A mentor can add value to you, your career or your business in so many ways.

In this series, we are exploring key ways in which you might want to work with your mentor to make the most of your mentoring relationship. That way you achieve the mentoring success that you want. It shows the value any organisation can gain for their people, profits and priorities through mentoring programmes too.
 
The area we are discussing today is clarity. When you have clarity through mentoring you will be able to:

• Make great decisions.
• Understand yourself better.
• Be more resilient.
• Build better relationships.
• Be more productive.

 
A great mentor and a great mentoring programme will help you achieve this through a mixture of support, positive challenge and signposting to help you succeed the way you want to.
 
So let’s look at clarity some more and I’m going to use the example of water here to hopefully bring the value of mentoring to life for you!
 
Surfing Waves through Mentoring
You want to get somewhere. You might be looking at career, professional or business success. You are working hard. However, you keep getting knocked back by waves of change or waves of circumstances. These waves can additionally come from within through waves of low confidence, low resilience or even waves of unhelpful thinking patterns and behaviours. A mentor will help you make sense of your setbacks to help you, as a mentee, learn from them and then get to your calm waters again.
 
Managing Currents through Mentoring
You’re in a situation (business or professional) where there is so much change you’ve lost your direction. You may have even got caught in a rip current taking you far away from where you were, leaving you feeling very tired and confused. A mentor will help you find the clarity of what’s really important to you now your circumstances have changed. You can explore why the change had really unsettled you and strategies for coping with change better next time. A good mentoring programme here will support your mentoring relationship over the longer term. This is to ensure that clarity stays with you through the transition and through to your new circumstances.
 
Removing Blocks through Mentoring
You’re getting along really well with your goals and have great clarity on them. However, small setbacks are irritating and distracting you. Small blocks or debris bobbing up in the water confuse you. These blocks can then seem much bigger and more important than they really are. That’s where our name ‘Leapfrog Mountain’ came from, as so many clients told us their mentoring or their mentoring programme had made them feel they could leap mountains! A mentor in these circumstances will help you really focus, understand what the blocks really mean to you and help you set the best priorities for you. The mentor will then help you find your tools for you to better manage distractions like this. You, as a mentee, can then achieve calm focussed success.
 
Managing Storms through Mentoring
If you feel you are in a storm, it’s very likely you are in a stress response. If you’re in this space sadly you are very unlikely to be making the best decisions. A stress response usually diminishes your capability to listen, to understand and to think creatively – all vital to make good decisions. Clarity therefore often gets lost unless you had exceptional clarity to start with over what’s important to you. Mentoring will create a safe space for you to make sense of your priorities. Mentoring will give the perspective on the storm and see it for what it really is – intense maybe but only a passing storm not a permanent state. Mentoring can additionally help highlight there is a stress issue and then a mentor can help by signposting to specialist support.
 
Seeing Clear Paths through Mentoring
Sometimes we think we know where we are heading and suddenly things just get a bit cloudy for us. That can make us feel lost, confused and tired. This wastes valuable time and energy. It often means we focus on low value tasks just because we feel like at least we are doing something. This strategy is really unhelpful. A mentor will help you find clear water again. Just by investing your time as a mentee in taking that mentoring relationship seriously in itself often gives clarity. Time out is really time invested in, as mentoring gives so much back for results and productivity for mentees.
 
Finding Your Direction through Mentoring
If you haven’t got clarity over which direction to head in, then a mentor can add real value here for you. A mentor can’t make that decision for you though as it’s you, as a mentee, that needs to decide your way forward. A mentor will help you see the pros and cons of each option. You then jointly explore this and see if your assumptions are valid and the impacts of each of those options. Often by doing this more possibilities become available, as your breadth of thinking is expanded. As a mentee, this will help you gain the clarity to make the right decision for you.
 
Creating Your Safe Harbour through Mentoring
A great mentor will add amazing value to you, as a mentee, by helping you find your own safe harbour. A safe harbour means you have total clarity on what’s important to you and why. You understand yourself better. You recognise the drivers for your thoughts and behaviours. You manage yourself better to achieve the right outcomes. This is the really valuable space where you develop, through mentoring, the clarity and focus to build on your own definition of success. In other words, you have nailed it!
 
How We Can Help You
If you want clarity and success for your team, we would love to support your organisation’s mentoring programme plans. We help create, design and deliver mentoring programmes and mentor training solutions.
 
If you would like us to support your individual mentoring, either as a mentor or mentee, we have flexible leadership and mentoring programme support for you, so please just get in touch.
 
Happy mentoring! 😊

How has the Summer and the second half of the year started for you?  
 
Are you focussed on where you want to spread your wings either emotionally, mentally, personally and professionally? Do you have a strong sense of what’s important to you and your business for this next half of the year?
 
Many of our clients have told us that they have finally had the opportunity to see with ‘eagle’ eyes the landscapes around them and reflect on their own priorities. This time now will be important to start putting those priorities in place.
 
Some of our clients have been such ‘busy bees’ with leading their teams, leading their business or supporting others that they have told us that they simply need to take a break.
 
A few clients have had a mixture with ‘butterflying’ around; feeling they need to be busy doing something but not sure quite what to focus on.
 
