In the US, January is National Mentoring Month, and January 11th is “I am a mentor day”. I am excited to write this post for this day!
Starting from when I received a lot of mentoring from cherished and loved ones, including my sixth-grade teacher, the Late “Master Williams”, when I didn’t even know what mentoring is, I have really cherished the activity. I continue to seek out mentors and also try to give back myself. If you are on this page reading this, you also appreciate it as much or more than I do!
If you read about how many industries and areas of endeavor in life, ranging from fundamental skills to cooking and the arts evolved, it was all through the art of mentoring. A lot of it was through the model of apprenticeship but has now expanded to other areas.
An Ever Expanding Landscape
The world of mentoring is ever-expanding, ranging from formal models to informal relationships, short-term to long-term, individual to group sessions, and more! And yet, I would venture, we have only begun to scratch the surface. Clearly, not enough people engage in mentorship, on either end of the relationship and that needs to change. People can lead better lives, enjoy enriched careers and become role models themselves creating an enduring chain that makes society all the better. Very briefly, let us discuss this.
Mutual Benefits
One of the pillars of mentoring is that the exchange happens through the lens of past experiences – the gathering of wisdom. While knowledge itself is forever becoming easier and easier to access through the seemingly endless books, videos, and other forms of absorption and dispersal, wisdom comes through experience. Now, one might accidentally assume this is unidirectional, but this would be a mistake for more than one reason.
- Personal Growth: Whatever stage of your career you are in, when your
mentees ask you incisive questions and you dig deep to answer those questions and provide them with solutions, suggestions, roadmaps, or ideas, you grow with them. You may then be able to go back to your own work and alter it for the better, you may be able to mentor your own team or other mentees based on the enrichment you experience. You can write blogs, go on podcasts, and write books, the possibilities are nearly endless. 
Reverse Mentoring: As a novel concept, reverse mentoring is taking its place in many places from informal to formal career engagements and the board room. Since the very act of mentoring draws from experiences, when one looks at people who come various ages, races, backgrounds and other factors, those experiences can be exchanged. Suddenly, a Gen X-er is able to absorb the way a Gen Z-er sees things. This helps everyone benefit in the workplace, in the boardroom, do a better job at Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) and beyond.- Satisfaction and Enrichment: Helping any number of people advance in life
or careers through the lens of mentoring helps us gain immense satisfaction and enrichment. This has been true in my case at least. Many of us want to feel useful. What better way to experience this than by lending your wisdom to help someone solve a problem, or complete a body of work, or just through the free exchange of ideas? 
A hiring pipeline: Now this might not always be a pathway, but it would work in some cases. The best hires happen through one’s network. In that sense, if you were mentoring people in the early stages of their career, or in the end stages of formative education, a sense of mutual familiarity develops. This can allow one to easily hire team members, with a sense of confidence in their fit and performance, the former being so much more important! But, don’t forget this also works both ways – the mentor themselves can be a candidate at some point, and the mentees may be able to make the right introductions.
So what is holding you back?
There are a few things that hold many people from mentoring:
- “I don’t think I have anything to contribute”: Imposter syndrome and
accompanying emotions and beliefs make several folks think they have nothing to offer. On the one hand, this is rarely true, and on the other hand, mentees would be so thrilled to spend time with you. At a minimum, you can match and try. Most of the time I suspect people would be surprised, at how their experience and knowledge are valued by mentees. So once again, give it a try. - Time – There is never enough time. Yes, it is easy to say make time. But difficult as it might be, thinking about all the advantages that we gain, making time is very important. Mentoring doesn’t take a whole lot of time. Most interactions never last more than a few hours a month, if that.
- Guidance and Resources: Of course, we can all use a helping hand. Guidance is available in the form of books, articles, blogs, videos, podcasts, and more from an immense number of sources, such as mentoring.org, alumni groups, libraries, and others. Peruse the resources and get going! Someone out there is expecting your generosity!
References:
- Cover Image: https://www.pexels.com/photo/photo-of-men-having-conversation-935949/
- Persons shaking hands: https://www.pexels.com/photo/photo-of-men-shaking-hands-3182831/
- Image of branches: https://www.stockvault.net/photo/165258/green-branch
- Young and Old Person: https://www.pexels.com/photo/fashion-man-people-woman-8527069/
- Image of Cornucopia: https://pixabay.com/photos/cornucopia-fruit-thanksgiving-3719247/
- Thinking Lady: https://pixabay.com/photos/african-black-woman-model-profile-5505598/