Have you ever seen an Olympic winner without a mentor? Can you think of achieving great success without a mentor to guide you. Thinking about success without a mentor is just like a plane flying without a radar.
Friends and relatives, online gurus, magazines, and even informal acquaintances can provide you with a constant stream of business news, industry trends, and prospects. Analysts, advisors, staff, and healthy networking sources in the industry will share their professional expertise with you about specific circumstances and needs you may face. On the other hand, only a business coach will genuinely share insights with you on an ongoing basis in a way that has a real, constructive effect on the long-term success of your company.
We should also strive to improve our skills, learn new knowledge, and test ourselves daily in our professional and personal lives. This naturally necessitates a level of commitment, and life can always get in the way of our attempts to better ourselves.
One way to keep on track is to get a coach – someone who can help lead, educate, and teach you about a challenge or against a target.
Business mentoring can accelerate our personal growth, professional advancement, and overall trust. As a result, it’s shocking that only 37% of professionals have one, particularly given how many influential people admire and suggest mentorship.
There was this company running in a haphazard manner with 300 employees. The management was tired of losses and was planning to shut everything down as the employees did not understand the goals. What they lacked was the guidance of an expert to help them carry on with the work in an efficient manner. One day a newly recruited manager took a meeting and guided them in his own way. He explained to them what had to be done and also warned them about the repercussions if the work is not improved. The employees got what they needed: MENTOR and since then the business has not seen back.
This is the beauty of having a guru or a mentor who can hold you like a little sapling and turn you into a flowering tree.
Who Is A Business Mentor?
A business coach is someone who has more entrepreneurial business experience than you and who acts as a reliable confidante for you over a long period, generally for free.
If you think this is a bit too amazing to be true? First and foremost, becoming a business mentor to a budding entrepreneur is an excellent opportunity for them to give back to their communities and society at large. Their advice and support will tangibly benefit their mentees. Many business mentors may help people improve their teaching, management, strategy, or consulting skills. A genuine mentorship partnership also benefits both parties: the mentor will learn about new concepts, plans, and approaches from you, and you will benefit from their eternal experience.
My followers are aware of my story of assuming control of a failing company after my husband committed suicide. I was nothing more than a housewife. First and foremost, I had to instil trust and admiration in the squad.
I made all of my choices and solved challenges by remembering the following things.
- The CEO should consider the company’s community and staff development.
- The CEO should commend the team members but still correct them.
- The CEO should set a precedent for those to follow.
- The CEO should try to improve the structure and atmosphere so that the same error does not occur again.
- The CEO should solicit everyone’s input so that everyone is responsible for the decision.
- The CEO should treat everyone with respect and think without prejudice.
I believe It is not enough to consider the start-up to make it monopolistic. It doesn’t matter if you have ten rivals; if your product is right, your quality is good, and your pricing is competitive. Many people could be working on the same theories, but only 1–2–3 succeed. Amazon, Flipkart, Microsoft’s Zoom and Team viewer, Ola, and Uber are only a few examples.
So please don’t waste your time and resources on the idea of monopoly formation. Yes, being unique, artistic, and inventive is a plus. It would be fantastic if you are the first one. Still, in the end, it’s the goods and services that matter. Otherwise, new people will copy your product, improve it, and go on to the next step.
How Can Business Mentors Help You?
When you start your own company, you won’t have a manager to look to for guidance or direction, and you may not even have any staff yet. You don’t have to be alone even though you’re flying solo. When things get rough, everybody wants a reliable board, a second opinion, and even just moral support (and they will).
- They Are Always There For You
The most apparent advantage of having a business mentor is that you will learn about their past experiences and failures. Your coach doesn’t have to have experience with your field, but it helps if they do, so you can maximise your chances to exploit essential partnerships. They don’t have to be up to date with the new developments or technology; you can get that information from other places. Your mentor’s job is to share lessons learned from their own experiences with you with the expectation that you can pick them up quickly and easily.
I recall one of my colleagues visited me. We were having a pleasant conversation over a cup of tea when her friend casually mentioned a business proposal she had in mind.
She told me how much she enjoyed painting fabrics and how much she wished to do it for a living.
“Why do you want to work with someone else if you have the talent? Why don’t you become a solopreneur?” I inquired.
“Some days I think about it,” She responded, “but some days I feel I need the right guidance.”
I instinctively recognised what was preventing her from realising her ambitions. Her concern was that she wouldn’t be able to handle the workload.
