quality schools will go to great lengths to help them crack entrance exams and shine in interviews. However, it is unclear how effective coaching classes really are.

Coaching classes have gathered a whole new perspective on the things they stand by. It has become the second-best source of concern after the concern of schools or sometimes even cross the school’s league. They are using different methods than what the schools do. It can also be considered as an outsource in enhancing a student’s capabilities, capacities, and his determination.

Correct guidance- Coaching institutes provide better career guidance as to what and how syllabus need to be prepared from 9th to 12th classes so that students are able to shape themselves accordingly for competitive exams, entrance exams, etc. In coaching institutes, the students not only get the correct academic guidance but also they are able to know better career options and choose the right path as per their interest and academic record. Coaching institutes are really helpful from where you can kick start your career and seek good career guidance from the connoisseurs of teaching.

The personalization of studies- In school, teachers have to deal with 40–50 students in the class and they just focus on covering their syllabus for subjects in the time allotted to them. At coaching institutes, each student gets individual attention for all the subjects that they show interest in. Coaching institutes provide better learning and development platform to students as per their requirement.

Specific subjects are covered- In school, if due to some reason if a student is absent, he misses out on the important topic and loses track of studies. Students are not able to cover the missed-concepts even if they want to because every day they have to follow the ongoing concepts in the classroom.

But in the coaching institutes, they get to learn topics as per their comfortability and cover up each concept that they miss out at school. In school, students fail to understand the comprehensive chemical reactions concept whereas the same they learn with ease by following the concept from the starting in brief in coaching institutes, and even if they fail to understand it at one attempt, they may ask the same thing multiple times for clarity.

What is the Difference Between a Mentor and a Trainer?

Mentor 

A mentor has a far more informal role than a coach or a trainer, but they have the power to be more effective than either of the two combined. The relationship is meant to be a professional one that bridges the gap into the personal. It can be a difficult line to walk, but the right mentor can work with boundaries without crossing them.

The biggest difference between a coach and a trainer is in both the scope and the time. Mentors get to know a person on a deeper level, and they stick with the commitment until they’re no longer needed. Mentors scale back their relationship as their mentee makes progress, but they don’t necessarily rush that progress if their mentee isn’t ready for it. Ideally, the two people should develop a friendship after the official mentoring is over. 

A good mentor is typically less concerned with the company’s goals and more concerned about the mentee’s personal ones. They may have a primary focus behind their actions, but they don’t let that focus get in the way of understanding the other person.

Mentors don’t necessarily need to be a part of the organization to be effective. In fact, mentors have the potential to enrich their mentees with different perspectives if they come from different backgrounds. The idea behind this is to build up the employee’s character and to invest in their overall success. It’s an oft-rejected idea in a cut-throat business world, but it’s also an art that can serve profit margins better in the long-term.

A mentor who follows a strict set of guidelines will instantly dehumanize the interaction, and turn it into a much more formal role (e.g., a trainer or coach.) Mentors work best for people who may not always respond well to authority, but who will benefit from someone who can meet them on their level.

Trainer

A trainer can be thought of as a teacher for the corporate world. It’s not necessarily their job to motivate or to develop an employee’s potential, only to impart knowledge about a pre-defined subject. A trainer and a coach will likely share a few key characteristics in this regard, but a trainer’s focus is set on finding the best way for employees to learn a particular skill or concept.

As with any authority figure, the rules are not set in stone. Just like teachers, trainers can’t solely rely on standing at the front of the room and delivering a boilerplate lecture. Because of the nature of training, trainers are typically internal employees of the company. They may teach a department about a new client request, inform of new compliance regulations, or show a new employee how to operate the phone system. 

If a company uses an external trainer, it’s usually for new technology. For example, a company-wide session to instruct employees on how to use a new type of workflow software. Training doesn’t always have to be formal, though there are advantages and pitfalls with either format.

Read Also: Starting a Career in Management Consulting

A large group may discourage participants from asking questions or clarifying points. An informal one-on-one session may lead the trainer to rush through the instructions or explanations so they can get back to their own work.

Trainers need to be recognized as experts in their field to be effective. However, trainers have a tendency to forget that they see the subject matter in a very different light than those who are trying to learn it from the ground-up. Companies need to select people who can start with the basics and then tailor the rest of the session based on the needs of the people in the proverbial classroom.

Where can you find your Mentor?

It is recommended that your mentor be someone within your same profession, or one who is closely-aligned to what it is you do. Whether that is industry of function, you want to identify someone who you can relate to in your professional life, someone who has a perspective of the daily trials and tribulations that you encounter and can offer advice or insight that is appropriately aligned to your career.

Your mentor can also come from different stages within their career. While it is highly encouraged to seek out someone who is more senior to you in experience and leadership, don’t hesitate to consider a mentor that could be your peer, one that you could potentially relate to better than someone who may be senior to you.

No matter what level of career experience, leadership or management they may have, the most important factor of your mentor is that it is someone who you look up to at any stage of their career.

Finally

Whether for personal growth or career goals, mentors play a valuable role in the lives of people looking to achieve new levels of success. Hiring the right mentor for your specific needs takes time and research to find the best person.