Mentoring enables genuine inclusion, without which diversity in itself cannot be sustained, says Yetunde Hofmann
Mentoring is defined as ‘a relationship in which a more experienced or more knowledgeable person helps to guide a less experienced or less knowledgeable person’. This can be across all walks of life and cover every aspect of diversity.
When conducted effectively mentoring can have a positive impact on the personal and professional lives of the mentee and mentor. For the organisation, it can help identify potential across all of the represented groups within it and help them operate at their very best.
Let’s examine the benefits to the mentee, the mentor and the organisation in turn.
Benefits to the mentee
Provides a confidential sounding board
The benefits of having a safe space in which to speak about career or life ambitions, challenges and issues should not be underestimated. Being able to do this with someone who has trodden a similar path, made some mistakes along the way and learned from those mistakes enables the mentee to avoid those same mistakes. When the mentee is able to do this with someone who looks like them it can really be very powerful because you have the added benefit of role modelling, particularly with underrepresented groups and people from diverse backgrounds.
Improves self confidence
When you are in the minority – the only one of your kind – whether it’s in the way that you look, sound, your lifestyle, or beliefs – the world of work can seem a very lonely place. Knowing however that you have a mentor in the organisation or indeed outside the organisation who believes in you and is willing to invest his or her time in you will strengthen your own self-belief and self-acceptance. It can also give you the confidence to more readily go for the promotion and career advancement opportunities that may at first appear unattainable (Psychology Today).
Develops leadership
Inside all of us is a leader waiting to be expressed. When you are mentored by someone whom you admire because of their background or indeed whom you admire and is different to you in terms of background, race, lifestyle and orientation, it can be a very powerful experience indeed. In leadership the one instrument to master is ‘self’. Through mentoring, self-awareness can be raised through candid feedback, given within a trusting relationship, sharing different perspectives on a similar situation and acknowledging that a situation or problem can change depending on the window through which one views it. The outcome however is that it encourages you to be you and know that having a different experience or coming at the world a different way doesn’t make you wrong.
Enable belonging
As a mentee when you have a trusted adviser in a mentor it can help you feel like you belong in your organisation. It can be especially important in cases where the person may have mental health challenges and may feel a sense of isolation. Having that confidential sounding board can lessen that potential sense of isolation – helping you to realise that you’re not alone and that there is someone else in the organisation who supports you, your wellbeing and your career. It can help you to know that you belong – that all of who you are is welcome.
Career advancement
The value to diversity in mentoring is that it can accelerate the career development of the mentee through exposure to the mentor’s networks, outside and inside the organisation. When mentoring is an integrated element of a comprehensive and meaningful diversity agenda in an organisation, it means that particular focus and attention is paid to the results of mentoring the underrepresented groups. When the mentor is also an advocate or sponsor, and the two are not the same, what results is that the mentee has a voice and a representative who fights his or her corner when those key people promotion decisions are being made.
Benefits to the mentor
The benefits of mentoring to the mentor can be the same as the benefits to the mentee. There are however additional benefits to the mentor which are as follows:
Continuous learning
One of the challenges that executives and organisational leaders have as they climb up the career ladder is staying fresh and in step with the current developments in technology, ways of working or indeed the changing needs and demands of the consumer and/or customer. Mentoring someone who is much earlier on in their career, younger and different will expose you to their world. In addition, when you engage in reverse mentoring, it’s a win-win.
Helps mental health
The health benefits of mentoring to the mentor should not be underestimated. There is the general feel good factor that comes from simply helping another human being be successful and even more impactful when you have nothing to gain and you do it without condition. What this HBR article does however highlight is that mentoring can contribute to a reduction in anxiety levels, if present in the mentor. And when you feel less anxious as a person, you are more likely to be fully present in your meetings and key decision making forums of which you may be a part.
Giving back
One of the key attributes of a leader is contribution. That means a willingness to make a difference to another without expectation and without condition. One way in which this is done is to mentor someone to whom you can be an ally. The benefit for the organisation is the advancement of diversity and the benefit to the mentor is the good feeling and positive emotion that comes out of that. The world of neuroscience does tell us that people perform at their very best when they feel good about themselves and giving back in the context of mentoring and mentoring diversely enables the ‘feel good’ factor which in turn will contribute to the establishment of an environment in which people can perform at their best and share creative ideas without censure.
Benefits to the organisation
The benefits to an organisation make mentoring integral to its diversity agenda and can be powerful indeed. It can lead to the advancement of a culture of belonging, creative ideas and where difference is to be valued and celebrated.
Innovation
Diversity, when unleashed, can accelerate the development of an innovative approach to solving problems, new product development and new and flexible ways of working and implementing change. When all employees are mentored effectively it can only enhance the speed at which effective change is achieved, as people up and down the organisation, regardless of where they sit or the employee groups they represent, feel able to speak up and come forward with ease.
Inclusive workplace
A benefit of mentoring is an increase in self-awareness in both the mentor and the mentee. When mentoring is done in critical mass across the organisation, it facilitates the establishment of an inclusive culture which over time will further enable the power of diversity to come through. Without a genuinely inclusive culture in an organisation, it becomes difficult for diversity to flourish and without mentoring as an integral part of diversity agendas in organisation it is difficult for the power of diversity to come through.
Development of love-based leadership
The most critical leadership capability in organisation is Love – the unconditional acceptance of self and others. The more leaders are willing and able to operate from a place of love-based leadership, the more willing and able they will be to mentor other people – peers, direct reports and wider team members – from diverse backgrounds willingly. Mentoring, as an expression of love-based leadership, demonstrates a genuine interest in another person’s wellbeing, success and advancement as well as in the voice and progression of the community and the demographic group that they represent. It enables genuine inclusion, without which diversity in itself cannot be sustained.
Yetunde Hofmann is a board level executive leadership coach and mentor, global change, inclusion and diversity expert, author of Beyond Engagement and founder of SOLARIS – a pioneering new leadership development programme for black women. Find out more at http://www.solarisleadership.com/
