If you are taking the time to read this post, I believe you would make a great mentor. My question is: do you believe it too?
I recently ran a couple of mentor training workshops for Women+ in Geospatial, a global professional network with thousands of members. They have the largest mentoring programme I know. Every year, it’s oversubscribed with over 400 people. Sadly, there aren’t enough mentors for everyone.
We need more mentors in this world.
As I’m sat on the train to deliver my last leadership development programme of the year, I’d like to bust a few myths around mentoring.
Myth 1: I need a lot of training
I’m always amazed at how quickly someone with no prior mentoring training can make a positive impact with just the basic mechanics of coaching, which you can easily learn with a bit of practice:
🌳 Listen to understand, not to reply
🌳 After you’ve listened, repeat back what you’ve heard (trust me, this is a superpower)
🌳 Ask open questions to help your mentee find their own solutions (like, “what else could you do?”)
🌳 If it’s useful, give advice — sparingly and lightly — and only after you have tried the above.
Do these things, and you can’t go far wrong.
Myth 2: I don’t know enough to be a mentor
Historically speaking, a mentor is a senior and well-connected person supporting someone more junior in their career development.
While that may still be true in some cases, you don’t need to be an expert to be a mentor. In fact, it’s much harder work to be a good mentor if you really are an expert in something.
As the Zen saying goes: in the beginner’s mind there are many possibilities, but in the expert’s mind there are few.
So here comes the crux
As a mentor, you need to be a role model for learning and — therefore — not knowing all the answers.
You need to be real and share your own insecurities, doubts and uncertainties. Because this will relieve your mentee of the pressure to be perfect. In seeing you as a real person with all your foibles, they are empowered to be real, too. And so you are creating the space for them to learn and grow. Just as you are, too. It’s a virtuous circle.
Have you ever watched the BBC’s Race Across the World? It is rarely the most experienced people who end up winning. It is those who are most open to learning and taking risks. And by the end of it, they have grown tremendously.
Mentoring is a partnership of two fellow travellers discovering things together. The quality of the relationship matters much more than anything else. And that takes two people, even if one of them is more experienced.
Last year I wrote about how mutual learning isn’t optional — it’s a necessity. I was learning about it then as a coaching supervisor, and I’m still learning about it now… it never ends.
Mentoring is a celebration of that. Who could you mentor today?
True Horizon Coaching 