My experiences with Mentoring
“Nothing great was ever accomplished alone. For every goal I have achieved in my life, I can trace back each goal to a mentor or individual who helped achieve it.” ---- Anonymous.
Knowingly or unknowingly we all have Mentors in our life right from the time of our birth till the end of ours life. According to Merriam-Webster, a Mentor is “someone who teaches or gives help and advice to a less experienced and often younger person”.
A Mentor may be formal or informal “in nature”, and may change or evolve as the needs of the mentee change. A mentor can be a role model, coach, sounding board, voice of reason, “source of” emotional support, counselor, and a trusted resource. Likewise a mentor could be anyone from our parents to our professors, our teachers our Doctors, and our aunts and uncles to name a few.
At some point during your career, you may have considered becoming a mentor but dismissed the idea, thinking it would not be worth the time and energy you put into it. It is time to rethink your decision.
Being a Mentor is more important than ever-and you will get more out of the relationship than you think. In America in January 2016, President Barack Obama declared January as “National Mentoring Month” and 17th Jan as “International Mentoring Day” and 19th Jan as “Thank your Mentor day.” Here is the reference.
As you all know I started my Mentoring journey with the NGO, Mentor Together in August 2016. This February 2017, I completed the first stage of the four stage program of our mentorship. Hence I thought to write down the awesome experiences I have encountered along the way that have made me and my Mentee learn and establish a sound relationship.
Brief Overview of Mentor Together NGO :
Mentor Together, founded in November 2009, is a non-profit organization which matches youth who come from backgrounds of socio-economic disadvantage to professionals, who serve as their mentors, in long-term, fun and empowering relationships, based on shared academic, career and personal interests.
My role focuses on mentoring as a relationship rather than a role with a set of preconceived duties. The journey involves the building of an equal relationship characterized by trust, the sharing of expertise, moral support, reliability and knowing when to help and when to sit back. It focuses on practicing many work and life skills like Self Awareness, Time Management, Motivation, Influencing, Decision Making, Empathy, Problem Solving, and Managing Emotions.
To help a Mentee learn these skills, the Mentor Together team has designed excellent curriculum and activities-based learning system that practices each skill. Mentors and Mentees are committed to spend minimum 6 hours on a monthly basis spread over 8 to 12 months to complete all four stages of mentoring.
Mentors are responsible for submitting their planned meeting schedule with their Mentee beforehand onto the web portal and also for submitting meeting logs after the meeting. This may sound boring but it's altogether fun while doing this activities with your Mentee. I never saw my Mentee losing interest or yawning in any of our meetings; on the contrary, my Mentee still looks up to the weekend for our meeting.
My Experience and Learning from Mentoring :
I believe a Mentor affects the professional life of a Mentee by fostering insight, identifying needed knowledge, and expanding growth opportunities. This assistance supplements the coaching an individual already receives from his or her supervisor.
Mentoring gives you an extraordinary opportunity to facilitate a Mentee’s personal and professional growth by sharing knowledge you learned through years of experience. While the primary intent of the mentoring role is to challenge the Mentee to think in new and different ways, the Mentee is not the only one who gains from the relationship. As a Mentor, I feel there are various ways one can get benefitted as well. I will list down a few of my experiences:
1. Skills Enhancement:
The experience you gain by mentoring someone can facilitate your own professional growth, making you more of an asset to your organization. Working with my Mentee from a different background and with a different personality type allowed me to strengthen my coaching and leadership skills. Your ability to manage people different from you is a valuable skill, especially as the workplace continues to grow more diverse. Besides skills enhancement, mentoring improved my performance at my workplace.
One of my role as a Mentor is to set a good example for my Mentee. Knowing that I am responsible for providing appropriate and accurate guidance to him or her motivates me to work harder. Furthermore, mentoring gave me a fresh perspective on my performance. “My Mentee always asked 'Why?'-why do we do things a certain way and why do we think and act the way we do.” He always asked questions which challenges our usual mindset and these questions helped me to take a critical look at how I was leading and what areas I needed to adjust for improvement.
2. Increase in Motivation & Confidence level of your team members :
Your role as a mentor can contribute to the success of your entire organization. As a Team Lead, I very well know the importance of developing and retaining good employees. By priming promising employees to become top-performing executives and by providing them with the challenges, support, and commitment needed to keep them motivated, my mentoring efforts effectively helped in boosting my team members’ confidence levels.
I did a few of the activities from the mentoring curriculum with my team members during our One-on-One meetings. This gave them the opportunity to introspect and align with their goals which in turn gave them a sense of motivation that resulted in positive changes in their work. Inducing a few mentoring activities on monthly basis helped them to develop their skills and boosted their confidence and motivation levels.
3. You get to learn new stuff :
When you become a Mentor you learn about how things work at different levels and in different places. Additional context always makes you smarter.
I seriously learned many difficult work skills which may not be taught in schools or colleges like Empathy, Introspection, Time Management, Self Awareness, and Emotional Intelligence which made me a better manager and leader. These skills helped me improve my judgement thereby enhancing my overall skill set and making me a more valuable member of my team.
The activity named “The Personal Telescope” of the Mentor Together team which focusses on developing and presenting one’s own Vision, Mission and Goals statement, similar to how any organization does, allows one to align themselves according to the statements. This really helped both of us to set our goals,ensure we follow them and continue on the right track. This activity came at the right time for me as it was start of New Year 2017. My Mentee actually drew his current scenario and his future scenario with appropriate use of images which I really liked. I learned that instead of writing down your goals, drawings and images have a greater impact on your mind and can easily be recollected and reassociated.
4. Collaboration for Problem Solving :
The activity named “Tic Tac Toe” focussed on having discussion and arguments on various general problem topics with the main objective of having a healthy discussion rather than arguing on it. Apart from the general topic mentioned in the activity, we discussed on my Mentee’s problem wherein I collaborated with him to identify the concerns and brainstorming on a possible plan and solution. I asked my mentee to try this out and we also discussed the positive and negative outcome of it. It may not be necessary that as a Mentor your solution be the most effective for him, but collaboration and brainstorming can open up many other solutions of which the Mentee or Mentor may or may not have thought.
As a Mentor I learned that problem solving, not just with my Mentee, but at every level of one’s life, one should be supportive, encouraging, reflective and should reinforce for successful completion of the solution identified. Once solved, the results should be celebrated thereafter.
Conclusion :
The life you end up changing could be your own. How cliche this may sound like but it doesn’t make it any less true. Although mentoring can be a truly rewarding experience, becoming a Mentor is a big decision and one that should not be taken lightly.
Your decision to become a Mentor will lead to a series of events and opportunities you can’t possibly foresee, to experiences and challenges and rewards you can’t anticipate—but all of them will force you to learn and evolve and, perhaps even despite yourself, become a better human being.
Ultimately, mentoring isn’t a one-way process. It’s a two-way street. It has the potential to change — indeed, to radically transform — not just one life, but two. It’s fun, it’s an adventure, you’ll learn a lot about yourself, you’ll have stories to last a lifetime. You may even end up with a new member of your family.
In the end if you feel like your corporate job is dry and sometimes many weeks or even months go by spent wondering “ What did I accomplish ?” give a hand at mentoring, helping someone else. You will surely feel the difference.
“Not a bad return on your investment, if you ask me.”
I thank the Mentor Together team for considering me and giving me an opportunity to perform this role. I also thank Nasim Mam, Arundhati Mam and Rahul Sable for matching me with my Mentee, in whom I see my younger self.
Kudos to the Mentor Together team for their excellent curriculum and the work they are doing.
