Business
Top 10 Ways To Become A Great Mentor
Having a mentor is a very important part of being a new business owner but being a mentor is a very difficult part of this relationship but it can be very beneficial on both parts.
Certain people have the right qualities of being a mentor and some are just not cut out to help others reaching their business goals.
Here are 10 things you can do to be a great mentor:
1.Be credible
Being credible is an essential part of any relationship. Your mentee will always have to run things by you and the feedback that you give needs to be credible and and useable for their business. If they use your advice and you are not very credible then their credibility is intern compromised.
2.Be a positive role model
A great mentor is someone that is very much respected by their mentee. A mentor can teach their mentee a lot simply by involving them in problem solving when they’re put in a difficult position. A great mentor also creates situations to put the mentee in to see how they will deal with the task at hand.
3.Be genuinely interested in your mentee as an individual
It’s one thing to offer to be a mentor, it’s another to actually take part in a mentorship problem and take the time out to genuinely understand your mentee and what drives them and interests them business wise. You need to know their vision and the areas where they need your assistance so you don’t have a baseless relationship.
4.Share your experiences and insights
Share your great and bad experiences. One doesn’t have the time to make the mistakes that every entrepreneur has made in order to learn from them. So teach the bad and good lessons so the mentee is able to learn how to avoid certain situations.
5.Ask open questions
Asking your mentee open questions will help you as a mentor to identify their real needs, values and passions. It’s also a great way to get your mentee to think through situations themselves and draw out the consequences of the various choices or courses of action they can take.
6.Act as a sounding board
A mentee benefits quite a lot from having a good mentor listen to them, be it problems or ideas it’s always great to have a listening ear on call. Always allow a mentee to share and explore their ideas with you, give them room to feel that comfortable with you.
7.Provide a fresh perspective
One of the benefits of working with a mentor is that a good mentor will often provide their mentee with a fresh perspective on an issue, giving alternative ideas to situations or improving the idea with the mentee not fully being in charge and having them do things your way. A good mentor will often have the clarity of distance from an issue or problem that’s needed to provide objective feedback to their mentee. It’s also wise to expose the mentee to their mistakes by using others as an example.
8.Provide helpful feedback
Constructive criticism is better than any other form of shutting down an idea. If you need to help make the idea better help improve it by not shutting down idea but working with the mentees idea to make it better. Give feedback that will help rather than just agree with every idea no matter how bad it may be.
9.Acknowledge achievements
The best feeling one has is when their efforts are recognised by the person they look up to most. Always acknowledge the mentees great work to let them know that even when the progress further when they achieve great things their work will be recognised.
10.Offer your advice, but only if your mentee asks for it.
It’s always so tempting to just give advice even when you see that the mentee is not ready for the advice. Give the mentee room to ask for assistance or advice and always let them know that they can feel free coming to you for some advice.
Allow them to discuss the situation with you, then helping them to think through the situation by asking them questions to draw out the consequences of various actions and how to carry out those actions. Doing this tends to be more empowering for the mentee. It’s helps them work through the issue and essentially making them come up with their own conclusions and in the end they walk away with a new confidence.
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