Month: February 2022

The figure of a mentor has been around since the days of Socrates, Plato and Aristotle. Nowadays, people often talk about the importance of mentoring in personal development and career contexts, with ‘get a mentor’ being a key piece of advice from successful business people the world over.

In the search to find a mentor, you may find yourself asking what is a mentor, really?

What is a mentor?

A mentor is a person who can support, advise and guide you. They typically take the time to get to know you and the challenges you’re facing and then use their understanding and personal experience to help you improve.

This relationship is additional to a manager or boss and benefits from a more personal and confidential structure. Mentors have the potential to become lifelong friends, or the relationship might only last until you’ve achieved a goal, there’s no one size fits all.

It’s a fantastic way to foster your personal development and to maximise continuous learning.

📖 Find out more about the benefits of mentoring in our guide 📖

Many celebrities have publicly discussed the impact their mentors had on their success, including Christian Dior, Richard Branson, and Oprah Winfrey.

What a mentor isn’t:

❌ While a mentor can provide invaluable support and guidance across a range of topics including mental health, they are not a therapist. It is important to establish this to all parties participating in mentoring.

❌ A mentor is not the same as a coach. Coaches are paid for and provide time-bound teaching on specific topics. You can find out more about the difference between mentoring and coaching here.

❌ Mentoring is not a magic cure. While mentoring can support a range of development goals and has many benefits for both parties and organisations, it isn’t going to fix everything. There are many complementary ways to develop your people alongside mentoring.

Mentoring definition

Definition: The act or process of helping and guiding another person to support their personal development.

Note that we’ve said ‘personal’ development here rather than ‘career’ development – and that’s because ultimately, mentoring is about people. If someone helps you improve your confidence or self-awareness, that’s going to translate beyond your day job.

What is the difference between mentoring and mentorship?

You may have heard the term mentorship used in various contexts and be unclear about what it means. Mentorship is simply the word for a mentoring relationship (mentor + relationship = mentorship). It can be used to reference both the act of mentoring and the relationship you have with your mentor or mentee.

What is the role of a mentor?

The purpose of a mentor is to help you grow as a person and become the best version of yourself.

This may involve helping you achieve your personal or career goals, introducing you to new ways of thinking, challenging your limiting assumptions, sharing valuable life lessons, and much more.

A mentor is someone that guides you and you may have several throughout your life and career. In fact, there are many different types of mentoring, from peer to peer, to group. You can find a mentor in many different ways.

📖 If you’re looking to go further than mentoring, you may need a sponsor. Find out more in our guide to mentorship vs sponsorship 📖

Why do people become mentors?

People choose to mentor others because it’s an incredibly valuable experience; seeing somebody grow and succeed as a result of your advice is highly rewarding. There are many benefits of mentoring for the mentor as well as the mentee, such as improving communication and developing leadership skills.

Harvard Business Review conducted a study researching the positive effects of mentoring, and found that people who served as mentors also experienced lower levels of anxiety, and described their job as more meaningful, than those who did not mentor.

What makes a good mentor?

“A mentor is someone who sees more talent and ability within you than you see in yourself, and helps bring it out of you.” — Bob Proctor

When asking, what is a mentor, it’s important to understand the difference between good mentors and… not so good ones. This quote highlights the essence of a good mentor: somebody that does not tell you what to do, but guides you to figuring it out for yourself.

When looking for a mentor there are certain characteristics to keep in mind. The traits of a good mentor include:

• Being a good listener
• Asking good questions
• Showing empathy
• Being encouraging and supportive
• Self-awareness
• A personable demeanour
• Giving constructive and honest feedback

Read our guide on How To Be A Good Mentor

Misconceptions about mentoring

There are a few common misconceptions about mentoring that affect the way people think about what a mentor is.

We want to set the record straight in this mentoring myth-busting:

• “Mentors have to be old” – Mentoring has no age requirements, and older people can benefit from being mentored by younger people, such as in reverse mentoring. What’s important is relevant experience and chemistry.

• “Mentoring only benefits mentees” – Mentoring has heaps of benefits for the mentor as well as the mentee, including; improving communication and leadership skills, increased fulfilment, likelihood of promotion and more. Read all the benefits here.

