Unlocking Potential: The Power of Mentorship for Seasoned Professionals
Fostering Growth, Nurturing Expertise, and Empowering Success at Every Career Stage 🔓🧠
Before we dive in, I'd like to make a small request 🙏. Please pick one favor you can do for me: either send me a quick email 📧 just saying "hi," or share this newsletter 🗞️ with family, friends, and even foes 😈. Naturally, doing both would be doubly amazing 😍. Thanks!
Unlocking Potential: The Power of Mentorship for Seasoned Professionals
In my previous post, I talked about the importance of mentorship for junior team members, highlighting how it helps them avoid costly mistakes, navigate challenges, and find the right balance in their work. Investing in mentorship is a win-win situation – it benefits both mentees and mentors, fostering growth and efficiency within the organization. In this article, we'll examine how experienced professionals can benefit from mentorship and explore the differences between the "push" and "pull" approaches.
Pull, not Push
Navigating the topic of mentorship with experienced professionals requires a delicate touch. Imposing mentorship on them can lead to hurt feelings or resentment. They may not want or need guidance or might already have their trusted mentors, thankyouverymuch. If you think a colleague could benefit from help, offer it respectfully and without being intrusive. Don’t force mentorship, you can lead a horse to water, but you can't make it drink.
On the flip side, if you're offered mentorship, don't hastily reject it without proper consideration. Many people have the tendency to reject help, probably because they don’t want to feel weak. When I became the CTO of Wizer.me, an experienced entrepreneur graciously offered to serve as my mentor. I initially thought, "I don't need it," but a second later, I realized how fortunate I was to receive help from such an accomplished individual. Embrace the opportunity to learn from others, as their guidance may prove invaluable in your professional journey. Offer mentorship to your team, and ask your managers to look for a mentor for you.
Why Mentoring Matters for Experienced Professionals
Now that we've discussed the importance of approaching mentorship with care let's explore why experienced professionals need mentorship.
Growth: Many professionals want to evolve, and a mentor's job is to facilitate their development and help them reach their full potential.
Learning new skills: Mentorship becomes crucial as experienced professionals take on new tasks and roles. It's not just about teaching; new responsibilities often involve a paradigm shift. Think about an individual contributor who becomes a manager, a team lead who finds herself leading the entire company, a software developer who becomes a data scientist. A mentor's guidance is invaluable in these situations.
Combat boredom and frustration: A good mentor can rekindle the spark for professionals who feel stuck and identify opportunities that benefit both the individual and the organization. Seasoned professionals may stop asking questions and seeking new perspectives. A good mentor challenges them, fostering continuous learning and improvement.
The bigger picture: Experienced professionals may lose sight of the larger framework as they focus on daily tasks. A good mentor bridges the gap, helping mentees understand their work's importance within the organization.
In short, mentoring experienced professionals is vital for fostering growth, continuous learning, and aligning their work with the organization's goals. Providing guidance and support helps experienced team members overcome challenges, expand their skillsets, and maintain their passion for their work. Remember, mentorship isn't just for juniors – it's essential for professionals at every stage of their careers.
External or Internal?
Finding a mentor for yourself or your experienced colleagues can be challenging, especially in small or medium-sized companies. Finding someone with the required experience, broad context, and sufficient detachment from the mentee might be tough. This detachment is crucial, as it enables candid discussions without fear that the mentorship sessions will negatively impact day-to-day relationships at work.
For example, I once mentored a team of developers transitioning into a data team. Most of them were experienced programmers with solid opinions about company processes. However, they lacked the reputation and confidence to address data science issues with management. As an "outsider," I provided a safe space for discussing these problems without fear of backlash from management. Together, we identified non-issues, minor glitches, and one major process fault.
On the one hand, an internal mentor is closer to the organization’s culture and business. Nevertheless, my personal, very biased opinion is that an external mentor is often the better choice for experienced professionals. They can provide unbiased guidance and support while maintaining distance from the day-to-day work environment.
Business Coach or Experienced Professional
Many business coaches are out there, and many companies offer their employees allowances to engage with coaching firms. When I worked at Automattic, I took advantage of this benefit, but honestly, it wasn't my cup of tea. Perhaps it was because all the coaches were American, and I'm a cynical ex-Soviet Israeli, or maybe my coach focused on corporate culture. At the same time, Automattic still had that startup vibe. I'm not sure. However, at least one coworker claimed that the mentorship allowance was the best perk they received from Automattic. I don't have a firm opinion on this issue.
To wrap things up
Check-in with your experienced team members to see if they need mentorship. Consider seeking mentorship for yourself as well. And if you need guidance, don't hesitate to contact me.
Two tips
(Please, please, let me know what you think of these tips. Should I keep them?)
Tip 1: 🤔✨ Try asking "Because?" in various situations. Although not a question, this prompt encourages others to think deeply, and creatively, and share their thoughts. Just say "Because?", stay quiet, and witness the magic.
Tip 2: 🚫😬 Don't offer anything out of politeness you don't want to do; people might actually agree to your offer, and you will regret it.
Next week in Direction Matters
In the next issue of Direction Matters, dive into the world of churn and uncover various types and methods for measuring and predicting it. Explore the differences between general vs. personalized and actionable vs. non-actionable approaches, and see how they impact your business strategy. Stay tuned!