When You Mentor Someone, You’re A Multiplier
Mentors are key to getting the necessary guidance and insights to advance in both the professional and personal realms. Most content speaks to the advantages for the mentee. I want to take a step back and look at the other side of the coin: how does this look like for the mentor? What’s in it for you if you are a mentor? After all, why would you want to add more commitments to your calendar when it’s likely you’re already pretty busy as is. Being a mentor, as most volunteer work, no only has intrinsic rewards, it also plants seeds for your mentee’s future and yours; this makes you a multiplier. Here are a few examples to illustrate this:
Providing guidance and perspective. Your mentee is trying to make sense of the world, a project, or the path before them. As a mentor, you’re adding a missing piece to their puzzle. Think of those “Eureka!” moments you’ve been through — something someone said or showed you shifted things in your mind and, suddenly, things started to make sense. You are providing this priceless service for your mentees.
Triggering a Domino Effect. When your mentee goes out into the world with this evolving perspective, they too help others either directly or indirectly. Mentees become mentors themselves or carry your advice with them to become better leaders, teammates, stakeholders, and humans.
As a mentor, you build rapport and a good track record. Word starts getting out about how you guided someone or provided useful advice. Others start seeing the results in this person’s life, and so they start seeking you for advice. Of course, there are only so many people you can guide at once, but your reputation is building up.
Future opportunities for you. Not only are other people receiving the benefits of your advice (e.g., your mentee built a better team because of your guidance and so people in that team are happier as a result), but your mentee(s) also grow their influence and reach, giving you future opportunities for collaboration. For example, I know someone that invited their mentor to be a C-level executive in their growing startup.
These are all examples of the “pay it forward” effects that come with being a mentor. There’s also one crucial element of being a mentor: it is personally rewarding. Just knowing that you’re making a difference by being available for questions and advice, is something that no amount of money can equal. In fact, Daniel Pink points this out in his book “Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us” — a plethora of tasks and actions, small and large, had better results when people were intrinsically motivated vs extrinsically motivated. Being a mentor is one of these instances; if mentors were paid, I don’t think we would see the inspiring results that we see around us. Go out there and be a multiplier.
