8 Answers to Questions About Mentors

[Man]

1. Who is a mentor?​

Translated from Latin, it means "mentor, teacher, master". The very definition of "mentor" comes to us from ancient Greek mythology. According to legend, Odysseus had a friend named Mentor, he was experienced and wise, but too old for a military campaign against Troy. Therefore, Mentor stayed in Ithaca and, at Odysseus' request, taught and raised his son Telemachus all this time, passed on his knowledge and wisdom to the heir, looked after Odysseus' wife and helped keep the family hearth in anticipation of the main hero's return from a long campaign.

Homer wrote that in the guise of Mentor, Telemachus was led through life by the goddess Athena herself, which is why in ancient legends "mentor" often = "mask of a deity". And in our time, a mentor is a person who provides all kinds of support, instructs, teaches and helps to achieve goals.

Socrates was Plato's teacher. Plato was Aristotle's mentor. And Aristotle was Alexander the Great's mentor.

2. So, are “mentor” and “tutor” the same thing?​

Indeed, they pursue the same goals - to teach and share experience. But if we consider the working methods, the difference turns out to be big.

The task of a mentor is only to teach how to do something. If you get a job, you are given a more experienced specialist as a mentor, who shows how to perform this or that work operation, requires you to repeat the same actions, do it exactly the same way. That is, the mentor teaches you to follow the "beaten path".

A mentor has a different approach - sharing their own experience. A mentor projects their life and professional experience onto their mentee and creates an individual program for each of their mentees. For example, they show you what methods, tools and technologies can be used to properly organize the team's work in order to achieve maximum efficiency. In addition, a mentor always warns about possible difficulties and unsuccessful actions when choosing a particular strategy. Based on this information, they expect you to come up with or find your own way to achieve your goal. Ultimately, the mentor's goal is to help you create your own individual strategy and guide you to your goal according to an agreed plan. During the training process, a mentor shows you all the ways to achieve your goal, gives answers to questions and advice, but never interferes with your work and does nothing for you!

So, mentoring is a type of tutoring that involves deeper work with mentees. A mentor, as an experienced specialist, not only shares knowledge with you, but also provides moral support, helps in solving complex problems and, in general, has a positive effect on your development as a person and a specialist.

So, mentoring is not just a story about sharing experience, and a mentor is not just a tutor. This is a person who shares with you the experience of his professional victories and defeats, achievements and mistakes. And his experience allows you to go the way to your goal much faster and more effectively.

3. Who is NOT a mentor?​

1. Teacher. Because he, using pedagogical and methodological approaches, teaches you only what and how to do. His task is to give the maximum possible theoretical knowledge about certain processes.
2. Trainer. Briefly explains a certain technology for performing a particular action and helps to consolidate its use in practice.
3. Coach. Acts according to a template scheme, using your internal resources and experience to solve a problem.
4. Expert. Provides an assessment of the situation in certain narrow areas, based on his knowledge and experience.
5. Consultant. Gives advice (usually based only on theoretical knowledge) on changing the situation in accordance with current circumstances.

Unlike them, an experienced mentor uses different techniques, including trainer, expert or coaching ones, to help their protégée advance towards the set goal as successfully as possible. So, in the process of your joint work, the mentor simultaneously combines the functions of an expert, a teacher, a trainer, a coach, a consultant, a psychologist. And most often, he also becomes a good friend for you.

4. Mentoring or coaching, which is better?​

Chatsky: “…Our mentor, remember his cap, robe, index finger, all the signs of learning, how our timid minds were disturbed…” © A.S. Griboyedov. “Woe from Wit”

Despite the fact that mentor and mentoring are concepts with deep historical roots, today in the Russian-speaking world they talk more about coaching than about mentoring. And most people simply do not distinguish between these two concepts.

These practices do indeed share common principles and processes, but they are based on different types of relationships.

Coaching is a professional activity, coaching practices need to be learned. Coaching is often approached by specialists from psychology, consulting, HR. A coach can simultaneously lead mentees from completely different fields of activity, using a specific template technology. Therefore, a coach, in fact, can also be a person who does not have significant life, professional or business experience in your field, but has received a special coaching education.

Unlike mentoring, the goal of coaching is to help the client “figure themselves out” in order to realize a short-term action plan that will allow them to solve the problems that have arisen more effectively. In other words, coaching is usually short-term mentoring that helps solve specific narrow problems.

In contrast, mentoring is a long-term tutorship that develops the mentee's skills for the future, grows him as a professional, as a specialist in his field, gives birth to the necessary style of thinking in a person and lays the foundation for success in a specific matter. Therefore, a mentor simply must have extensive experience in the specified field. Thus, a mentor not only helps to solve existing problems, he motivates for self-development and stimulates serious personal growth of a person.

