Feature

The Benefits of the GNAA Mentorship Program

by Eddie Ivey, Freeman Webb Company and GNAA Education Committee

In both business and personal life, we should all be seeking to develop our skills, learn new things and challenge ourselves on a regular basis. This has always been a challenge and even harder to do during a pandemic. One way to stay on track is to have a mentor who can help guide, advise and teach you through a problem or towards a goal. Mentoring has the power to accelerate our selfdevelopment, career progression and overall confidence. Unfortunately, Forbes reports only 37 percent of professionals have a mentor. As I look back on my 30+ years in the industry, there are several people who served as mentors to me. Each one brought different skills, ideas and talents with them, and these people have helped develop the person I am today. There are many benefits of a mentorship program that go way beyond the mentee’s self-development by positively affecting the mentors themselves as well as the companies they work for.

Benefits of Mentorship for Personal Development

• Increased confidence – Whether it’s the ability to share ideas comfortably in meetings or stand up for yourself in a challenging situation, people with mentors benefit from higher confidence in themselves. Mentors also experience an increase in self-confidence, as their mentee’s success reaffirms their abilities, resulting in a confidence boost. • Higher self-awareness – Working out your goals with someone you look up to requires serious self-analysis around strengths, weaknesses and values. As a result, those who are mentored are more self-aware that those who aren’t – and selfawareness is highly beneficial when it comes to career development.

• Exposure to new ways of thinking – For both mentee and mentor, the mentoring process exposes new ideas and revelatory ways of thinking or problem solving. This can have long-lasting effects on both people in the partnership, encouraging innovation.

• Giving and receiving feedback – Feedback is something we should all want in order to improve but probably don’t ask for enough. Similarly, managers everywhere struggle with delivering feedback honestly and effectively. Mentoring helps people develop their relationship with feedback in a productive way.

Benefits of Mentorship for Career Development

• Promotions – Those who receive mentoring are promoted five times more often than people who do not have mentors.

• Job satisfaction – Reaching your goals makes you feel fulfilled and successful. With mentors often helping mentees achieve their career goals, job satisfaction naturally increases. Similarly, those