What Is Leadership Mentoring?

Leadership mentoring is something that might already be on your radar if you’re a leader and have overcome a few challenges on your way to the top. Imagine how much easier your leadership journey would have been if you’d had an experienced leader sharing their wisdom, knowledge and skills with you on your journey. That person would have been a leadership mentor.
And that’s what we’d like you to become.

As a leader already, you’ve got most of the skills a mentor needs to be successful. You’ve most likely already done some coaching and mentoring of junior colleagues. But why stick at that? If you’ve got the time and inclination to gather more experience by mentoring other people outside of your company, you’ll get all the benefits that come along with being a mentor – there are many.

It’s true that no two people are alike, and no two leadership roles are exactly the same. It’s also true that many of the challenges you’ve faced as a leader are challenges others will be facing as they start their leadership journey. Why not provide the leadership mentoring you wish you’d had?

What Are the Benefits of Leadership Mentoring?

Let’s examine how leadership mentoring can help both mentees and mentors grow in their personal and professional lives:

For Mentees

Whatever situation you find yourself in, whether it’s navigating a tough career situation, finding the perfect contractor for a job or making the difficult decision to let someone go, there are moments that truly test your leadership skills. In this case, having a leadership mentor plays an important role in navigating difficult situations.

Imagine being able to gain years of wisdom in a fraction of the time. That’s the power of leadership mentoring. As a mentee, you have the opportunity to learn from someone who’s already been through several ups and downs of leadership, saving you valuable time and helping you achieve your goals faster.

To get the most from a leadership mentoring relationship, mentees should come in with an open mind, a hunger for knowledge and a go-getter attitude. By proactively seeking out leadership mentoring, attaining goals set by your mentor and being receptive to their feedback, you can unlock the full potential of your professional development and accelerate your growth. Learn more about how to be a good mentee.

For Mentors

Being a mentor doesn’t mean you know everything (whatever you might think, or have been told). People learn every day, mentors included. By sharing your knowledge and experiences, you’ll not only help others grow – you’ll also reinforce your own understanding of effective leadership practices and how to communicate them.

Mentees will offer a fresh perspective, unique expertise and diverse experiences that can challenge mentors to think outside the box, broaden their horizons and learn something new. It’s a two-way street.

Showcasing your talent for mentoring and empowering others to reach their full potential is an essential ingredient for advancing your career. By improving your leadership skills through mentoring, you can boost your overall job performance, potentially paving the way for a promotion to a higher management position.

A Sun Microsystems mentoring programme discovered that people who acted as mentors received very notable career boosts:

• People involved in mentoring are SIX times more likely to be promoted than those who aren’t involved in mentoring
• 28% of mentors received a raise – compared to just 5% of managers who weren’t involved in the mentoring programme

How Is Mentoring Valuable to Leadership?

Mentoring is one of the best ways to build leadership skills. If you’re working within an organisation and aspiring to be a leader, you’ll know how challenging it can be. Mentoring teaches you how to be a good leader since you’ll have a role model to observe, follow and learn from.

Through active conversations, mentees will learn first-hand how their mentor faced similar challenges at the start of their leadership career and how they overcame them. Leadership mentoring isn’t only good for aspiring leaders, it’s also beneficial for people who are already leaders.

Working as a leadership mentor gives you the opportunity to lead, coach and mentor outside of your current organisation. Different people and different industries means different challenges, which will develop and improve your leadership skills.

If you’re a leader, you can sharpen your leadership skills by becoming a mentee to a more experienced leader. Here are more ways mentoring is valuable to leadership:

Networking

Mentoring can be a game-changer for leaders, providing the opportunity to expand their network. Mentors have the power to open doors for their mentees by linking them up with their own network, introducing them to key industry players and granting them access to valuable resources and prospects.

Accountability

Mentoring can help leaders receive guidance to clarify their goals, create strategies and ensure they follow through on their promises. Leaders can benefit from having regular feedback sessions and check-ins to stay on track, keep up their momentum and achieve their intended results.

Strategic Thinking

Leadership mentoring provides a good opportunity to up your game in strategic thinking. It can help you analyse situations, spot trends and think about the bigger picture.

