Mentoring is not just beneficial for the mentee - it's also an opportunity for professional and skills development on the part of the mentor, writes Barnaby Mollett, vice-chair of the AGCAS Career Mentoring Task Group
Being a mentor is an excellent way to enhance your own professional development, as well as increase your ability to meet the needs of your stakeholders - in particular, students and graduates - in your institution.
Firstly, what is a mentor? Eric Parsloe defines mentoring as to 'support and encourage people to manage their own learning in order that they may maximise their potential, develop their skills, improve their performance and become the person they want to be.' The context of our professional task group is career mentoring, where this learning has the goal of career choice and employability.
While the career mentoring programmes run by higher education institutions across the country vary in terms of aims and objectives, they may include mentors providing mentees with insights and understanding of their area of work, journey from university to present day, and developing skills for the professional workplace.
However, mentoring is not solely about benefits for the mentee, but also for the mentor. So if, for example, your workplace, former university, or a local charity organisation offers mentoring opportunities, there are a range of skills you could develop yourself - and then use in your own work with students, graduates or other stakeholders.
Done right, establishing a mentoring programme can be an excellent means of engaging and bringing together various communities in your institution.
Some of the key benefits and skills reported by mentors in programmes our task group members have coordinated include:
- developing communication and interpersonal skills in a different setting (and with a different audience)
- gaining experience for future job roles/promotions (organisation and leadership skills, for example)
- sharing knowledge you have gained from your career to support a potential new entrant to your profession (developing your ability to reflect and articulate)
- understanding the career mindset of current students (widening emotional intelligence and empathy, for example)
- providing supporting evidence for professional qualifications and continuous professional development
- giving something back to the community (or institution)
- broadening professional networks with mentees and other mentors.
Of course, you may find a mentoring programme at your place of work - or, for example, across local universities - where you feel you would develop as a mentee. Some wider professional development opportunities, such as the female leadership programme Aurora at my institution, pair participants up with a staff mentor. As a mentee, while having a mentor presents an opportunity to have a sounding board for career-related thoughts or work-based questions, it also provides a great chance to enhance transferable skills, such as:
- improving commercial or institutional awareness
- interpersonal and communication skills
- organisational skills from leading/directing your mentoring partnership
- improved technical skills (e.g. software) if your mentor is proficient
- presentation and/or report writing skills (many mentoring programmes have attached projects or reflective reports for mentees and mentors).
It might be the case that you are considering setting up a career mentoring programme at your institution, and in itself this presents opportunities to develop skills such as project management, planning, and stakeholder management. AGCAS members can find information from 2019's Career Mentoring Conference online, which looks at key topics to consider when creating a programme in your institution, and means of establishing best practice.
Done right, establishing a mentoring programme can be an excellent means of engaging and bringing together various communities in your institution, such as students, alumni, academic departments and employers, and has the potential to create far-reaching benefits.
Involvement in mentoring programmes, from any perspective, offers skills development as well as wider spanning benefits. And anybody can be involved, whatever stage of your career. In his book Everyone Needs a Mentor: Fostering Talent in Your Organisation, David Clutterbuck notes that 'mentors are not picked for any superhuman qualities' and cites good qualities as being able to share experience, being well-balanced professionals, and with an interest in developing others. If this sounds like you, why not start seeking out mentoring opportunities today?
The views expressed in this article are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the position of HECSU/Prospects
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