How Can Early Career Mentorship Lead to Development?
As I always stated: “Your team is your greatest asset”. Team members are always the corner stones in any business or institute, shaping the relation between the employee and the client. Early career mentorship is considered one of the most underrated types of mentorships that mentees undertake, believing that through experience, one can reach his/her utmost level of expertise and competency. However, after the rapid growth in businesses, early career mentorship became an essential need for entrepreneurs and newly employed personnel. But how does it lead to development on both a personal and organizational level?
On a Personal Level
Mentees who endeavour trainings with their mentors are more likely to overcome obstacles based on advices designated, which in turn reduces the possibility of carrying out mistakes and errors. This is a result of building self-consciousness in the early stages of career building, giving the mentees a broader view of their strengths and weaknesses. Self-awareness is vital for career startups and entrepreneurs because it helps in progressive exertion through problem-solving skills, where to-some-extent is considered an additional motive to resolve conflicts that are likely to happen.
In addition to overcoming obstacles, learning new and leadership skills will always be a consequence of having a mentor. With the purpose for early starters to reach executive roles in their future, improving their technical skills is a necessity. Nevertheless, technical abilities without communication skills is always incomplete, since effective correspondence is a result of constant interaction between both the mentor and the mentee, preparing them for future challenges. Not to forget to mention that early tutorship develops delegation, teamwork, assertive listening, creativity and responsibility.
On an Organizational Level
A common mistake that most people commit is thinking that mentorship is endorsed only for personal development; conversely, its target is to prepare early startups for organizational structuring, initiating new managers. According to Torch Blog, 92% of mentees conveyed increased job skills, and 70% of them stated performance improvement and advancement in their communication skills. Managers that become well trained will increase the organization’s productivity as a result of strategic leadership, where 22% of managers who encountered 8-week leadership sessions reported increase in their productivity.
Besides developing new managers, early career mentorship also paves the way ahead of companies to benefit from organizational partnerships with other establishments. In a world of exposed markets, building cooperation and mutual aid is a must; thus, it can always be a fruitful chance for institutes to advantage from their new-trained mentees, in order to reinforce their business based on an open inviting culture built on knowledge allocation.
Finally, yet importantly, early career mentorship improves employee engagement and communication in their organizations. Around 50% of employees tend to leave their jobs due to management clashes; therefore, in order to prevent vacancies and sudden disputes, tutorship is essential to be taken in companies as a precaution. Mistakes that most organizations carry out, is giving the opportunity only for managers to undertake mentorship, believing that executives with leadership skills will be able to push a company forward. However, neglecting early starters and employees and withholding them the opportunity to get trained, will create a potential clash since the results most likely to occur will not be as expected.
Early career mentorship is a like a railroad that a train is driving on. Whenever the railroad moves out of track, the train becomes lost; thus, whenever early starters are forbidden from tutorship, organizations become more likely to be less managed and not well-structured. For this reason, mentorship for early career starters is a basis that leads to both personal and organizational development, transforming new leaders and successful establishments.
Arezou Harraf
