Mentoring can come in many different forms and help produce results for all types of goals. In many organizations today, leaders and managers with years of experience are getting ready to leave the workforce, leaving younger generations to take on more leadership roles.
A crucial part of succession planning is setting up partnerships for mentors and mentees to share experiences, knowledge, advice, and reflection. The transition of younger leaders into senior roles will flow exponentially more smoothly when leadership is focused on how to be a mentor in the workplace.
Characteristics of a Mentor
Certain personality traits will be important for an effective, mutual mentoring relationship to develop. Great mentors are:
- Honest
- Trustworthy
- Objective
- Constructive
- Challenging
- Humble
- Confidential
If you’re thinking about becoming a mentor at work, first take a step back and assess which of these areas you’ll need to watch closely while you grow as a mentor.
For instance, your expertise will need to be called upon, but you may need to be careful not to let pride in your accomplishments come across as arrogance to your mentee. The goal is to coach and help them learn from your experiences, so it’ll be important to share them honestly and humbly.
Learning how to be a mentor in the workplace means identifying the objectives and challenges where your experience can benefit less experienced mentees. Mentoring meetings are about imparting wisdom and seeing changes that improve others’ professional and personal lives.
Many potential mentors have the opposite issue of keeping pride in check – thinking they don’t have much to offer that would interest younger generations. Before a mentoring relationship begins, you may know very little about your mentees, but you can be sure that they are hungry. They’re hungry for meaningful work.
You may struggle to see how your experiences can impact them if the gaps between generations are what you’re focused on. Taking a deeper look will likely reveal that your motivations to grow in your career bear a striking resemblance to theirs.
Holding a Productive Mentoring Session
To be an effective and motivating mentor, you’ll need to learn how to structure your time spent with mentees. These sessions aren’t the time to regale rambling stories of times gone by. Take the time to prepare for your session beforehand, look at goals to discuss, and know what you’d like to ask or share during your time.
Here’s a general structure to follow when holding a mentoring session:
- Take a little time to shift mental gears from the normal work day
- Go over the goal of the session
- Review the previous session
- Discuss the challenges and questions related to the session’s goal
- Make an action plan
- Debrief – what went well or what could use improvement?
- Decide the goal of the next session, and what you’ll do differently
Remember that mentoring is about seeing changes, not just giving new knowledge. Your session should be focused on the actions that mentees will take to improve on the goals that have been set. You’re helping them improve in a myriad of ways through a mentoring relationship, but make sure you’re paying attention to the resulting changes and how they can be improved even further.
To learn more about how to be a mentor in the workplace, you can view BizLibrary’s employee training video course, “Being a Great Mentor or Mentee.” This six-part series of video lessons helps mentors and mentees learn to be active participants in the mentoring process, understand what drives a good partnership, and explain how to make the time spent together as productive as possible.
Watch a preview of “Role of the Mentor” here:
