Have you ever benefited from mentoring? Have you been a mentor to someone? Carol explores what mentoring is and isn’t in a recent post on the Nextiva blog “4 Tips on Mentoring Employees for Everyone’s Benefit.” She begins:
“Without inspiration from a former boss, Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos might not be where he is today. In a mutual mentorship, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg turns to Washington Post CEO Donald Graham for advice on being a CEO; Graham turns to Zuckerberg for social media advice. But effective mentorship does not have to apply only to top brass. Nor does the mentoring relationship have to be formal or all-consuming — and the best partnerships are mutually-beneficial.
Here are four tips to help you learn the essentials of mentoring and how to do it for mutual benefit.
1. Mentor/Mentee Matches Often Begin Informally
Mentorships often begin when you offer a bit of advice to someone or when a person comes to you for advice. Whether a co-worker approaches you to learn your secret to handling difficult customers or you offer shortcut tips to a local print shop owner to improve scheduling, you are a mentor.
In fact, those few minutes may mark the entire mentor relationship. But, it may also mark the beginning of a long-term mentorship.”
You can read the rest of the post here.