“Can we begin the counselling from tomorrow,” She said cheerfully,
I agreed to it and she was cheerfully present at my office the other morning.
My client has owned two factories since that time, employing nearly a hundred artisans. A professional, entrepreneurial counselling service helped her realise her dream of bringing her designs to life.
- Your Mentor Offers You A Long Term Relationship
Your tutor has no hidden agenda and is not trying to sell you anything. This, along with their other strengths and expertise, provides a factual basis for faith. The confidence will become deeper over time as the relationship grows. Additionally, as they grow more acquainted with you and your company, your time with them becomes more effective.
If you can see, the benefits of finding a business mentor can be substantial, although the downside is minimal. By having a good coach, you have nothing to lose and anything to win. Any business owner should have at least one.
I’ve spent a lot of time assisting people in discovering and developing their skills. I believe that if a person is inclined in the right direction from the start, he or she can attain any level of success.
The Main Benefits Of Business Mentoring
If you have skills or skill void, mentoring might be a good option for you. E.g., you might have a brilliant business plan but need some help turning it into a profitable enterprise.
A tutor can provide you with a variety of advantages, including:
- Advice on growing and expanding your company
- Assistance in making tough choices
- Ideas for new goods or services or business-related operating advice gleaned from a realistic experience.
- Access to a network of other people’s contacts
A business mentor will also assist you in the following areas:
- Build important market abilities
- Enhance your problem-solving skills
- Study on gaining trust
Business Mentoring For Personal Development
- Increased Trust
People who have advisors have more confidence in themselves, whether it’s the opportunity to exchange thoughts in discussions or speak up for themselves in a difficult situation. Mentors gain trust as their mentee’s performance reaffirms their talents, resulting in a rise of self-assurance.
I recall counselling one such Chandigarh client who had lost his employment due to the pandemic and lockout. The company paid him for a while, but as the lockdown became longer, the company had to fire some workers.
Each of them was him. He became helpless and desperate as the family’s only breadwinner. He considered seeking assistance from my firm.
I instinctively recognised the source of his dilemma when he came to see us. I didn’t waste much time and instantly asked him to start a company.
The client was perplexed because he believed he had no strategy and had no idea how he would cope. As the session progressed, it became clear that the client was passionate about cooking. He explained that cooking is his passion and that when doing so, he forgets about his problems.
This is where start-up consultancy comes in handy. He discovered his happiness and interests with the help of my counselling service.
With this, he established a boutique culinary at his home and began delivering cooked food via home deliveries during the lockdown. Due to the corona pandemic, he took all of the necessary precautions.
- Higher Self-Awareness
Setting targets for someone you admire necessitates a thorough examination of your talents, flaws, and principles. As a result, those who receive mentoring are more self-aware than those who do not – and self-awareness is crucial for career advancement.
- Exposure Of Innovative Ways Of Thought
The mentoring process exposes new thoughts and revelatory ways of thinking or problem solving to both the mentee and the mentor. This will have a long-term positive impact on all partners, fostering creativity.
- Giving And Getting Input
We might all like feedback to improve, but we still don’t ask for it often enough. Similarly, administrators around the globe fail to give truthful and meaningful reviews. Mentoring assists individuals with developing a positive relationship through guidance.
Benefits Of Business Mentoring For Career Development
- Promotions
Those who earn mentoring are five times more likely to be rewarded than those who do not.
- Work Fulfilment
Achieving your objectives helps you feel happy and competitive. Job satisfaction inevitably rises as mentors assist mentees in attaining their career goals. On the other hand, mentors see their work as more rewarding and therefore have greater job satisfaction and fulfilment than others who do not.
- Personal Network
Those who have mentors profit from expanding their network beyond their coworkers. A mentor will expose you to various inspiring and influential individuals who could have a future influence on your career.
Benefits Of Business Mentoring For Mental Health
- Supporting Isolation
People who are suffering from mental illnesses often feel alone and have extreme fear about their future and skills. Mentoring is a way of supporting mental health challenges in the workplace with both the counsellor and the student.
- Increased Self-Confidence
It can positively affect mental health, particularly if mentees feel encouraged in their decisions and career direction. Mentors gain increased self-esteem and trust due to assisting others in achieving their aspirations, which leads to better mental health.
Benefits For Business Mentoring For Business
An effective mentoring program fosters a philosophy of learning, nurturing, and development in the workplace. This will spread across the company, resulting in teams of fulfilled and comfortable employees at work.
Mentoring greatly aids minority participation at the executive level, and many organisations use mentoring to increase gender and racial diversity in leadership positions.
