Mentor mentality: one of our own

Mentoring can inspire, enlighten and open doors, but it needs both parties to feel like they are part of a team.

A mentor is the wiser older sibling we all wish we had, wired with all the most successful and useful information. Mentorship, paired with hard work, can be a powerful cheat code to success and knowledge within an industry.

 “A mentor is someone who allows you to see the hope inside yourself” – Oprah Winfrey

Mentors will often provide professional, social and humanistic advice on your output within a workspace and help you develop any skills needed to progress further. Not only helping you, but majorly helping companies in terms of creating more confident, skilled workers. 

There are several ways to learn and train before entering an industry, with direct mentorship arguably being the most powerful. First and foremost it creates a friendship within the workspace, and building relationships can be seen as one of the most powerful ways to ascend in business when of course paired with work ethic and ability.

The mentor may invite you to certain events or involve you in team-building exercises that a random new recruit may not be part of. People work harder for their allies, and the mentality of ‘one of our own’ can be so powerful. Which is why, alongside many other reasons, graduate schemes often provide new recruits with a mentor for their first year, to utilise their own specialist knowledge in learning more skills and techniques.

Euella Jackson for Rising Arts Agency provides some valuable insights into how mentoring can work to aid us further, no matter how experienced we might be. A list of nine different ways, including improving self-confidence, holding yourself accountable and to motivate yourself to push harder.

”On the days where we may think our work’s not good enough, or that things aren’t moving fast enough, knowing that there is someone with industry expertise who really cares about your progression can give you that added push to be more bold with your work, whether it be being more experimental with your style, showing off your work or going for those opportunities that you may have been too afraid to before. Knowing that someone’s got your back goes a long way” – Euella Jackson, Rising Arts Agency

Mentors can help to secure internships, placements and freelance opportunities for their mentees, achieved by working together to bounce creative ideas back and forth providing feedback and constructive criticism. Consider them your supportive creative friend.

Another mentoring imperative is sharing current and accurate business knowledge. Many graduates entering the creative industries are taught in institutions that share vital practical and contextual know-how but may sometimes slightly dated in their approach.

A university course is filled with theory and skills, but in many ways students only begin to grasp what working in the creative industries really involves when they get their first job.

However, the gap between these two settings – educational and working environments – can be minimised through the support of a mentor, who will share their knowledge and experience, help mentees to shape their goals, and prepare them for the next stage of their lives.

Founding director Isabel Farchy from Creative Mentor Network wrote an article for We are Social blog, which elaborates that students are looking for a type of support that they lack from basic educational teaching. She says of mentors: “They offer the chance to connect with an established professional – a living, breathing example that this potential career choice can work. It opens up a world of possibilities, connections and most importantly, role models for them to be inspired by.”

Mentors can also help when it comes to networking: making introductions, inviting mentees to events and recommending them to their contacts. So much of the early stages of someone’s career is about getting to know the right people and developing contacts who can help them to tap into to all the opportunities on offer.

These networks can help to open doors in what initially might seem a very daunting world: for example, you may get to hear about who is moving on or changing roles before their post is even advertised.

Feature image from Unsplash by Joshua Ness.