5. How popular and effective is mentoring?​

In developed markets, mentoring is considered one of the most powerful growth levers in any profession and one of the most effective ways to develop soft skills - flexible skills like creativity and teamwork. According to the American Society for Training and Development, 75% of company executives believe that mentoring played a significant role in getting their job.

Analysts at Endeavor Insight have been monitoring New York companies for 10 years and have found that more than 33% of them have achieved success due to mentorship from top entrepreneurs.

Mentoring also makes employees more loyal to the company. In the summer of 2019, SurveyMonkey conducted a survey on happiness at work. One of the findings: if employees have a mentor, they are much more comfortable in the workplace. Employees with mentors tend to believe that their company provides good opportunities for career growth. Among top managers, 80% think so.

Here are some more figures from world statistics confirming the popularity of this movement:

• 76% of organizations in Europe offer mentoring to their employees;
• 71% of Fortune500 companies have corporate mentoring programs;
• 77% of companies worldwide say that mentoring helps retain valuable employees in the company;
• 78% of employees involved in mentoring programs are not subject to layoffs;
• 60% of job seekers in Europe and the US indicate mentoring as a mandatory criterion for a new job;
• Employees who had a mentor earn $5,000 to $22,000 more annually.

Mentoring is extremely important for startups. In the US, 70% of startups and small businesses whose founders use mentor support survive for five years. This is twice as much as startups without mentors. The Village conducted an interesting study on this subject: they analyzed the main reasons for the closure of young companies and came to the conclusion that only one of them is related to product flaws. Everything else is the lack of certain knowledge and mentoring support among the team founders.

Harvard Business Review once conducted a survey of 45 CEOs to find out what role mentors played in their professional lives. As it turned out, 84% of CEOs are sure that mentors helped them avoid costly mistakes and quickly increase their expertise in a certain area.

6. Why do I need a mentor if I'm not a newbie?​

There is a stereotype that only beginners need a mentor. This is a profound misconception. Every person at different stages of their life needs one or another mentor for personal and professional growth. Here are just a few well-known examples:

1. Flickr co-founder Katerina Fake was a mentor to Chad Dickerson, the founder of Etsy, the largest online marketplace for selling handmade and vintage items.

2. Ali and Hadi Partovi, Silicon Valley entrepreneurs, mentored Drew Houston and Arash Ferdowsi, founders of cloud storage service Dropbox.

3. Steve Jobs was mentored by Mike Markkula, one of Apple's first investors and top managers.

4. Google CEO Eric Schmidt was a mentor to its founders Sergey Brin and Larry Page. The list of such star couples is endless. Schmidt wrote in his book How Google Works: “Even if the CEO is a superstar, he still needs a mentor. After all, even Olympic winners have coaches.”

So at different stages and in different situations we need different mentors. Not only their names should change, but also their roles, strategies and directions, simply because we ourselves and our life tasks change.

7. Why do people do this?​

I would say they do it for themselves. After all, mentoring experience is a great opportunity to summarize your successes, life experience, and re-evaluate your own professional path.

There comes a time in every person’s life when he wants to feel important and in demand, when he wants to share his knowledge and experience.

It's simple: to be happy, you need to help others, you need to feel useful and needed. In addition, it has been noted that when you look for solutions to other people's problems, you distance yourself from your own experiences. Working on other people's difficult situations allows you to look at your problems with a new perspective.

And seeing your student succeed is a great pleasure for a mentor. So mentoring is always a two-way process, in which you both invest and receive investments.

8. What types of mentors are there?​

Yes, all sorts of things. Remember the secretary Verochka from the movie "Office Romance"? How she shared her experience with her shrewish boss Lyudmila Prokofyevna about what it means to "be a woman"? She taught her to walk "like we walk" and not "drive piles"... That's personal mentoring in its purest form.

There is, for example, social mentoring, when Social Integration Funds of different countries enter into agreements with specialists to provide such services to refugees so that they can adapt to a new environment.

Legal mentoring may also take place. For example, Alexey Artyukh, one of the best tax lawyers in Russia, who enjoys the greatest trust among colleagues (PRAVO-300 rating of sympathies) believes: “Mentoring and transfer of experience in the profession is the most important condition for developing the best qualities of a lawyer. Of course, success can be achieved without a mentor, but then the path will be much more difficult and thorny.”

So the conclusion here is clear: mentoring is a very interesting, promising and promising path.

Every person can and should be a mentor for someone in order to realize their hidden and obvious talents, to feel happy and needed, to help people.

And every person should have their own mentor, and not just one. To find themselves, to find their way, to become a successful specialist, to solve problems faster and more effectively. Do you want to become a mentor or find your mentor?

P.S. Here I have collected the questions that I am most often asked when talking about mentoring. I hope that among them you will find the one that worries you. If not, write, ask your question directly. Let's talk!

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