When it comes to mentoring, the benefits to the mentee are pretty obvious. They get expert guidance from a proven pro, personalized advice about their specific career and goals, and most importantly, connections with higher-ups in their organization and across their industry.
It's a slam dunk in every sense of the phrase.
But what about the mentor? What benefits do mentors get out of the arrangement, other than lost hours in the day? Why is it worth their time and effort?
Surprisingly, there's a lot more benefits of mentoring than you might think. Experts who regularly share their knowledge and mentor others can enjoy:
Improved Listening Skills
Mentoring sharpens your listening skills and enables you to better understand and empathize with those around you. You learn to better put yourself in others shoes, ask questions, and really get to the bottom of both professional and personal challenges on the whole.
Improve Mentor's Communication Skills
Not all the mentee coming from the same background or environment the mentor belongs. Mentor and Mentee may not comfortable to speak the same language. This may force mentor to find a new way to communicate more effectively with mentee as you navigate further in mentoring relationships.
A Better Understanding of Younger Generations
Mentors typically work with professionals who are younger and less experienced than them. The mentee gets access to the mentor's years of hard-won experience and knowledge, and the mentor learns about up-and-coming tech, tools and approaches from the workers of tomorrow.
It's a great way to stay on top of current trends and ensure you're in tune with what today's younger professionals need, want and expect in their careers - and in a leader.
A mentor engages with many mentees through out their mentoring career. This improves the mentoring skills in terms of better understanding of audience from diverse education and professional background, in terms of generation gap, cultural differences. This helps the mentor to learn new culture, understand the thoughts of different generations.
Stronger Leadership and Management Capabilities
Being a mentor, you're able to see the true impact of your leadership and mentoring skills in action. You can hone in on what works, what doesn't work and what approaches best resonate with different personality types and workers. It's a great way to strengthen your existing leadership, coaching and mentoring skills and better prepare yourself for new responsibilities and challenges.
Increase Mentor Confidence and Motivation
Mentoring programs are not only a one-on-one activity. Mentoring programs like Youth Mentoring Program, Business Mentoring Program or Online Mentoring Program are the activities where the mentor must communicate with many mentees from different background that gives a confidence to speak in front of big audience.
A Sense of Achievement and Fulfilment
There's a lot of personal satisfaction that can come from mentoring. Mentors create lasting impacts on those they take under their wing. They can change the course of someone's career – or even their life in general – for the better, and they can greatly improve a person's financial and professional standing for the long haul.
Most importantly, mentors are also able to pass down their knowledge to future generations of workers, ensuring they've had a permanent influence on the industry and organization they worked so hard for.
The value of mentor is invaluable. Mentors shares their hard-earned success and failures they have gained throughout their professional career. They break-down what goes wrong and right in their personal and professional career. Mentor pass on their experience during coaching and mentoring programs to the mentees, without all the heartbreak and challenges that comes with them. It gives a sense of satisfaction.
If these benefits aren't enough to encourage your own mentoring efforts, consider joining iConnectX. On our platform, you can use mentoring services to raise valuable funds for the charities and causes you care about. Select from a variety of pre-vetted organizations, fill out your profile, and professionals will donate to your charities in exchange for a mentoring session. Best of all, it's all done digitally – no physical meetings or long commutes necessary. Sign up today to see what iConnectX all is about.
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