Does Mentoring works in Career Development?

The Mentor is your ‘go to person’ or a guide in case you feel confused at any stage in your career. The mentor can provide a blunt advice without any personal interests or direct career relationship with the person getting mentored (normally referred as mentee)

If the mentor is asking you right questions, many times the employee will have a feeling that they never thought so much about their career and career growth. This is a right stage of discussion and not leaving the discussion half-way and going back to ‘flow with the current’ type of career.

GROW (Goal, Reality, Options and Will) model works well for career development with different age groups & different career paths. What is important in discussions with the mentor, is that it should be a discussion leading to outcome rather than mentor telling you what should be the next step. While using this model, the mentee gives 99% of the answers and the mentor has to ask correct questions.

While considering career growth, it is always important to consider the Business Goals or Goals and Objectives of your employer and fit your individual career goals to match with the same. If the employer wants you to take PM responsibility, you can't take the path of being a Software Architect. You can say so, may be at the cost of losing your job and pursuing your career somewhere else. But if you are not ready to do that, you will always have to accommodate employer Goals with your own ambitions.

This is where a mentor can help you. The Mentor’s experience in the field, the experience of mentoring several people should be able to tell you to work with you on this. This is a long process and you should have the patience to get the results. The process involves knowing your technical skills, business skills, Industry knowledge, soft skills, current Organisation structure and telling you how to move ahead. It is extremely important for the Mentor to keep the mentee motivated all the time. You can be moving in the circle as long as you want.

An approach towards mentoring needs to be different than a teacher. The mentor will tell you what to do, how he/she would handle a situation, how to develop the right skills and get experience. A mentor is not for guiding you on your program defects, neither in your arguments in the team. A mentor is supposed to be a friend guiding you to swiftly swim across the Organisation in confidence and move towards your goals.

It is OK to move sideways, upwards, downwards also while taking different career moves and it doesn't have to be always a Career ladder. You can be on a Career Wall and could move in different directions, what is important is what you like, how your Organisation gets benefited and how you can achieve individual career Goals while meeting the yearly Performance Objectives. Having a Mentor is always a good thing for your career.