Mentoring Myths Debunked
Written by Patrick Del Rosario Tuesday, September 25 2012
Debunking Mentoring Myths
Everyone has his or her own idea about what makes a good mentor, and while some of these differences in viewpoint can be put down to personal preference or coaching style, others are serious misconceptions that can prevent a person from fully benefiting from the mentoring they receive.
To help you get the most out of mentoring and being mentored, we have compiled some of the most common mentoring myths here, as well as the reasons they don’t hold water.
1. There is a minimum age requirement for mentors
Admit it--when you think of a mentor you think of a wise old sage wrapped in a toga and sitting cross legged on a cushion. This is probably the most persistent myth about mentoring, and likely stems from the fact that many of us assume that we can only learn from someone who is older than us.
In reality however, a mentor can be any age and come from any walk of life. The main requirement for a mentor is that he or she has more experience and knowledge than the mentee in a particular particular area. If your degree is in human resources, seek out a knowledgeable professional in your field. If you have a bachelors degree in management, seek out someone with experience in management to further your education, don't worry about the age. Of course, it often does happen that the mentor is older than the mentee, because older people generally do have more life experience than a younger person.
But getting stuck on the idea that a mentor must always be older than a mentee can be detrimental to the learning process, especially in the business world where younger people are often more up to date with the latest technology compared to their older counterparts who have 10 0r 15 years of overall experience.
2. Only younger people or newbies need mentoring
This is another misconception that may rob older people of the valuable opportunity to evolve and grow in their industry. While it is true that younger people or those who have just started out with a new company will need more coaching than someone who has been around for a while, it is important for everyone to continue to build on the knowledge they have.
If an employee only receives mentoring for the first few months when they arrive at a company, they will begin to stagnate or feel unmotivated. Mentoring is primarily for people who want to learn new skills, improve their current skills, make new connections and stay up to date with the latest happenings in their industry. That pretty much describes every employee and even manager in a company right?
3. Mentoring takes up a lot of time
One reason that people tend to shy away from mentoring is that they think it will take up a lot of their time, and for busy professionals, that is pretty much always deal breaker.
But in this day and age of technology, with email, instant messaging, smart phones and social networks, face to face mentoring is no longer the only form that exists. Some mentoring programs require just a few brief phone calls or chat sessions a week. And even the more formal face to face mentoring programs usually don’t take up more than four hours of face to face mentoring in a month.
If you don’t have a lot of time to spend on mentoring sessions, you can simply create a more flexible schedule by including phone or Skype meetings in your routine.
4. Mentors need to be perfect
Mentors are by no means perfect, and they certainly don’t have an error free track record, nor would you want them to. Mistakes are valuable tools for learning, and having someone who has been there and done that to teach you about the potential pitfalls are far more useful than you can imagine.
The misconception that mentors must be perfect themselves has also held many capable and experienced individuals back from becoming mentors. Mentors are only human and they will never be perfect or have all the answers, and no one should expect them to.
Their main task is to help their mentee to expand his or her personal network, find useful resources like books, websites, videos, support groups and seminars that will help him or her grow and improve. Essentially, their task is to provide their mentee with the necessary tools, and the mentee can take it from there.
5. The mentee is the only one who benefits
Although this is still a widely held belief, the mentee is in fact not the only one who can learn and grow through the mentoring process. Mentors continue to learn and improve their career as they go, because communication is a two way street, and it would be impossible for them to walk away without any new knowledge, ideas or information. Ideally, a mentorship should be a partnership where both sides benefit in the long run. This is important because most one way relationships aren't very successful.
Do you have any other tips? Share them in the comments below.
Patrick Del Rosario is part of the team behind Open Colleges. It is one of Australia’s pioneer and leading providers of Business management courses and Human resources courses. When not working, Patrick enjoys blogging about career and business. Patrick is also a photography enthusiast and is currently running a photography studio in the Philippines.