It’s easy for people to say no to activities that take up their time without explicitly visible or tangible returns. We’ve heard that a lot when it comes to mentoring. There’s always a reason not to become a mentor – from lack of time, to not having the right personality type, or even just feeling intimidated. However, there’s more to gain from mentoring than there is to lose. Mentoring can be life-changing if you are equipped with the right tools for the process, and the impact of mentoring can be felt by both the mentor and the mentee alike. In this post, we’ll let you in on what you stand to gain from becoming a mentor. 

1. You’ll be giving back If you’ve been successful in your career, are an industry thought leader, or are a general force to reckon with in whichever space you work, you can and should always pay it forward. Mentoring allows you to do that. It gives you an avenue to help the people who are currently walking the path you did do it with less friction and less mistakes. Use your networks, learnings and past experiences to shape the future of individuals and the industry.
2. You’ll have an opportunity to strengthen your leadership skills. Being an effective mentor will require you to draw on your skills as a leader. If you are not developed in certain areas, you are bound to stretch those leadership muscles as you journey through your mentoring relationships. You’ll become a good listener and a strong communicator. You’ll learn to be patient with people by listening to their challenges, asking them questions, giving them feedback and helping them to reflect. In the process, you will also learn how to push your judgements and biases aside. Because mentoring is about the mentee’s journey, you will be more focused on helping them come to their own solution through your leadership and communication style without telling them what to do. By helping your mentee understand what is holding them back from progressing or achieving their goals, you’ll be unlocking their potential for them to achieve peak performance, fulfilment and success. This is really the stuff that makes up true leaders.
3. You’ll gain new perspectives and insights. Even though the journey is about a mentee’s development, there is still a lot of learning to be gotten from your mentee and your mentoring conversations or relationships. When your mentee talks about their experiences and challenges, how they thought about or went about addressing the same, as well as what they learnt along the way, there will be very many take-aways for you as a mentor. People internalise and handle situations differently. At Mowgli Mentoring, we often say that mentoring is a mirror. There will be lots to reflect on and about. As you ask questions and listen to your mentee, you will begin to appreciate others’ points of view on different events, and more often than not, it’ll make you self-reflect since these are questions one tends to forget to ask themselves.
4. You can grow your career They say that the best way to learn something is by teaching it. By strengthening your leadership and ability to empower, guide and build others, you will not only have an opportunity to put mentoring on your CV, but you will also be viewed as a trusted source of wise counsel. Mentoring is an avenue to develop these skills. When your leadership skills are strengthened and your guidance is sound, it will undoubtedly shine through in your work and in your mentee’s success. A promotion or some form of recognition will be on the horizon for you.
5. You’ll get to feel good about yourself The feeling you get when you help someone is priceless. You get that same feeling from mentoring. It’s the feeling you get when you change someone’s life for the better and enable them to become the person that they want to be. They say that it is giving that you receive. We find that to be very true from our mentor stories.

Don’t take for granted the opportunities placed before you to help others. As you grow yourself and your career, take the time to grow through mentoring and mentorship. Through the mentoring conversations and relationships there will be several learnings that you too will unlock as you reflect with your mentee