We have all heard stories of people talking about how their mentor opened up their eyes to new opportunities, helped them find their calling or assisted them to new heights in their careers. Mentorship always seems like that “buzzword” that everyone mentions in a career conversation as well as how it will have a profound impact on your life. But doesn’t it almost feel like a marketing gimmick people use to get your attention?
While sometimes over-mentioned, mentorship is pivotal to having a successful career whether you are a salaried employee, an entrepreneur or both! Just as how it takes a village to raise a child, it also takes a village to build your career. So let’s get into it and talk about why you need a mentor and how to make the most of it.
Mentorship can have various purposes and styles depending on the type of relationship. It can be structured differently in each case since the end goal will change your approach. While there can be endless reasons to pursue a mentorship, some of the major driving factors can be:
Getting an insight into understanding future possibilities for your career
To help you grow personally
To build soft skills
An desire to seek guidance on how to be a people leader
Wanting to learn how to develop relevant job skills for your future career transition
To help you navigate a career change
A way to support development goals and more
Your mentor-mentee relationship can have a baseline of one or more of these guiding factors. I have always had a mentor since I was 19 years old. At times I have even had 2-3 mentors at a time for different goals, and some of them have been an integral part of my life for years and continue to be so. Making Millennium and our entire learning philosophy started because of a mentorship relationship! I met Helly at a work event where she was the guest speaker, and hearing her talk about her ambitions and goals resonated so well with me that I reached out to her right after that session to ask her to be my mentor. I felt that there was so much I can learn from this fellow Computer Engineer who is relatable for me, who defines what I appreciate in a leader, and who is immensely passionate about what she does. This relationship eventually evolved into a deep friendship and we became each other’s biggest cheerleaders. Even in the beginning of our mentorship I learned so many leadership skills through Helly and found someone who could relate to my challenges as a young woman in a technical profession. The validation that I am not alone in this journey was extremely important in itself!
Through all my different mentorships I have learned so many things that I would otherwise have probably gone through my entire life without knowing. I have gained wisdom and feedback based on experiences from individuals who have been in my shoes in the past and have shown me a path where I can avoid the same hardships as them. How wonderful is that! I have learned how to be more effective in my communications, how to be a better team player, I have grown my technical skills and understood different career paths available to me through my mentors.
Some of us, maybe a lot of us, want to be self-sufficient, don’t want to rely on others for help or are hesitant to ask for help, but at the same time we want to build successful careers and progress personally. To do that we need feedback on what we are doing well and what needs improvement, we need people in our life to understand our aspirations, our skills & strengths, and want to see us succeed. Mentorship is the way to do that!
A mentor can be an advocate, a sponsor, a coach, a well-wisher in your life and be someone who actively promotes your brand without you needing to ask for it. This can be a huge gift in life that helps you grow your influence and reach out to people you wouldn’t have otherwise had the opportunity to connect with. I am a strong believer in mentorship because I have seen how impactful these relationships can be when taken seriously and with the right amount of effort to drive them. I hope you decide to reach out to that person you look up to, you aspire to be like or want to learn from and ask them to be your mentor!
We will be sharing many different resources on the different types of mentors, how to reach out to one as well as how to maintain and build a mentorship so follow <LINK HERE> campaign for growing your career through mentorship.
The women in your corner