Becoming a Mentor gives you the opportunity to develop your leadership skills, working out how best to motivate and inspire others and respond to feedback from your Mentee to further improve your skills. Mentoring requires strong communication skills, including active listening and getting out of your comfort zone, and learning how to ask challenging and probing questions that will encourage mentees to consider alternative perspectives on their work.

Mentoring enables you to exercise your problem-solving skills in new contexts, accommodating other people’s ways of thinking and working, and apply your expertise to suggest appropriate training or development to best help mentees achieve their goals.

Mentoring will also improve your own confidence through practice and working outside of your comfort zone, and completing invaluable CPD. 

Mentoring is a two-way relationship; mentees can offer you fresh perspectives on your past experiences or current ways of working either naturally through your mentoring relationship, or specifically through pursuing Reverse Mentoring. Sharing your experiences with mentees, both the positive and negative ones, can help you reflect on what you have learnt from your experiences and find out what valuable lessons you have to share.

Meeting mentees at various stages in their careers will also inform you of current employment trends in the sector, challenges that early career professionals may be facing, and expose you to opportunities for recruitment and development within the sector.

Wherever you are in your career journey, the fresh perspectives you can gain from Mentees can help you develop your own work practices and broaden your understanding of the environmental sector.

Past and present IES Mentors frequently report that supporting others to achieve their goals is one of the most rewarding activities they have pursued as an environmental professional.

It has also been reported that those who served as mentors experienced lower levels of anxiety and described their jobs as more meaningful than those who did not mentor. The achievement of helping a fellow colleague helped mentors realise how important their daily tasks were too, and their ability to make a difference.

Through working closely with another individual, you can see the real impact of your support, whether it’s an increase in their confidence, new skills they have learnt, or helping them to achieve a specific goal. You are in an invaluable position to help someone reach their full potential in the environment sector.