Research has been done to confirm the importance of mentoring to career success and happiness. As it turns out, informal mentoring is more valuable than formal mentoring, simply because informal mentors truly care about you. Research also showed that it’s best to have more than one mentor for different parts of your career and development. All of this has been true for me. I’ve been blessed with a great number of formal and informal mentors who gave freely of their time, told me the hard truths, and helped me develop my leadership skills and progress rapidly in my career.
Mentors are a valuable part of your network, not only for the advice and support they provide. They can advocate for you when you’re up for a new job or promotion, they can help you connect the dots to new opportunities, and they can introduce you to decision-makers in another company. This has also been true for me, and my mentors from long ago still lend me their ears, advise me, encourage me, and open doors for me, regardless of the fact that I left the corporate world years ago. I’m extremely grateful for this.
To this day, I continue to mentor those who need a little guidance, sometimes formally, sometimes informally. It’s part of my commitment to giving back, and to my own learning journey. Below is a snapshot of some of the data related to mentorship that was shared during the webcast entitled How to Network Effectively.
If you’re interested in learning more about how we can work together in a mentoring or coaching relationship, please reach out to me at lesley@lesleyantoun.com.
Lesley Antoun Consulting 