Structuring your mentorship needs

Mentorship can be a highly positive propellant in one’s career, if done well. If you have a mentor that supports you, motivates you, advises you and assists in you making well thought out and well-planned decisions, you can get very far in your career. A mentor can help you chart a solid career path and help you develop all kinds of attributes that can influence your career positively. It is encouraged that one gets themselves a mentor and develop a programme with them that will benefit both parties and enable you as a mentee to learn from a highly experienced individual.

Reasons for seeking a mentor

Having a mentor for the sake of having a mentor is not ideal. You need to know why you want a mentor and what value they will add to the path you want to carve for yourself. You need to understand what value they will add to your journey and how they must influence you and the career or life you want to build for yourself. This will go a long way in helping you decide who you want to be mentored by and how you want to be mentored. The value of your proposition to the mentor will rely largely on your reasons for seeking a mentor, so ensure that they are solid reasons and that they will add value to your career and/ or life as a whole.

Career and personal aspirations

When structuring your mentorship needs you need to decide which areas of your life you need to be developed on. You must also understand that the mentor may have their own opinion as well regarding where you need to be developed. You must allow them to engage you and allow them to add onto your list because there may be areas you do not see as a hindrance to your growth which actually are. Before you approach a mentor you need to write down what your career aspirations are and what you would like to do with your life so that you can align it to the direction you want your mentorship to take. This empowers you and allows you to choose a mentor who can fit your needs. The mentor also knows what you want to do with your life and sees that you are serious.

Mentor Mentee Relationship

In order to shape a mentorship programme for yourself you need to agree on it with your mentor. This means you need to either have developed or want to develop a relationship with your mentor. Once you have identified who stands out for you as a potential mentor you need to approach them and then request them to mentor you. You need to ensure that your intentions and expectations are clear before you approach your prospective mentor.

• Know what you want and say it: it is important for you to structure what you want to do through the mentorship programme you intend to partake in. This will help you state clearly to your potential mentor what you would like them to do for you and what role you would expect from them. This allows them to also decide whether they believe they are the right mentor for you and if they can deliver on your needs as a mentee.
• Decide on the limitations of your mentorship: you need to be clear about how you want to be mentored. Know whether you want your mentor to develop you in your work life only or holistically, moving into your personal life as well. This will help you also decide whether you need more than one mentor for the different parts of your life because a mentor may be good in one area of life but not so much in another area.
• Decide what you want to gain from the mentorship: you need to be sure about what you what to achieve through the mentorship you want to partake in. You need to state your goals so that the mentor also knows what their expected role is. It is also important to understand that the mentor may also decide to add certain aspects to the mentorship as part of building you to propel you to achieve your intended goals.
• Consider the mentor’s views: remember that you approached a particular prospective mentor for a reason, their wisdom and knowledge is key to you so it is essential for you to get their views on how you intend to do things, get their suggestions and their opinions so that you can develop a mutually beneficial programme for both of you.
• Set strict ground rules for both participants: ensure that you set clear ground rules of engagement for yourself and your mentor to avoid blurring the lines of your engagement. These will help the relationship develop in the manner it was intended for.

All the above points will play a key role in the foundation of your relationship with your mentor. Once you have established the ground rules you need to start working on building a relationship with your mentor. The relationship you build with them must be strictly for the purpose of developing yourself with their assistance and influence.