• “Mentoring is elitist” – It’s not about senior managers taking prodigies ‘under their wing’. Modern mentoring is fair and inclusive (when established right) and can break down unfair hierarchies.

• “You’re either a mentor or a mentee” – In fact, 89% of people with a mentor go on to be a mentor themselves. You can be both a mentor and mentee, and even switch between the two in a peer mentoring relationship.
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• “My mentor has to be similar to me” – Familiarity is nice, but the best learning happens when you’re exposed to different ways of thinking. It can be better for your development to seek out opinions from outside of your usual spheres of influence.

How do you find a mentor?

If you have somebody that you admire in mind to be your mentor, we recommend you reach out to them for a coffee or a video call. Say you’d love to pick their brains about a certain topic and have some questions ready – don’t ask them to be your mentor straight away!

It’s important to build a relationship with them before making the ask. If you have good chemistry and you can see their experience being valuable to you in your career journey, then ask them if they’d be happy to meet more often and mentor you.

Read our full guide here: How To Find A Great Mentor

Sometimes it’s hard to find mentorship on your own. You might not know the right people, or feel intimidated to reach out to someone. In that case, speak to your organisation. More and more companies are running formal mentoring programs than ever, so there’s a good chance your company can support you. You can also find support through ERGs (employee resource groups).

So, there we have it! Everything you need to know about what a mentor is, and isn’t. If you want to learn more about mentorship download our e-book ‘Introduction to Mentoring’ to find out more!

If you’re an employer looking to establish or scale mentoring, get in touch with us by booking a demo.

In an increasingly fast paced world, it is difficult to find time to be there for people and even for ourselves. As a consequence, spaces to talk about mental health are shrinking.

The day has therefore been set aside to create supportive communities by having conversations with family, friends, or colleagues about mental health. We all need good mental health. By talking about it, we can support ourselves and others.

What’s mentoring got to do with mental health?

At its core, mentoring is about helping another person. A mentor is somebody who advises, supports and guides another in the right direction.

There are many benefits of mentoring, which is why this type of relationship is established in schools, universities and organisations the world over. Many celebrities have cited their mentors as having played a huge role in their success, and finding a mentor is on the top of many people’s career development lists.

But less often discussed is the positive impact, for both the mentee and the mentor, that the relationship has on mental health and wellbeing. And it’s important for people from all areas of the business – from stressed out sales leaders to overworked junior engineers. So let’s find out why you should be putting mentoring high on your employee wellbeing action plan.

Find out more about embedding mentoring in your diversity and inclusion initiatives with Guider

How mentoring helps mental health

Here are 5 ways that mentoring has a positive effect on mental health, for both the mentee and the mentor involved:

1. Supporting isolation

Those struggling with mental health issues often feel isolated.

While the stigma around mental health issues is thankfully decreasing, it can still be very difficult to speak up, particularly in a workplace. This stigma can leave people feeling isolated, and believing it’s better to stay quiet. This is even more relevant following the effects of 2020, with feelings of loneliness reaching a record high in UK adults.

In their guide to supporting mental health at work, the Mental Health Foundation lists mentoring as an effective solution. Having a support system in the form of a mentoring programme for those who have lived experience of mental health can have a huge impact. This could be in the form of peer, group, or team mentoring, or equally traditional one on one mentoring can provide someone struggling from mental health issues with a person who is invested in their success, leading them to feel less alone. You can read more about the different types of mentoring here.

 In the spirit of Mental Health Awareness Week, remember to check in on your colleagues regardless of whether or not you are formally mentoring them. We never know what someone else is going through, and knowing that people are looking out for you does a lot of good for someone suffering from feelings of isolation.

2. Reducing levels of anxiety

Those who suffer from constant anxiety are likely to worry about everything from the simplest of tasks, to the people around them, to their own abilities.

Anxiety at work drastically impacts general wellbeing, and is a huge set back for many people and organisations. In fact, the World Health Organisation estimates a global cost of $1 trillion per year in lost productivity as a result of depression and anxiety.

