In fact, almost every successful person in the world must have gained influence from a teacher or mentor. Mentors can play a variety of roles in life, including coaching and encouraging others to be encouraged and dare to step outside of their comfort zone in order to achieve success. A mentor is a person who has wisdom in the form of a combination of knowledge and experience that he has.
Although, the average person looks for a mentor to provide direction and share his experience in going through a business. It aims at nothing but to achieve success or improve the quality of self in order to be better. Employees need the existence of a work mentor because it can bring positive changes in career development and a myriad of other benefits. A competency management system helps you improve your employee performance to meet the standards desired by the company.
In this article, we are going to talk about what is a mentor, its benefits, and its purposes.
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But, are you still looking for the right mentor to support your career? Check out the following article to understand it first.
What is a mentor?
So, what is a mentor? A mentor does not always have to be a college professor or someone with a high level of education. A mentor is someone who professionally has certain life experiences and voluntarily assists others in the development of certain skills, competencies, and life goals.
In addition, mentors have the meaning of a person who has long been in a certain field and proved successful in achieving success in any activity in that field. Mentors are also defined as individuals who act as advisors or coaches to people who have limited experience.
However, to be an effective mentor, you need to understand that the role must be reliable, sincere, and adjust according to the requirements of the mentee. As a mentor, it is necessary to provide mentoring that includes a series of achievements in a sustainable and stable manner.
Meanwhile, the term mentoring is a term for a mentor’s relationship with others who still need support, motivation, and encouragement in order to achieve success and success.
Also read: 6 Tips for Becoming a Successful Management Trainee
Difference between Coaching and Mentoring
After we talk about what is a mentor, we know that mentoring is a program to improve hard skills and soft skills by someone who has experience in their field to one person or group who needs guidance or is not yet proficient in something. The keyword of this mentoring activity is to share experience and knowledge.
The orientation and focus of mentoring tend to emphasize a mentoring activity. The mentor and the mentees have a relationship that lasts in the long run. For example, you can meet in business mentoring, after the mentoring activity is completed the relationship between mentor and mentee will still take place because later there must be a follow-up that makes the relationship between the two last longer.
Meanwhile, coaching is a skill transfer activity with individuals in a thought-provoking and creative process that inspires them to maximize their personal and professional potential to achieve their goals or targets. The keyword of this coaching activity is to achieve a goal or goal.
In coaching activities, orientation tends to target the things that participants directly need, such as skills and so on. Unlike mentoring, in this activity, the relationship between coach and participant will not last in the long run. In addition, coaching is also more focused on the results that participants are able to achieve after participating in the training. Examples of this coaching activity you can meet before doing a race or Olympics.
Simplify the process of training management, and data management and monitor the progress of each training participant with the certification & training management system.
The Benefits of Mentoring from Mentor is
Mentoring certainly has benefits in guiding the progress of individuals and groups in carrying out a job periodically when viewed from the implementation process, focus, and orientation. Mentoring activities that each session and curriculum are made fun of will make training and development activities run smoothly. In order to create it requires the role of a mentor to build the atmosphere. The benefits of mentoring include:
1. Improve one’s professionalism
2. Get input from other mentors with a view to developing skills and knowledge
3. Increase motivation because you feel the company is supportive
4. Have a new skill
5. Open up a wider career path
Type-type of Mentor is
According to Martoredjo (2015), there are types of mentoring and development, namely:
Distance
Although the difference in places is very far, this activity you can still do by utilizing the power of technology as a medium. This type is very interesting because it can reach difficult and practical places in terms of time. But the use of this type requires adequate infrastructure and special skills in using technological media. Examples of apps that will help process remotely between, Zoom Meeting, Google Meets, and more.
Cross-cultural
This type broadly has a purpose as a partnership involving differences in gender, age, race or ethnicity, and nationality. Over time, the need for cross-cultural mentoring increases due to the diverse work environment. Therefore, each individual must be able to work in a different environment.
Group
This type occurs in situations when the organization has more mentees than mentors. There are two approaches to group mentoring in achieving the learning goals of its members, namely action-learning and community practice. In action learning, groups are formed to conduct shared learning to overcome difficulties and problem-solving by meeting to discuss difficulties experienced, experimenting, and reflecting.
While the practice community is a collaboration between two groups who want to learn something and also find solutions to every problem both in real and virtual. These people share the same thing in their goals or interests in learning from each other by sharing experiences and information.
Fellow employees
Mentoring fellow employees is the position or position of mentor and mentee is at an equivalent level of knowledge. This type occurs when individuals have the same level of responsibility as partnerships to develop effectiveness with each other. However, the program is only in the short term and it is less effective in the long run.
Organization
In organizational mentoring, there is a relationship between business to business. The goal of this type of mentoring is to help and build other organizations. Usually, this method is done through case studies.
Also read: Coaching: Understanding Its Principles and Benefits for Business Success
The Purpose of the Mentor is
A mentor has many important roles in a business career. There are several purposes as follows:
- Providing navigators is important for budding entrepreneurs in understanding the right route to achieving goals in the course of a business career.
- Give a new view impartially and very different from the coach.
- Set goals and provide business evaluations.
- Help on investment issues by taking positive action and understanding the potential of business ideas.
- It helps to become an entrepreneur who works intelligently, gives advice, and combines it with old experiences and new thought processes.
Conclusion
So these are all about what is a mentor and its purposes. A mentor is someone who has professional life experiences and volunteers others to develop certain skills, competencies, and life goals. While the activity is mentoring which is a program to improve hard skills and soft skills. By someone who has experience in their field with the aim to improve the quality and competence of employees.
Training and development is a long-term investment for the company. Because by getting training, employees can make their best contribution to the company.
Companies can use learning and development modules in HashMicro’s HRM System to structure systematic training and development activities. With HashMicro you will find it easier to determine the type of training and development, budget, sessions, participants, and so on in just one system. Furthermore, HRM software has a simple appearance, quick to adapt to existing systems and features.
