Independent Career Counsellor, Business Coach and Mentor

Career Management

Business Coaching 

Business Mentoring

Contact / Bio . . .

Mentoring in Business . . . .

Benefits for the mentor
Mentoring creates opportunities for experienced executives to strengthen their knowledge base.

By becoming more reflective practitioners mentors develop greater self awareness and appreciation of their skills and the knowledge they have developed. This can greatly enhance their job satisfaction, which is often the main reward.

It can enhance the mentor’s leadership qualities and can improve their communication skills.

Benefits for the Organisation
Mentoring can contribute to the development of a positive organisational climate and can promote a more clear understanding of responsibilities and expectations within the organisation.

Matching a newly appointed with an experienced executive in the field promotes networking and visibility. This may in turn lead to the development of useful partnerships and alliances in the organisation for the future.

Providing such a support mechanism can lead to greater employee satisfaction and retention as it reflects an investment in employee development.

Benefits for the Customer
Mentoring helps to ensure that customers experience continuity of culture, a reliable quality of service and therefore increases the likelihood of a long-term relationship

The challenges of mentoring

People who are very good at their job are not necessarily very good at supporting others to develop in the same or similar job.

Mentors need excellent self awareness in order to be able to ‘tease out’ the aspects of their highly effective performance which would be relevant and beneficial for their protégé to learn.

Mentors also require the ability to pass on their skills in a way that can be adapted and applied by the protégé in their own personal style.

Mentors must also have highly developed people-skills in order to ensure that the mentor/protégé relationship operates most effectively and is experienced by the protégé as appropriately challenging, supportive and developmental.

Mentors benefit from having a confidence in their own ability there is always the danger to misuse the situation to show-off or boast which is not a learning situation for the protégé

What is mentoring?

Mentoring is the formal process whereby a more skilled and experienced business person (with an understanding and knowledge of the skills needed to perform the job) can support a less experienced or ‘protégé’ to improve their skills and the performance in the business. The process of mentoring stimulates and challenges the protégé to arrive at their own solutions and to make use of the mentor’s input. Mentoring is useful at all levels from top management to clerical ranks.

Why not give just give advice? 

While giving the answers is usually better than giving no help at all, helping someone find the answers for themselves is a far more effective process in ensuring they find ways of coming up with their own solutions in the future. The mentor's role is to help the person find their own path; to experience and learn from their own attempts, failures and successes, and by so doing, to develop a greater width and depth of skill and understanding of his/her own natural strengths leading to greater fulfilment of their potential.

Benefits of mentoring

Benefits for the protégé
Mentoring can develop a newly appointed/promoted employee’s confidence as s/he becomes familiar with a new role, increased responsibilities, or a new organisational culture.

The process of mentoring can support the person to progress further, take estimated risks, set new targets, and achieve higher personal and/or professional standards.

It can provide a forum for dialogue on professional issues and to seek and receive advice on how to balance new responsibilities.

Mentoring provides role modelling for leadership and facilitates the development of increased competencies and stronger interpersonal skills.