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Helping people stand on your shoulders to see further requires time and effort but the rewards can be great. As a mentor you can use your knowledge and experience to help less experienced individuals who wish to succeed and progress. Being a mentor is a way in which we can ‘hand the baton’ by sharing our skills and knowledge with those people who are coming after us, in fact many leaders believe that ‘the personal, one-on-one aspect of mentoring is something our society desperately needs’(1).

Core to being a good mentor is to have a clearly defined plan, and the plan should reflect not what you the mentor wants to teach, but what the individual being mentored wants to learn. Understanding a person’s goals and what they want to achieve will govern the direction of the mentor and mentee relationship.

A mentor should have a willingness to encourage positive behavior and choices, always acknowledging and praising discipline, hard work and good decision-making skills. However, together with encouragement and praise a mentor needs to offer correction and instruction when required. Letting someone know that because of your greater experience and knowledge you have a ‘better way of doing it’ makes you a good mentor. Offering instruction in a clear, concise, and compassionate manner allows people to adjust behavior that will assist them with achieving their goals.

Mentoring gives you the opportunity to impact the direction of an individual’s life, indeed it is reported time and time again that many successful people attribute what they have achieved to having a mentor at a pivotal time of their lives. There is something about mentoring that just makes you feel good!

At Income Solutions we welcome the opportunity of advising our clients and mentoring them through a financial partnership that allows us to clearly understand their financial goals and develop a financial plan that will ensure, at times through instruction and correction, that they achieve their life long financial objectives and aspirations.

References:

How to be a great mentor:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G3q8kEn_nsg

https://www.indeed.com/career-advice/career-development/why-is-a-mentor-important

https://www.td.org/insights/7-tips-about-how-to-mentor-someone