Benefits of Being a Mentor

06 Sep Benefits of Being a Mentor

Many businesswomen have benefited from a relationship with a trusted mentor.  Once you’re ready to be a mentor yourself, don’t hesitate to reach out to others.  Being a mentor can help your career in unexpected ways.

Career Growth

Anne Fisher, senior writer for Fortune, wrote about the benefits of mentoring at money.cnn.com, citing a study by the HR department at Sun Microsystems.  They compared the career progress of roughly 1,000 employees for 5 years.  These are the results:

• Both mentors and mentees were approximately 20% more likely to get a raise than people who did not participate in the mentoring program.
• 28% of mentors received a raise – versus only 5% of managers who were not mentors.
• Mentors were SIX times more likely to be promoted.

Those are some pretty sound statistics, well worth the effort to be a mentor for those benefits alone.  However, there’s more to gain from advising your fellow business people.

Networking

The more relationships you have in business, the better.  When you mentor a young person, they become your ally, and their loyalty will serve you well as you both grow in your careers.  Your mentee can introduce you to their business contacts and friends, which will double your pool of potential clients and collaborators.

Problem-Solving

Simply helping someone with their career obstacles is good practice for tackling your own.  Try bouncing ideas off of one another and help one another see issues from a fresh perspective.

Plus, it feels good to help people!  Lisa Quast, contributor to Forbes.com, founded the volunteer foundation Wing to Wing Women’s Mentoring Project to inspire women to reach out and offer guidance to one another.  Visit the website for a free mentoring guide.

Is there someone in your office who you’d like to mentor?