Learning - a two way process

Learning is a two way process and in the corporate world many of us may have experienced being both a mentor and a mentee.

Organizations, teams and relationships are built on faith and trust. The greatest quality of a mentor is not only to be superior in knowledge, but also display patience to enable learning. People feel like they have too much to do and not enough time and lack of time is blamed for everything from not getting enough exercise, unachieved goals, bad relationships and so on. Through a mentor, you will learn ways to sort out time and work and even learn the art of multi-tasking.                

A mentor helps you transform from a follower to a leader. He demonstrates the mentoring skills in shaping you up as a good leader. He teaches you ways to handle people, give feedback and maintain work life balance in a very demanding work environment that we are in today. A good mentor always steps in and help you learn & understand ways to handle high pressure situations while still respecting people.

A mentor will help you understand that once performance levels of people are established you should not delay telling people where they stand. In case performance isn't meeting expectations, they may need you to ensure they know this before hand. Further, establishing a relationship with people beyond what they do at work and remembering the small things about them also helps in building healthy organizational environment.

Some of the challenges that mentors face are the resistance to change and willingness to unlearn certain preconceived perceptive. A mentor also develops an ability to absorb the experiences of his mentees which they have acquired through the course of their life. You can enrich your learning by other people’s life experiences and problems.

Understanding our mentee’s point of view may be difficult sometimes and we may need to step into their shoes to understand the issue before guiding them in a certain direction.

I think the biggest lesson I have learnt while mentoring is that you have to let people go and make their own mistakes. Don't give solutions as much as ask questions that help them to take the decision for themselves.