The thought of becoming a mentor can be a daunting prospect. The idea of guiding someone else in their career can feel like a big responsibility, but what if you are asked questions you don’t know the answer to? 

Be assured, these feelings are normal.  No one can know the answer to everything. In fact that is one of the key benefits of becoming a mentor. It will give you exposure to new challenges that you might otherwise not experience. Your role will be to work with the mentee to look at options, evaluate these and come up with a solution.  

The role of mentor isn’t to have all of the answers. It is to be able to share your knowledge, perspective and experience and to work with the mentee and to act as a sounding-board to their ideas and proposed solutions. Your role will be to ensure that they look at as many different options and scenarios as possible. Even if you don’t have the answers, you are likely to have a very good idea of how they can go about finding the answer.

Once you start working with a mentee you will soon realise just how much valuable knowledge and experience you have and how even things that you think are obvious may be very valuable to a mentee.

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 learned 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 learned, 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.

"Helping others achieve their goals is a great way to give back whilst improving my own coaching/leadership skills. It has made me a more empathetic manager/leader and diversified and expand my network."

 

"An excellent and invaluable professional development experience."

 

"I think the programme works well as it stands and I’ve been well matched with those I’ve mentored. This was a long relationship and I felt supported by IES when I needed to seek guidance to support my mentee on her CEnv journey."