Mentoring: what it is and how to get a mentor to accelerate your career

Mentoring is important at different stages and aspects of life. Listening to different advice and opinions may be the best option for solving some problems. In part, this is what mentoring is all about.

Basically, its goal is for you to get the right advice and honest, unbiased feedback. Because many situations can be difficult to discuss with your manager (because you don’t want them to know), your parents (because they don’t understand), or your best friend (because you have more important things to talk about).

In these situations, the right person to give you “the way of the stones” may be a mentor. Supports and encourages the other person to manage their own learning, maximize their potential, develop their skills, improve their performance, and become better personally and professionally.

In other words, a true mentor helps you become better and find meaning in your life and career. It is people who give us visions, dreams, ideals, principles, values, attitudes, knowledge and wisdom. A mentor can be a teacher, a boss, a colleague, a grandfather, a poet, a philosopher, or even the author of a book that inspires you.

Where did the mentoring app come from?

The word “mentor” comes from Homer’s 8th century BC Odyssey, when King Odysseus of Ithaca left his family under the Mentor’s protection when he went to fight in the Trojan War. his son.

There is no specific date for the invention of the term in business, but the first business schools only began to flourish in the second half of the 20th century, after the Second World War. Since then, a mentor has become synonymous with someone who shares their wisdom, experience, and knowledge with their less experienced peers.

In addition, the story itself is full of cases of mentoring. Among others were Aristotle, mentor of Alexander the Great, Gandhi, mentor of Martin Luther King, Peter Drucker, mentor of Jim Collins.

What is mentoring for?

It is also worth noting that mentoring can have several purposes. For example, from solving a specific problem in technical or management issues to giving advice on the general direction of the career.

So, see some mentoring uses below.

• Help analyze results, consequences or cause-effect relationships in the most critical situations;
• Identify and discuss ethical issues;
• Discuss ways to do the right things better;
• Increasing the mentee’s self-esteem and self-confidence;
• Discuss the career path and the best strategy to achieve it;
• Help the network.

How does mentoring work?

But looking for a mentor doesn’t mean signing a contract with someone to give you advice during tough times. You just need to be close to that person and create a bond that allows you to absorb what they are going through.

It could be mentoring a good professor during your college years, chatting with more experienced members of your family, or connecting with successful people in your field (social networks like LinkedIn and Facebook help a lot with this).

Many will be surprised at the willingness of more experienced people to mentor young professionals. So, if you are inspired by someone and want that person to mentor you, be sure to send an email expressing your desire.

The result, by the way, can be surprising! Talking to your colleagues to find out who are good mentors at your company or college is also a good way to find experienced people willing to help. That’s why once you find a mentor, it’s important to set up regular meetings to discuss your life and career.

By the way, you should be completely open and sincere in these conversations. For the first dialogue, it is interesting to show what your goals with mentoring are: changing careers, improving leadership skills, improving performance, being more efficient, improving communication, etc.

*HE text “Mentoring: what is it and how to get a mentor to accelerate your career” originally published on Fundação Estudar’s Na Prática portal.