I’m also delighted to say that some clients have been scanning the horizon for opportunities and have found them; creating growth and new ventures for themselves and their business. These ‘meerkats’ have kept a great look out and have built new foundations to expand.
 
Whichever space you are in, taking some proper time out at this time of year is important. It gives you a chance to develop 2020 to be just as you and your business want.
 
So which space are you in right now? Are you ready to spread your wings?
 
If you’ve decided that you are in ‘eagle’ mode, then the most helpful reflections are to check that you are truly in balance to take the best flight forward. How especially are your personal and professional priorities balanced? ‘Eagle’ mode can sometimes mean you’ve a tendency towards perfectionism so is that causing tensions for you personally or as you lead others?  Mentoring programmes or leadership training for organisations and individuals can really help here.
 
If you’ve decided you are in ‘busy bee’ mode then taking a break is a proven tool to help! However, if nothing changes when you get back, it’s only pressed the pause button not the restart button and you will be back in the same chaos very soon. How can you do things differently, deal with people differently, prioritise your time and energy differently? Leadership means leading yourself successfully as much as leading others well. How skilled are you? We’ve seen great success with a variety of tools here with different clients from mentoring programmes through to tailored training in the areas of Time Management, Emotional Intelligence, Resilience and Leadership. Once leaders or entire organisations work together to understand triggers and raise awareness then great results happen naturally.
 
If you’ve been ‘butterflying’ around, then the big question is what are you avoiding? Distraction activities and keeping busy are all things we do when we’ve lost our way. Avoiding something is much harder work than facing something. Avoidance is very draining. When was the last time you let yourself stop, pause and reflect? Have you given 100% focus to your challenge or have you been just 'butterflying' around? What’s making you feel uncomfortable and why? Training and mentoring programmes can be helpful here for businesses and business leaders. Some private clients have realised they want to make very significant changes and our Career Crossroads service has given them the support to do that in a flexible way. Spreading your wings simply means doing it in the most helpful positive way for you.
 
If you’ve been in ‘meercat’ mode then that’s a lovely result in our current climate. Our clients have used us through both mentoring and training programmes to continue to build on their success. Opportunities are great things – they just need managing carefully to maximise the results for both people and business. We’ve shared training as our clients have grown and expanded or acted as a sounding board through mentoring, as they build sustainable changes for themselves and their businesses.
 
Every feeling from total grey to seeing bright Summer possibilities. It has definitely been a very varied time with all the different businesses and business leaders we work with. Whatever the circumstances though, there are always the key themes of training and developing people and teams positively through finding the right training and mentoring programmes just for them.
 
Please contact us so we can help you explore what training or mentoring solution will help you spread your wings – just as you want!
 
Wishing you every success and a wonderful Summer ahead! 😊

A question that I get frequently asked is how to make Mentoring really work for you.

Mentoring can have a very varied approach and meaning to different people and organisations. This means you need to be very clear about what you want, what’s involved and what to expect.

What you want from Mentoring  – The more open a mind you can have on what you want from Mentoring the more you will gain from the experience. That’s because Mentoring can have so many benefits and areas to explore that if you fixate on one outcome you can be missing opportunities to add value to your plans. Having a clear idea of what your goals are though can be very helpful or sometimes the Mentoring helps those goals become clearer.

Why you want Mentoring – It really helps so much to have some clear idea of why you you have sought Mentoring. Why was Mentoring the best solution as opposed to support from friends, family, advisors or line managers for you? How does Mentoring fit with your other sources of support? What was the real trigger for you seeking a Mentoring solution?

Which Mentoring Programme - There is a vast array of Mentoring Programmes out there, all giving different support. From internal organisational programmes to remote Mentoring. It’s important to focus on what feels right to you and then gain clarity on that Mentoring Programme Frameworks.

A framework is important to protect everyone involved. We train Mentoring Programme Leaders and Mentors  using  the Mentoring Code of Practice which means mentoring is always focussed on the Mentees agenda. This means the mentor gives support and challenge to help the mentee to come to their own solutions.

We feel the total focus needs to be about empowering mentees to become independent and to find their own path forward.

Which Mentor  -  A lot of people can get very over-focussed on this question. They start creating a detailed checklist of all Mentoring characteristics required. I believe if you have a Mentor who has been trained, who has a passion for supporting others to find their own way and  they are someone that you feel you can trust then you have the three core ingredients for Mentoring success.

I’ve been lucky enough to be a Mentor for people from very different walks of life and professions from Finance to Sport and to Art. The same principles apply and add value, it is just about being flexible enough as a Mentor to make it work for different people in the way that means the most to them.

Mentoring has amazing benefits when it’s designed and focussed so everyone understands and recognises what is involved. If you are looking to create or develop an effective mentoring programme in your organisation take a look at our flexible programmes to support you.

If you’re interested in our Career Crossroads or Business Mentoring support programmes with a blend of Training and Mentoring please just contact us.

I’ve explored how to make Mentoring work for you some more in an interview I had with Martin Lucas . 

For more insights in this area listen to the interview here. 

Happy Mentoring 😊