“Mentoring is a brain to pick, an ear to listen, and a push in the right direction.” — John Crosby

The common belief among junior executives trying to climb the career ladder is that all they have to do is become proficient at their jobs by developing technical and job-related skills. This makes many people focus on technical skills while ignoring the other aspect needed for career development – “the intangibles”.

Intangibles refer to soft skills such as communication, interpersonal skills, leadership abilities, professional relationships, and networks. Prospective senior executives must exhibit these qualities as promotion to and success in the C-suite depends on having those aforementioned qualities.

While you can try to develop these intangibles yourself, you’ll be more successful if you have someone that has already acquired them show you the ropes. Enter a career mentor.

Mentors are experienced professionals that have ‘been there’ and are willing to share their experience, knowledge, and insights with their mentees. You get to learn ‘shortcuts’ instead of trying to advance your career by trial and error.

One of the first things a mentor will help you with is to define your career goals/aspirations and how to achieve said goals. Below are ways a mentor can help you advance your career and achieve your goals.

Developing Communications and Leadership Skills

Human management is one of the more unique aspects of senior executive roles and people that occupy these positions need to be great leaders and effective communicators. However, the thing with leadership and communication skills is that they are difficult to learn or improve on without help.

By acting as a role model, a trusted advisor, and a teacher, a mentor can show a mentee how to be a great leader. Feedback is an important part of the learning process as the mentor helps the mentee identify areas that need to be worked on.

Overcoming Career Challenges

Climbing the career ladder isn’t all rainbow and sunshine. Challenges are bound to pop up every now and then. And overcoming these challenges is key to progressing your career.

Without a mentor, an individual has to work through their issues and may sometimes need to learn ‘the hard way’ through trial and error. But with a mentor, overcoming career challenges become significantly easier.

It’s worth mentioning that a mentor won’t solve your problems for you. But you are bound to receive tangible support and valuable advice to help you solve any career-related issues. In this situations, mentors are synonymous to guardian angels that help you find the right path (right solution to your problems) instead of wandering aimlessly in the dark on your own.

Mentees can avoid some career obstacles through insights from the mentor. After all, the best solution to a problem is to avoid the problem.

Growing Professional Network

Networking is crucial to professional success, especially for those with eyes on the apex of the career ladder. However, networking tends to be daunting and time consuming. And having a mentor can be the networking hack you need to advance your career.

One of the ways a mentor can grow your professional network is to introduce you to people in their network. This could take place informally or at professional events, seminars, or networking events. In most cases, the people your mentor introduces you to are those you would normally not interact with or have no reason to interact with.

When to Seek A Career Mentor?

There is no good time or bad time to seek a career mentor. However, you are more likely to benefit from mentorship when you have a specific career goal in mind. Career goals can range from obtaining skills and knowledge to acquiring leadership skills, aspiring to become a senior executive, identify core strengths and potential weaknesses, striving to achieve work-life balance, and so on.

In short, make sure you have a purpose or career goal before seeking a mentor. It’s okay if you don’t have a clear career goal or vision for the future. Your potential mentor can help you come up with a clear and solid plan for the future. But you should at least have a good idea of what you want to achieve.

Once you’ve identified your goals, it’s a matter of finding a mentor with similar values and more experience. You could try finding a mentor at your workplace or through online platforms like LinkedIn. It’s worth mentioning that your mentor doesn’t have to be the most powerful or experienced person in your organization. While it’s good to receive mentorship from the CEO, your manager and senior colleagues are also good mentorship candidates.

There’s a lot you can learn from colleagues and this is why organizations are encouraging reverse mentoring. In reverse mentoring, employees pair up, regardless of seniority, and learn from one another. This results in better professional relationships and mutual exchange of tangible and intangible skills. Reverse mentoring can also bridge generational gaps in the workplace and make an organization more inclusive.

Common Challenges In Mentorship Relationships

While mentoring provides huge benefits to the mentee and even the mentor, the best mentorship relationships can encounter challenges. But as long as both parties are committed and willing to continue the relationship, it’s often easy to find solutions to mentoring challenges. Below are common challenges in mentorship relationships:

Bad Match

This is one of the most common mentoring challenges. Sometimes, the mentor and mentee don’t just get along due to personality clashes and other reasons. And when this happens, there are two ways to go about it.

The first solution involves both parties having a sit-down and trying to figure out what’s not working. If they feel like the mentoring can be salvaged, they can continue with the relationship. On the other hand, the best solution might just be to end the relationship.

Mentors and mentees can try to see if they are a good fit by discussing their goals, hobbies, strengths, and weaknesses.

Lack Of Commitment

Just like it takes two to tango, mentoring requires both parties to be committed to the relationship. If the commitment of either the mentor or mentee is waning, the benefits of the arrangement won’t be maximized.

The solution to any mentoring commitment-related issue is communication. It could be that the mentor or mentee is stressed from work and unable to keep up with meetings. One of the parties could also be feeling incompetent or embarrassed.

Over-dependence

Mentees can become overly dependent on mentors and rely on them for everything. But a mentor is meant to guide you in the right direction. The mentee needs to take charge and do all the heavy lifting.

One of the goals of mentoring is to develop intangible skills which includes independence. So, while mentees should always be able to count on support from their mentors, they shouldn’t get complacent or become overly dependent on mentors.

Mentors should also avoid using mentees as emotional support. Mentoring is all about the mentee and mentors should keep their ego in check and ensure the arrangement is not all about them.