Prepare to Become a Mentor

In the early weeks and months of your new, better paying job, you’ll be learning a lot from others who have been in the organization longer than you have. These people are your mentors, even if they don’t formally hold that title. Learn from these people to help you get proficient at your job, but also learn from them with an eye toward how you will help others learn in the future. While you can’t rush becoming a mentor or try to become one by a specific deadline, the time to start preparing for mentorship is now, as you never know when you’ll need to be ready to provide mentorship to someone coming up behind you!

-            Mentoring others cements your subject matter expertise

-            Help others as you’ve been helped

-            Build a network of mentees you want on your team later in your career

Mentoring others cements your subject matter expertise

You probably have at least one experience in your past where you thought in your head that you knew something well, but when you tried to explain or demonstrate it to someone, you realized you didn’t know it quite as well as you thought. Mentorship through demonstration or explanation gives you an opportunity to discover and address gaps in your mastery of your work, either because you discover a gap in your own understanding when showing someone something, or they ask a thought-provoking question leads you to discover the gap. In this way, mentorship can be just as valuable for the mentor as it is for the mentee. Do everything you can to master your craft before becoming a mentor to build credibility with mentees. At the same time, know that you don’t have to be perfect to be a mentor and that providing mentorship will deepen your level of mastery and help you come to thoroughly know your stuff.

Help others as you’ve been helped

As mentioned in the earlier post on networking, look for opportunities to help others similar to how you have been helped. The fact is, we can’t leave young and inexperienced people around us to just figure things out on their own. Yes, they can eventually learn that way if they have to. But then they have to learn the long, painful, and expensive way, and to leave someone in that position is a true disservice to them. We’ve all had people in our lives who helped us when they didn’t have to, and we should remember those people and feel inspired by what they did for us. Start preparing yourself now to be that person for someone in the future; your time to be a mentor will arrive sooner than you think, and you never know when it’ll arrive. Learn to excel at your job now for your own benefit, but also excel to prepare for mentoring others; remember that the reality is, mentors are always needed to help mentees sustain an enduring culture of strong performance in the organization.

Build a network of mentees you want on your team later in your career

Mentoring others is an opportunity to expand your professional network. By mentoring others to help advance their careers, you form a solid professional connection that can benefit you later in your career. You might be leading a department of an organization or decide to start your own company someday, and by mentoring others before getting to that point, you will know quality people you want on your team, and they’ll know you’re a quality person to work for. Having a prior mentoring relationship with people enables you to recruit past mentees to come work for you when you assume a significant leadership role and need to augment or build a team to accomplish your new mission.

Conclusion

Mentoring others helps you to learn your job better; having to demonstrate or explain how to do something shows whether you’ve truly mastered it or if there has been a hidden gap in your understanding. Use help you’ve received from others in the past as inspiration to help others in the future; even if you don’t have to do it, remember that many people who’ve helped you in the pasts also didn’t have to, but they still chose to invest their time and energy into you anyhow. Think about the long-term case for mentoring. In addition to the satisfaction you’ll feel from helping others flourish in their careers, you’ll form connections that could be very helpful to you later in your career. Helping others now typically makes them want to work with you again and help you back in the future.

Learn your job well both to succeed today and to prepare for mentoring others later!

The next step on the roadmap: Why Learn About Project Management