The term mentoring itself comes from a Greek word meaning “enduring”. To me, this represents one of the key features of mentoring – its sustainability. Mentoring, ideally, should equip you with skills that last a lifetime.
The EMCC – the European Mentoring and Coaching Council – defines mentoring as “a learning relationship, involving the sharing of skills, knowledge, and expertise between a mentor and mentee through developmental conversations, experience sharing, and role modelling. The relationship may cover a wide variety of contexts and is an inclusive two-way partnership for mutual learning that values differences.”
Mentoring, as well as coaching, uses well-thought-out questioning to to help you to develop the right solutions to your issues and the path to reach your goals.
Mentors need to be very skilled listeners and able to spot links between goals, issues and passions that will help clients to see their situation in a new way.
As a mentor, according to the feedback I get from clients, one of the most important things I deliver is perspective and clarity. Clients often come to mentoring feeling overwhelmed. Being able to help them to draw a clear picture of what is happening in their world and how it affects them and their business can be the key to unblocking progress and unlocking solutions.
As a mentor I use my 27 plus years of experience working with hundreds of businesses to give feedback to clients on their business, in my case, particularly in terms of their marketing and brand strategy and activities as well as helping them to come up with options to solve problems or reach goals.
Mentoring or coaching could be helpful for you if you want to develop your decision making, goal-setting, planning or other business management skills or if you want to get a clearer view of where you are in business, what the blockages or opportunities are and how you can develop to take advantage of them.
Mentoring and coaching can take place on line via video or in person and sessions can take from one hour to three. It is a good idea to commit to a block of sessions in order to keep the attention on the issues and goals and give yourself a chance to make progress and start getting results. Everything said between the client and the mentor or coach is entirely confidential. I work to the ethics code set out be the EMCC.
I have been a mentor for Local Enterprise Offices in Ireland for over 15 years and am a mentor for the Enterprise Nation Help to Grow initiative in the UK. I also provide professional mentoring and coaching directly. I have been brushing up my mentoring and coaching skills through the Institute of Learning and Management since last year too.
If you would like to try business mentoring or coaching with me, contact me at paula@ronanmarketing.ie
