Career planning is a continuous process. Admittedly there is a need for building contacts, knowing people and the who’s who of important people in an organization but mentoring is equally important to see you through the hurdles that you face during the course of your career. Surveys point to the fact that networking and mentoring are two most important ways of furthering career prospects of women. Most of the times, women leaders lack companions as there is a paucity of other women at the top level in any organization. There are times when you need advice in developing new skills or a take a call on accepting a new position. Acquiring such advice haphazardly may not be the right thing to do. Developing a mentoring relationship provides a better opportunity for gaining both personal and professional abilities.
Choosing a mentor should be among your first priorities if you wish to advance in life and business. When you choose a mentor you are actually saving time in crossing hurdles in your life. At every stage new skills are required for a career to progress. The mentor, being an experienced person, has obviously already crossed those and can guide you at every step and help you to cross them or even prepare you in advance.
Leadership is not about a single quality. It is more about a number of qualities that come together to present something stronger than those qualities alone. It is also about motivating by example rather than managing people or taking charge of situations. A mentor provides you the opportunity to air your susceptibilities and gives valuable advice on how to overcome them and help you to see possibilities that you may not be able to see for yourself.
A mentoring relationship is not a complaining session or a series of disconcerted phone calls. It is a formal relationship where it is understood that the guru will aid in enhancing the interests of the protégé or mentee.
The problem that women may face in finding a mentor is presented by the fact that we are at the start of seeing a widespread success of first generation women leaders and women owned businesses. A woman’s perspective is different and so are the hurdles that women face in life and business. So there is a dearth of mentors who can say that they have ‘dealt with’ or ‘seen that’ before.
Another problem is presented by the fact that women leaders have to deal with both men and women. A male mentor will teach like a man and a woman mentor like a woman. There may sometimes be some amount of disconnect between the advice offered by a male mentor and what is actually being faced by a woman. This, however, does not suggest that only women should mentor woman. This is actually a suggestion that women will probably do well if they enlist several mentors - men and women.
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