6 Mentoring Topics for Leaders

If you’re a leader, there should be a bit of structure in how you mentor other leaders or aspiring leaders.
To come up with mentoring topics, sit back and think about the time you got your first leadership role. What was it like? How did you feel? Happy? Excited? Perhaps worried? Scared?

Now think about all the things that had seemed like a problem in your early days; Imposter syndrome, fear of being ‘in charge’ or ‘the expert’, managing your time as a leader and guiding colleagues.

Consider what actions you could have taken in the past to improve your younger self. Those points should form the basis of mentoring topics for leaders.

1. Managing Failure

As a leadership mentor, you should have conversations about failures. One of the most important lessons for your mentees to learn is that failure is inevitable. Rather than being hard on themselves, you can teach them how to use these moments as opportunities for growth and learning. Failure is where all the most important lessons are learned – make sure it feels that way when mentoring or coaching leaders.

Encourage them to embrace their mistakes and move forward with newfound knowledge and resilience. Leaders who achieve success possess a growth mindset that enables them to embrace challenges, persist through difficult times and welcome constructive feedback.

2. Managing a Team

Moving from being part of a team to leading one is a big change, and often results in changed dynamics with colleagues. As a mentor, you can help your leadership mentees through this time by sharing your transition struggles and how you got through them.

In addition to this, mentees will need to put in place an effective feedback system. You can talk to them about the different types of feedback and how to give constructive feedback, encourage members of their team to do the same and what they can do to make sure feedback is heard and implemented. Read more about the role of feedback in mentoring.

3. Emotional Intelligence

As a mentor, stress the importance of emotional intelligence to your mentees. Helping your mentees understand the influence of their emotions on both themselves and others will enable them to manage stress more effectively and avoid impulsive reactions. They can take charge of their responses and become masters of their emotions by acknowledging their feelings.

4. Relationship Management

Empower your mentees with effective techniques to cultivate and navigate professional relationships with their colleagues, at all levels, both junior and senior.
If your mentees can do this, they can ensure their team is on the same page, conflicts are resolved amicably and everyone is working together towards a common goal.

5. Handling Change

A key part of leadership mentoring is helping your mentees to adopt a growth mindset when it comes to change. Encourage them to embrace change as a chance to expand their horizons and gain new insights, instead of fearing it as a potential danger. After failure, change is the second place where we learn lessons.

In today’s fast-paced world, it’s essential to be adaptable, flexible and open-minded. These qualities will help you navigate through unexpected challenges and seize new opportunities.
Don’t be afraid to embrace change and explore new ideas and approaches.

6. Balancing Work and Life Responsibilities

This is a major problem for many people, including those in leadership positions. As a mentor, you should talk to your leadership mentees about finding a good balance between their work and personal life.

Ask them questions about life outside of work, their hobbies and their family. Get a general idea of how they’re coping with their new role and give them guidance and tips to help them effectively juggle their commitments and responsibilities if they’re struggling.

How To Get Into Leadership Mentoring

If you’re looking to improve your leadership skills as a mentor, Career Navig8r is the perfect platform for you. It’s a platform that connects prospective leaders with experienced mentors such as yourself. There are different types of leadership mentoring available at Career Navig8r:

One-to-One Mentoring: This is the style of mentoring that immediately springs to mind when mentoring is mentioned. One-to-one mentoring involves a partnership between two individuals, united in their pursuit of growth and achievement. An experienced mentor taking a less experienced mentee under their wing, guiding and supporting them on their journey towards success.

Peer Mentoring: Where two people of similar job levels or age ranges come together to learn from each other. Peer mentoring allows two people at a similar level of superiority to learn from each other.

Virtual Mentoring: Virtual mentoring allows people to stay up-to-date with the latest trends and developments. The world of mentoring is now at your fingertips like never before. Gone are the days when mentoring was restricted by physical distance. You can effortlessly connect with individuals from various cities and even continents, all from the comfort of your home.

Ready to add additional strings to your bow by trying out leadership mentoring?

Upgrade me from a leader to a leadership mentor.