Benefits of being a mentor

If you had an opportunity to be a mentor and you shunned it because you thought; what's in it in for me? Well, we would say a lot! We agree that the role of a mentor is to encourage the personal and professional development of a mentee through sharing knowledge, expertise, and experience. But we also think it is more, it is about the mentor and mentee offering reciprocal benefits in developing each other's profession. It is about exchanging culture and enhancing soft and hard skills. It is about giving back to the industry you are mentoring in and seeing things differently and opening up to learning all over again.

If you get an opportunity to be a mentor, don't go into it blindly, there's more to it than what social convention puts it out to be; 'the mentee benefiting', with that being said, here are 3 reasons you should be a mentor and how you can benefit greatly from it.

Learn new things
''When you teach something to another person, you discover all of the details that you do not completely understand yourself.'' This one is a given, learning new things will be inevitable. Say for example you are a Baby Boomer and you are mentoring a Millennial employee, the Millennial might be more technology and social media savvy than you and teach you a thing or two about using technology effectively.

Develop your leadership skills
When you mentor someone, you learn things that make you a better manager and leader. You learn things that improve your judgment. If for example, you are mentoring someone within your company - you will get new insight into how other parts of the business work, and what people in those teams care about. All this will help your ability to motivate, inspire, and encourage others, which will, in turn, help you become a better manager and team member. This will further assist in paving the way to a management position or when applying for a raise.

Gain personal satisfaction
Mentors derive pleasure from passing on information, skills, and are exhilarated by the enthusiasm their protégés show. Knowing that you have played a substantial role in someone's personal development, seeing them grow and succeed can be very gratifying.

Mentoring can be beneficial at any stage in one's career from personal satisfaction, being recognized in your organization, having a renewed sense of purpose, and improved job satisfaction. So go ahead and make a difference in someone's life while you improve yours. You need not be in a managerial or leadership role. It is about what you understand and how well you can transfer it to the next person in the most sensible way.

If you need some career mentoring and advice on what the next opportunity might be for you, talk to us! Communicate Recruitment is a recruitment company with over 3 decades of experience in the Finance, Engineering, IT, Supply Chain, and Freight industries. Connect with us to learn how we can help shape your career. Click here now!