7 Easy Steps On How To Be A Better Mentor
Have you ever wondered how to become a mentor? Mentorship is a two-person relationship in which a more experienced or knowledgeable person guides someone less experienced or knowledgeable, resulting in a mentor and a mentee.
Mentors are important because they can be crucial in one’s personal and professional development. A good mentor will help you reach your goals and achieve success in life.
Similarly, being a good mentor allows you to touch other people’s lives and help them in their personal and professional development. But if you want to be able to do this, you first need to learn how to be an effective mentor.
7 Steps on How to Be a Better Mentor
There are seven most important steps on how to be a better mentor. They are the following:
You have to follow these seven important steps if you want to have a good mentor-mentee relationship. The best experts and mentors not only have flexible minds, but they also remain humble, and fine-tune and tweak their models to remain relevant to those around them.
1. Build Communication
Communication is very important in this relationship, especially during the first meeting with your mentee. You want to ensure that your mentee feels comfortable and relaxed.
The first meeting is very important because this is where you will be building the foundation of your relationship. Get to know each other, ask good questions, and let the mentee also ask you questions as well since they have to get to know you as their mentor. Let the conversation flow so that the mentee will also be more than willing to open up to you.
If you are mentoring someone who is your colleague, you already know something about each other. You can build a conversation about work-related issues, which is a good start.
2. Listen
You don’t always have to give answers or ask questions. Sometimes, it’s important to just sit back and listen because the mentee wants to tell you something.
As a mentor, you should ask questions that will reveal certain aspects of the mentee’s life—whether personal or professional—or whatever you are discussing and where your mentor-mentee relationship has taken you.
3. Set Goals and Determine What the End Goal Is
Remember, the reason for a mentee to come to you is that they trust that you can help them develop themselves, perform well at work, and be something different. For that, you want to set achievable goals for your mentee.
Another way to demonstrate transparency and build a relationship with your mentee is to share your own goals as well. If you share your personal or career goals with your mentee, they are more likely to take their own goals seriously because they have bought into your goals, and vice versa.
4. Gain Their Trust
Trust and respect supports the mentor-mentee relationship through transparent and honest communication. It’s easy to overlook trust when it’s present, but when it’s missing, it’s nearly impossible to think about anything else.
Meeting face-to-face is recommended by most mentors online as another way to build trust with your mentee. It can be done through emails and chats, but the most important one is to schedule regular face-to-face or video meetings.
5. Motivate Your Mentee
If you want to be a better mentor, you must learn how to encourage other people. If you see someone you are mentoring, the first thing you should say is something positive—some sort of acknowledgment, words of praise, or gratitude.
Being a great mentor, you must always be willing to encourage others on the good they do, no matter how little it is. Keep in mind that the mentor-mentee relationship is a two-way street; you will learn something as well, so be open to receiving feedback.
6. Give Feedback
Great mentors take their time, have a plan, are extremely encouraging, and know when to offer corrections and instructions. This is crucial.
You must bring corrections while remaining kind and relaxed. You should look at the mentee and say, “This is a good way to do it, but how else can we go about this?” or “This is incorrect. Let’s look at this again, together.”
You have to give constructive feedback so the mentee can learn. When giving feedback, plan the next step on how you’re both going to overcome the problems and analyze what you could have done differently in hindsight.
7. Create Opportunities for the Mentee
The goal is to assist your mentee in achieving personal and professional goals. Mentorship is important because it helps people realize their potential skills and development. This allows them to reach their goals more quickly than they would on their own. This is because it’s easier to tap into your potential with the support and guidance of an experienced mentor.
A mentor may also introduce a mentee to one or two key individuals who can assist with the mentee’s career development or goals.
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