What makes millennials stay at a job?
Higher pay, perhaps, or more flexibility, or neat perks such as ping-pong tables and gym memberships. All of these are fair guesses, but you probably wouldn’t expect that they also prioritize getting a mentor.
To be fair, mentorship has always been valued. Even in the Middle Ages, people would learn their trade by joining a guild—and would apprentice under a master until they rise up the ranks themselves. This style of learning corresponds more closely to internships or job-shadowing, but it’s far different from what happens in schools, where we sit as part of an indistinct crowd and listen passively as a professor lectures.
An alternative is online education, which gives more freedom to the individual. You can find information online on practically any topic and choose how little or how much you want to learn, effectively cobbling together your own curriculum.
However, it still doesn’t quite compare with having a physically present mentor or teacher who can guide you through the various stages of your growth.
Incorporating a mentorship culture into your company can reduce turnovers. A key reason why people quit is a sense of stagnancy, and mentorship prevents that. When managers also actively take on the role of mentor to their team, it opens up communication and can lead to better teamwork.
A mentorship culture is characterized by sharing knowledge openly—and the beauty of this is that you can go beyond the usual top-down model and make it an equal exchange, such that the mentor also learns from the mentee.
A mentor is much better than Google
The most outright reason for getting a mentor is knowledge. And not just any knowledge, either—it’s real-life, practical knowledge, distilled in someone who has already gone where you want to go. Of course you can read textbooks and watch videos, but getting it straight from a mentor is invaluable.
This is especially true if your mentor is a master in his field. You can pick his brain, indulge your curiosity by asking questions, and get advice that you won’t find anywhere else, lighting up the way for you to achieve your own goals.
A mentor can give smart criticism
To improve, you need to put in your hours—but blind practice will just leave you spinning your wheels. You need feedback to clarify your direction and point out your weak spots.
There are multiple ways to get feedback, but a mentor with an observant eye can isolate what exactly you’re doing wrong—and be completely unbiased and honest about it.
Feedback has also been shown to play a role in employee engagement. The more you act on feedback, the faster you can make progress.
A mentor can expand your world socially
One major difference between a mentor and a traditional teacher is that teachers can be much more distant, especially if you only interact with them in the context of a class.
Mentors—because of the increased closeness of one-on-one interactions—are more likely to become friends and confidants. There’s a certain warmth in relationship between mentor and mentee–psychological safety is a defining feature, and you can even say that your mentor is personally invested in your growth.
Beyond this, a mentor can also introduce you to her circles, so that you get to know her friends and business partners.
It’s not that one-sided
All of this sounds peachy—and seems to give much more benefits to the mentee rather than the mentor, who will at most get paid for it or gain a sense of fulfillment.
If you’re on the mentee side, though, it’s not exactly light. While there are formal mentorship programs—and your manager can be your mentor by default—more often than not you have to look for a mentor yourself. And once you do find someone, you have to put in good effort and be receptive to criticism.
Still, it pays off a lot: the right mentor will definitely put you on the fast track to growth.
The post Get a Mentor to Fast-Track Your Growth appeared first on Sprout.
source https://sprout.ph/blog/get-a-mentor-to-fast-track-your-growth/
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