Mentoring: a skilled role for the right people

Do you see yourself as mentor material, as someone able to offer professional guidance and advice to the next generation? It’s not a role that suits just anyone…

Many of us have heard the word ‘mentor’ before, but do we actually know what it means? The dictionary definition is ‘an experienced and trusted adviser’. Typically, a graduate mentor is (usually) someone older, with experience in their field who helps their (usually younger) mentee to achieve their goals and success.

Mentors should exude confidence and be trustworthy in their advice because, if there are not, then how can they guide their mentees in the right direction?

Not everyone is well-suited to becoming a mentor, and even those who are must give accepting the responsibility some serious consideration and, ideally, undergo training beforehand. 

In an online article for the Association for Talent Development, Jen Labin says that most people feel reluctant to become mentors in the first place, because they either didn’t have one, or had a poor one and that’s why it is so important to educate future mentors, in order to develop their skills properly.

Through training, the mentor will learn various ethics within the role and how to provide other important information, for example how to cope when challenging situations arise and how to react to these situations, these situational remedies are typically learnt through the mentor’s experiences.

“A mentor is like the lead car in a convoy. You are trusting that they know where they are going” – Insala, The Importance of Training Your Mentors

During this training, mentors should be taught how to problem solve, how to give feedback, how to help their mentee set their personal goals, help them keep their confidence high and to guide them through the art of networking.

Training must have particular emphasis for potential mentors, as the individual must respect and understand their responsibility for their prospective mentee. At the end of the day, the aim is for the mentees to succeed, and hopefully this will come full circle and, one day, they will be inspired become mentors themselves. 

“A good mentor will create a strategy that fits your needs, talents, skills, and desires and push you towards a better you—not towards a clone of themselves.” – Penny Loretto, 8 Qualities of a Good Mentor

Training itself is not typically enough to make a graduate mentor. The individual also needs to have certain personal qualities which would help build a good mentor.

According to the article 8 Qualities of a Good Mentor by Penny Loretto, potential mentors should be enthusiastic, careful and attentive listeners, be able to cater for their mentees needs and to create a personal strategy that would suit them, their skills and desires.

Mentors must remember that mentees are their own people, with different goals and dreams, so they should avoid seeking to mould them in their own mirror image.

Instead, the mentor should nurture and guide the individual. Mentors should be good at providing constructive feedback, without being degrading or judgemental, and to encourage their mentees to leave their comfort zone when necessary. As such, patience is a virtue that all good mentors possess.

To make sure that graduate mentors are successful with their tasks we must remember that they too need guidance and appropriate training. The skills they already have need to be further developed in order for the mentor to be adept in their leadership.

The best mentors try not to just develop their mentees, but also to develop themselves. Mentorship is a cyclical process. To become a successful and effective graduate mentor, one must see the skill gaps in their mentee and find a way to fill them or overcome them.