The Importance of Mentoring
Leaders realize many benefits from mentoring, including personal satisfaction and fulfillment, enhanced creativity and professional synergy, career and personal rejuvenation, development of a loyal support base, and recognition for developing talent.
People who are mentored also gain many benefits: access to leadership opportunities, career mobility, better rewards, increased adaptability when facing new situations, improved professional identity, greater professional competence, increased career satisfaction, greater acceptance within their organizations, and decreased job stress and role conflict. Additionally, mentees enjoy some of the credibility and influence of the mentor through association.
Now’s the Time
Optimizing talent through mentoring is timely. Given that Generation X is smaller in number than the retiring Baby Boomers, organizations are recognizing a shrinking pool of suitable candidates for succession to leadership positions. Organizations face an impending leadership vacuum. Good leaders will be scarcer. Competition to attract and retain good people will be fiercer. Developing and retaining talent is critical to organizational success now.
Organizations also benefit from mentoring. It helps them attract talent, and it enhances organizational commitment among employees who seek developmental opportunities. Turnover decreases, and development accelerates. Typically, mentors have a welldeveloped view of organizational direction and dynamics, which they impart to mentees, and can better align a mentee’s efforts with organizational objectives, enhancing organizational capacity. Many contemporary organizations consider mentoring a key competency among their leaders.