Mentorship is the guidance provided by a mentor to a mentee. Usually, a mentor is experienced and knowledgeable in a company or educational institution. Mentoring is to mature by tapping into the knowledge of someone further than yourself. It’s the best way to quicken your development. Mentoring programmes are very beneficial for apprentices getting into the software development industry. Also, mentoring programmes at a workplace attract potential candidates to apply for job opportunities. Having someone who knows more than you do share advice offers guidance and is a sounding board for your ideas. You stand to gain from experience beyond your own. Whether in your career or personal life, having a mentor is essential to your continued growth and development.
A mentor is a person who helps you develop your skills, make better decisions and have new perspectives on your personal life and career. As a mentee, your mentor will leverage their experience to offer guidance on your career and personal life.
However, the benefits of mentorship are only for mentees. There are many benefits for mentors as well. In this guide, we discuss the benefits of being a mentor.
Improve your leadership skills
Leadership is a valuable skill in your personal and work life, and mentoring is critical. Learning how to work with people, you don’t have a natural connection with, providing work-related and life guidance and support and helping them figure out their best paths are all trademarks of a great leader sharpened through mentorship. The more you work for one leader one-on-one, the more you improve in a group setting. The ability to help others learn and progress in their career also helps you level your communication skills. Also, when you know that there are people who are looking up to making themselves better encourages you to perform better and offers you an excellent opportunity to become a leader and inspire your juniors to achieve their goals.
Action tip: Mentoring generates confidence and builds your communication skills, gratitude and empathy, which are some essential qualities of a good leader.
Exposure to new perspectives
It’s always important to broaden your horizons. As a mentor, you have an outstanding opportunity of stepping out of your ordinary conversation topics and circle and get new understandings from the people you are mentoring. You will get many new ideas when you work closely with your junior developers. You might witness how they implement their experience to decipher computational challenges in approaches you didn’t consider. Getting new perspectives leads to new ideas, and who knows what could come from those ideas? During this period, it’s when the mentee can also become a teacher and guide the mentor on how they do their things. As a result, mentors get an opportunity to have a refreshed and different perspective by working with mentees.
Action tip: When engaging with mentees, you listen to different ideas and get different views about life and work. Much as you’re better than these mentees, there is always something new to learn from someone.
Enhances communication skills
Communication is the basis of effectively working in a company, and mentoring can help you improve your communication skills as a mentor. Mentoring involves open communication and accessibility through verbal and written pieces; mentors speak and listen to their mentees. In turn, they improve their communication skills when interacting with the mentees. Also, explaining certain aspects to someone means you have to think it through and make sure the person you’re presenting to gets to understand what you’re saying. Mentoring someone requires excellent communication and high emotional intelligence. The opportunity to practice these skills also helps your professional and personal life. Therefore, mentors will become better at communication and listening under being in a mentoring position.
Action tip: During mentoring, as a mentor, the more you pass on guidance, advice and work and life lessons to your mentees, the more you improve your communication skills, which involve verbal and nonverbal skills and active listening.
Exercise emotional intelligence
Emotions play an essential role in the strength of relationships, including mentorship. Being a mentor of someone requires you to sharpen your emotional radar. As a mentor, you’re not only responsible for your mental state, you can majorly impact someone else’s feelings, attitudes and behaviours. Mentoring involves understanding and managing your and the mentee’s emotions, allowing proper communication and empathy. You will be called upon to gauge the other person’s emotional state and respond with compassion. Emotional intelligence is a crucial differentiator for career advancement and can also improve your relationships outside the office.
Action tip: When mentoring someone, try to understand and manage their emotions, allow proper communication and practice empathy. This, in turn, helps you exercise your emotional intelligence.
Gain personal satisfaction
It can be personally satisfying to know that you’ve directly played a part in the growth and development of someone. Mentors offer knowledge, advice and encouragement to the mentee, and at the end of the day, they get to witness the success of another person they were part of creating. This draws a feeling of self-satisfaction toward the mentor.
Action tip: knowing that you were an essential pillar in the development of someone’s personal and work life draws a feeling of being pleased and satisfied with yourself and what you have done.
Learning more
In any type of setting, things change. This means that what a mentor once dealt with in their experience may be new to them when they see it through their mentee’s current view. So, the mentor continuously learns about new ways of doing things and changes that have taken shape since the last time they were in the same situation. This can be an eye-opening experience for the mentor, just like for the mentee.
Action tip: During a mentorship, it’s not only the mentees who learn new things and aspects but also the mentor gets to pick up a few lessons and aspects from his or her mentees. Through the discussions you hold with your mentees, you share information each time, and this information can have new ideas, approaches to specific tasks and so forth.
Conclusion
Mentoring is usually a win-win situation for mentors and mentees, but the benefits for mentors are flagrantly underestimated. And this is one of the main reasons senior software developers are not accepting mentoring roles. However, great mentors genuinely enjoy looking at their mentees’ growth. After a particular period, your mentee may stop meeting you at the same workplace. But the bond you’ve created will always be in both your hearts. You’ll genuinely cherish the results of the mentoring process.
