Why is Mentoring Important?

When most people think about mentors, they think about positive characteristics of other people who have helped them. When you were making your list, you probably thought about how someone could be supportive and show you how to do deal with certain aspects of your job that they know more about. This person may encourage you, give you good feedback, and lend an ear when you have a question. This may give you some obvious reasons why mentoring is important: it makes people feel good in their jobs. But it goes further than that. Mentoring is important for many reasons.

• Mentoring helps people quickly “learn the ropes” of a new job.
• Mentoring helps people meet their new colleagues and build a social network.
• Mentoring helps people do their job correctly
• Mentoring helps people build confidence, because they get feedback about if they are doing their jobs correctly.
• Mentoring helps people get supplies and information more efficiently.
• Mentoring helps people feel competent by having someone who gives them credit for their work.
• Mentoring helps people feel satisfied in their workplace by providing a venting place for frustrations.
• Mentoring helps people stay in their jobs, by helping to make the workplace a nice place to work.
• Mentoring helps people feel like they are in a professional setting, working with people who are serious about their jobs.
  
  CAUTION!! This is not a complete list!!

Pick up your pen and paper again. It is your job to look at your brainstormed list and make a sentence to add to our list about how mentoring helps people. Think of how a mentor helps you. What does it look like?

Finish this sentence:
MENTORING HELPS PEOPLE…

Now that we know why mentoring is important, let’s take a look at these people are who are doing this important mentoring job.

Go to the next section entitled “Who Is a Mentor?”

IPSP Module Series

Mentoring