There are many actions that businesses can put in place to support their employees better and reduce that impact. Mentoring is one of those methods that has been proven to reduce anxiety, particularly around one’s own ability. Those feelings and worries are minimised by sharing them with a mentor who can encourage and inspire you.

‘Work politics can be a real challenge when we have mental health problems. It can be helpful to find a mentor or a small group of trusted colleagues with whom you can discuss feelings about work.’ – Mental Health Foundation

While we often focus on the benefits of mentoring for those receiving it, this also works the other way. As the Mental Health Foundation highlight in their choice of kindness as 2020’s theme, helping other people feels good.

Harvard Business Review conducted a study researching the positive effects of mentoring on the mentors themselves, and found that people who served as mentors experienced lower levels of anxiety, and described their job as more meaningful, than those who did not mentor. These findings were also found in a study by Cambridge Judge Business School, with mentoring reducing anxiety in mentors.

3. Increasing self-confidence

Mental health charity Mind says: ‘while low self-esteem isn’t a mental health problem in itself, they are closely linked’.

An increase in confidence can therefore positively impact mental health, and help to challenge those limiting assumptions about ourselves that mental health issues cause us to feel.

Those with mentors frequently report an increase in their self-confidence, particularly as they feel supported in their decisions and career path. Mentoring relationships are a safe space for mentees to explore new ideas and grow without fear of judgement, as well as receive reassurance from someone they admire. These factors naturally work to increase their confidence in themselves, and so can really help to tackle mental health issues such as depression.

Mental health issues feed off limiting beliefs about ourselves. Feelings of worthlessness and futility are closing linked with depression, and so investing in building the self-confidence and self-esteem of your employees is a highly effective way of improving mental health across your workforce.

Mentors similarly experience improved self-esteem and confidence from the act of helping others achieve their goals. This rewarding feeling also results in improved mental health across the board.

4. Feeling listened to

This may seem obvious, but having a safe and formalised space where you feel listened to and valued has a positive impact on mental health.

It’s not often that those safe spaces are available to us in our day to day lives, particularly in our working lives. For those who do not have a family or friend unit they are close to, these spaces can be hard to come across full stop.

A mentoring relationship, especially one established formally through work, is built around mutual trust and confidentiality. It therefore provides a space to share without judgement, to be listened to and supported. This obviously comes more naturally if the mentor and mentee get along on a personal level, which is important when matching mentoring pairs.

For those suffering from mental health issues who might not have many people to talk to, mentoring can be very cathartic and supportive. However, it’s important to remember that a mentoring session is not a therapy session, and a mentor is not a therapist. If running a mentoring programme for mental health support, this is an important reminder to share with all participants throughout the programme.

5. Hope for the future

For those suffering from mental health issues, fear and anxiety about the future is a common struggle. People can feel dread and detachment when thinking about what lies ahead for them. This is another experience which has become more widely addressed during the Covid-19 pandemic, and something which mentors can support with.

As a mentor helps someone work towards achievable goals and accelerates their progress, they can reduce these anxieties and instil hope and optimism around the future.

The Advocacy Project shared some of the feedback from their mental health mentoring programme, with mentees describing the experience as ‘a light at the end of the tunnel’ and their mentors giving them ’empowerment and belief in you’.

This is truly powerful and can make a huge difference in the lives of those suffering from poor mental health. If running a mentoring programme tailored towards mental health support specifically, ensure your mentors have received adequate training in how to broach topics surrounding the future, so as not to overwhelm or panic their mentees.

Typically, mentors may look to discuss and set long term career or personal goals with their mentees. However, for someone suffering from mental health issues this could be overwhelming and lead to them putting undue pressure on themselves. Mentors need to be aware of this and work on short term achievable goals to boost confidence and reduce anxiety.

For more practical tips to support employee mental health while working from home, check out this blog post.

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With more and more emphasis on workplace wellbeing and mental health, organisations needs to be ensuring their people are happy and healthy at work. For the reasons discussed in this article, starting a mentoring programme is a highly effective way to tackle mental health issues while also supporting personal development.

Don’t be reactive to mental health support. Mentoring helps to create an inclusive culture built around community, mutual support and growth. Find out how Guider can help, book a chat below.