Benefits of mentoring

Mentoring is often touted to be an extremely satisfying experience not only for mentees, but for mentors also. The specific reasons for this vary from person to person and from relationship to relationship. As always however, there are some general aspects that overlap and these are what I'd like to talk about today. Anne Rolfe* has identified four such areas which I'll share with you:

1. The development and growth of the individuals
   
2. Connecting and building relationships, as well as the thought process used in mentoring, contribute to people’s well-being.
   
3. Tapping into tacit knowledge. This is the main purpose of mentoring; literally picking someone’s brain for the wisdom born of experience.
   
4. Gaining perspective. Increasing the intelligence people bring to any situation by seeing more than one point of view. This improves, decision-making, teamwork and workplace harmony.

As I mentioned before, these are general areas and so we're only just scratching the surface here. Aside from the satisfaction you get from knowing you're making a positive difference in someone's life, your mentees can unlock whole new areas of interest you never knew you had, talents you never knew you had. If you've never been a mentor and have the interest and commitment, I'd certainly advise you to do so!

You can mentor anyone who is willing to learn from you; a family member, someone in your class or church... the list goes on. Or, you could apply to be a mentor on our programme. Applications for our next programme will be opening in a few months, so keep checking the blogs for updates if you're interested!

*You can follow Anne Rolfe on Twitter here.