- Sharing Of Information
Mentoring is a low-cost and convenient way for senior workers to pass on their business and company experience to younger employees.
- Employee Satisfaction And Engagement
Since mentees and advisors are more satisfied and happy at work than most staff, mentoring has a positive impact on employee retention and engagement.
Many people, especially millennials, who have come to expect mentoring and growth opportunities from businesses, find mentoring services to be an appealing job perk.
That concludes the discussion. Since mentoring has so many opportunities for everyone concerned, if you don’t have a mentor yet, talk to your employer about projects they should implement.
How Can Business Mentoring Positively Strengthen Your Company?
Business Mentoring in the workplace is a standard method for companies to bring new employees into the company seamlessly. However, these actions can and should be much more than a mechanism for onboarding.
Vital business mentoring services promote recruits and help foster a responsive, welcoming atmosphere that encourages all employees to share their ideas for improving the organisation.
In a recent study, 93 percent of staff surveyed said target setting is key to their job success, but for some professionals, such meetings with managers never happen.
Mentoring offers an atmosphere for forward-thinking management where finance and accounting experts can stimulate ideas and exchange experience and a dedication to creating a profitable business.
You must start these relationships on a firm footing and meet daily for them to be satisfying. Here are five pointers for a successful mentoring program in the workplace.
- Match Mentors With The Mentees
Often companies make the mistake of allowing new hires to shadow veteran workers in the expectation can pass vital information automatically. This sort of “follow Joe around” structure, on the other hand, is usually ineffective in the onboarding phase and does not count as a mentoring partnership — mainly if the mentor and mentee aren’t a good fit.
You’ll need data to make a fair match. Creating a questionnaire that questions potential staff about their job goals, leadership preferences, and what they want in a mentor or mentee is one way to gather knowledge. Then, based on their reactions, pair them up.
- Build a robust mentoring program
Make mentoring a priority in the company’s culture. Promote it during the hiring process, begin pairing recruits with mentors during orientation, and ensure that the pairs are given the resources they need to excel. This necessitates extensive preparation, internal marketing, instruction, and follow-up. Ensure that top-level executives promote the initiative, stress its relevance, and are active participants.
Formal employee mentorship programs require buy-in from both upper management and rank-and-file employees to be effective. Start with a company-wide conference or a departmental retreat. Maintain direct, quick, and upbeat contact. Be sure that everyone is aware of the situation.
- Establish roles and responsibilities
Mentoring services and partnerships differ from one entity to the next and from one individual to the next. However, all parties must recognise that the terms “mentor” and “supervisor” are not interchangeable. Mentors provide advice and encouragement rather than assigning work or telling mentees how to do their jobs.
Encourage the tutor and protégé to keep in touch after they’ve been partnered up to help their partnership evolve. Email or phone check-ins are great, but face-to-face meetings are essential. Some mentors and mentees meet for coffee every week, while others meet for lunch once or twice a month. Mentoring must be mutually beneficial for both sides.
- Engage In Goal Setting
When staff members have common priorities that help the company achieve its strategic targets, it benefits the company. Workers who see a bright future in a business and feel encouraged in their career pursuits are more likely to continue to work.
Below are some ideas mentors can use to assist in target setting:
- Ensure that opportunities for training and learning are available.
- Provide constructive criticism and praise for intense work.
- Assist mentees in aligning their priorities with the company’s corporate objectives.
Why me, Ritu Singal A business mentor/ business coach?
Mentoring partnerships are beneficial to more than just mentees. Team members who actively participate in directing and coaching others can hone their leadership skills and demonstrate their willingness to take on more responsibilities to senior management. One of the essential advantages of mentoring partnerships, according to mentors, is the joy of serving people — paying it forward.
Furthermore, learning is reciprocal. For example, tech-savvy millennials may show boomer mentors how to use social media effectively, while mentoring is more about knowledge transfer than age. When you do not see the light at the end of the tunnel, give me a call, and I, Ritu Singal, will be your path shower.
There is a book called the monk who sold his ferrari, there is a scenario that the monk is trying to fill tea in a cup that is already full but the tea is overflowing. The same is the case with your life, when you come to me with an open mind I can help you in a better way out.
Business counselling is like taking help from a person who has already gone through a lot and gained experiences from the ups and downs of life. I have gone through a lot and brought my empire to the international level from minus 60 crores. I can help you out in any sector from personal to judicial to business or property related issues. I can guide you because I have gone through all this in my life and faced it personally.
