Guest Post – Mentorship Relationships

The following is a guest post by Jack Dawson,  a web developer and UI/UX specialist at BigDropInc.com.

16 Characteristics of a Good Business Mentor Relationship

From time immemorial, people have always passed on skills from one person to the other through a direct relationship between the person in the know and the person acquiring the skill. This is what a mentor relationship is all about.

In business, entrepreneurs should be in charge of mentorship programs if they are going to oversee the success of the business. If mentorship is done properly, business growth can be accelerated because a large pool of expertise on the job tasks will be developed and this can improve efficiencies and effectiveness in performance.

Formal and informal mentorship

In a business organization, mentorship can be done in two main ways, formally and informally. Formal mentorship involves a person skilled in a particular business role transferring their skill to someone else. The person being trained on the new job may be a new employee, someone who is taking over the role from a different department, or it could be to train extra manpower to improve redundancy in the business.

Building redundancy is important to a business, especially when critical business tasks are only performed by one individual and therefore need to be duplicated so as to ensure the smooth operation of the business if one of the people trained to do the job is not available.

Formal mentorship is organized in such a way that the mentor trains and evaluates the mentee or apprentice to ensure that they can effectively and independently perform the tasks that they are being trained in.

With informal mentorship, the mentor’s main role is just to train the mentee and not to evaluate them. Employees are encouraged to seek a mentor in tasks that they would like to improve their performance at.

As an entrepreneur, you will probably be the first mentor in your business. It is therefore important that you know what it takes to be a good mentor so that you can do a good job at it and so that you are able to, not only pass the skills that you are mentoring, but also the traits of being a good mentor.

Below are the characteristics of a good mentor;

Characteristics of a good mentor

 

As a mentor, you should have the passion and commitment to teach someone else and oversee their development, growth and cultural integration into the business.

As a mentor, you should also have all the necessary skill to be able to train or effectively teach the new skills or pass on knowledge to an employee.

By the time you are mentoring, you should be clear on the business culture that you want to promote in your business. This means that you should be clear on your business mission and vison.

You should also have good communication skills to be able to verbally and nonverbally pass information effectively. This means that you should be honest and genuine in wanting to take on the stewardship responsibility in order to perform it with an integrity that the mentee can sense and therefore absorb.

You should be gentle enough to accept questions and queries, but at the same time be firm enough to insist on high quality performance at all times. As such, you should be able to communicate successes and failures when they occur in an effective manner.

You should be able to pass on the enthusiasm for performing the tasks that are being taught to the mentee and the resolve to want to constantly improve and pass on the mantle.

You should have the skill to adapt and find out the most effective way to transfer knowledge to different kinds of people. For example, some people learn better through clear instruction while others learn better through observing and mimicking the task from a mentor.

You should be highly respected and successful at performing the tasks that you are mentoring.

You should be able to allocate ample time to the mentorship process in order to be available to the mentee and ensure that the new skills and knowledge are being passed effectively and at an appropriate rate.

As such, you should have a flexible enough personality to be able to spend time with someone with a different background, values and sensibilities from you.

You should be willing to test your mentees full integration into your business culture and to the expertise that you are passing. At the same time, you should be able to assess and acknowledge when the mentee is not a right fit for your business.

You should be able to take your ego out of the equation, especially when it comes to training the mentee. If you cannot have a good relationship to pass the skill and expertise that you need to, you should be able to step aside and let someone better suited to take over.

A good mentor should also be able to assess the willingness or eagerness of a mentee to learn from him/her. As such, a mentor should be able to look for the following qualities in a mentee.

The mentee should show an eagerness to want to improve themselves from what they currently are to what you can show them or teach them to be.

The mentee should be clear that nothing is going to be handed to them and that they are simply being equipped to be able to qualify for a role based on merit. The mentee, in short, should not feel entitled just because they are under your tutelage.

The mentee should demonstrate that they are absorbing what they are learning by showing an improvement in their performance.

The mentee should show that they are willing to put in the work to learn from you. They should show an extra willingness to do more than is required to learn. If you have a mentee who shows up late or keeps giving excuses, they are most probably not ready for your mentorship.

About the author:

Jack Dawson is a web developer and UI/UX specialist at BigDropInc.com. He works at a design, branding and marketing firm, having founded the same firm 9 years ago. He likes to share knowledge and points of view with other developers and consumers on platforms.