Small Business Mentor Research Paper

Mentors should reflect confidence, hope, optimism, and resiliency as well as the ability to promote others and their strengths. This sounds uncannily like the descriptions of an authentic leader that we have been reading about in our literature.

Over time, organizations have adapted and refined the way that mentoring is used in their companies. For example, mentors now help the person to solve problems, navigate through the culture at a company and even advance their career. This, in turn, will create a person that is ready to lead and manage.

An advantage of mentoring is that it helps to acclimatise less successful workers to the job and organisational requirements. By having a "go to" person to ask questions, discuss scenarios and generally learn the nuances of the company, the mentee can become a productive member much more quickly and never feel that he has nowhere to turn for help. The mentee can gain the sense of achievement that comes from the mentor's feedback and assessment of his progress. The mentee's quest to gain the mentor's approval can serve as a motivating force to continue to improve his performance. The mentor can gain satisfaction from knowing that she is helping an individual and can take a measure of pride in her accomplishments. For a mentor that has already achieved a great deal of success, she can look at the process as a way of "giving back”.

"Mentoring is a special quality, skill set and attitude," she says. "The benefits are not only between the mentor and mentee, but the future generations."

We often meet wise people who we trust to guide us. Some consider these individuals to be mentors because they support or influence us in a special way. A mentor can be anyone, such as a someone who guides you through a tough job, or even your mom and dad! What makes all these people similar is that they all have likeable qualities. The qualities that I think make a good mentor are patience, determination, and a good-listener.

Mentors instill self confidence and empowerment in the people they train.

Mentors are influential, senior organizational members with advanced experience and knowledge committed to providing perception to a mentee’s career development. A mentor supports a mentee’s views of self within a work role as well as it supports the mentor’s sense of self for the valuable wisdom and experience they have to share.

Your personal business mentor will hold you accountable to meeting your goals, help you develop plans to accomplish them, and assist with identifying and removing roadblocks that may hinder you from obtaining those goals. Business coaching sessions can also assist you with building a healthy work/life balance so that you can accomplish not only your professional, but your personal goals as well.

I believe a good mentor should have the ultimate goal of successfully teaching the student, meanwhile, guiding them properly in a manner in which he/she learns by themselves. In the National Honors Society, I have participated in a program called “Mustang Buddies”.

Mentoring for the mentor is about challenging himself to perform to greater capabilities while nurturing a mentee and stretching them to realise their full potential. Mentors counsel, tutor and guide their mentees in developing themselves.

In addition, coaching and mentoring are key mechanisms for transferring learning from training courses back to the workplace and can have a positive impact on an organisations bottom line (Parsloe & Leedham 2009).

Mentorship is very important in the workplace especially in the area of training and development. The mentor-protégé relationship is a much needed relationship that begins in the early career stage and this relationship involves the current or new employees and the supervisor or other colleagues that provide work-related guidance. The relationship itself is comprehensive and involves “educational, occupational, physical, social, and spiritual development” (Greenhaus,, Callanan, & Godshalk, 2010, p 211). One of the initial task of the early career the establishment of the career field which involves the gaining of the workplace competence, learn what is needed to excel in the organization, and to gain acceptance in the workplace to be recognized as the valued employee. There are many ways of achieving the above mentioned advantages in the workplace which one main method is through the use of the mentorship program.

True success and fullfillment at any stage of life can be achieved by a changed mindset. This is the most important path of opportunity. It is sometimes only realised through mentoring.

Learning mentors tend to work on a one to one level or in small numbered groups, a learning mentor must be a good listener, be able to encourage and motivate and act as a role model and encourage the build up of a mutually respectful relationship (Hayward, 2001).

With the development of the more organic and less formal organisational structures the role of mentors has shifted with these changes. Unlike previously where mentors where seen as formal trainers who taught newcomers the processes and got them acquainted with the cultures and the systems within the organisation. Which required good interpersonal skills and a good knowledge of the activity or tasks the mentee would have to undertake, and be able to effectively relay or demonstrate the tasks or activities to the mentee. As opposed to more recently where a mentor would have to be more of an emotional counselor and demonstrate more skills than were traditionally required from