Accelerate Your Growth Through Mentoring

A few weeks ago, I wrote about Personal Growth in Leadership. My goal is to challenge aspiring leaders to uncover areas of leadership development they cannot afford to overlook. This week, we’re talking mentoring.

What mentoring is and why it matters

Mentoring is an indispensable tool that can accelerate your personal growth in leadership. Unfortunately, not every aspiring leader I’ve met understands how mentoring adds value to their leadership.

Jaimito Cartero / Foter / CC BY-NC-SA

Mentoring is more than an occasional conversation. It’s

an ongoing relationship of learning, dialogue, and challenge.

 

It involves seeking out people with considerable experience in an area of life you’re interested in growing. It’s an ongoing commitment to learning. Mentors can help you navigate through life’s peaks and troughs.

This matters because we thrive in communities. No man is an island. You need people to succeed and reach your life goals.

My first exposure to a mentor happened when I needed to write my personal statement prior to university. The process helped me tremendously and the result was significant to getting university offers.

Ever since, I haven’t looked back. Today, I have mentors for my marriage, finance, career and spiritual leadership.

The big mentoring misconception

Leaders are committed to learning. Leadership is a progressive process, not an endpoint. Life is complex enough, learning is not easy either but in leadership, you must embrace the right challenges.

But there’s often a misconception I’ve seen with aspiring leaders:

the fear to commit to the process of mentoring for lack of trust and feeling of vulnerability. 

 

It’s true opening up to someone could leave you vulnerable, but when it’s with the right people, it’s good for you. Sometimes we have to accept vulnerability, step out in faith and trust the process. It works. Life is about trust.

Four ways mentors help you accelerate growth

You must choose mentors carefully. You only want to expose yourself to the right mentors. How can mentors help you accelerate your personal growth in leadership? They:

1. inspire you to grow your vision. They act as catalyst to your development by helping you shape your dream. This is an iterative process but stay committed to it.
2. challenge you to make choices that may rightly inconvenience you, especially when we don’t want to be made uncomfortable. But some inconvenience is good for you.
3. help refuel your passion to live with purpose. Each conversation with a mentor should reignite your passion.
4. learn along with you. Mentors don’t know everything. Each mentoring session I have with young leaders or youths teaches me something new about myself, them and life. I need this. Every mentor does.

Identify mentors you aspire to emulate. connect with them and submit yourself to the learning process. It’s time to take personal responsibility for your personal growth.

Do you have a mentor? How has mentoring helped you personally? If not, why not? Share your thoughts below.