The Importance of Mentorship and Why Starting Early is Key

 

It is no secret that life has become so hectic and harried these days that people don’t even have time to breathe properly. Most try to amass as much money as they can in order to immunize themselves from the vicissitudes of life. They work day and night to gather as much wealth as possible and forget that they’re just human beings. In a world of rampant consumerism, it is pretty easy to get caught up in it. By looking within for what we need, to answer the world’s challenges and learning to detach from outcomes, we can much more effectively navigate the turbulent waters of the 21^st century. As it’s often said, "People want change, but they don’t want to change themselves." It seems like such an impossible project to take on in the midst of our busy lives.

Did you make career-related New Year’s resolutions? Are you resolved to boost your career and move forward professionally in 2022 and beyond? If so, you should consider an underutilized, but incredibly powerful professional growth tool: Mentoring. Whether you are the mentor or the mentee, the mentoring relationship can push your career to new heights.

Mentorship has a long history

The term mentor comes from the character, Mentor in Homer’s Odyssey. This character was the companion of Telemachus, Odysseus' son and gave him guidance and advice while he was away from his home and family.

Going back to antiquity, the purpose of a mentor is to take all the experience that they’ve accumulated throughout their career and life and transfer it to their mentee for their benefit. 

Mentorship Can Feel Intimidating - But It Shouldn’t

The word mentorship may bring to mind images of Karate Kid and Mr. Miyagi, or Luke Skywalker and Yoda. These images can make mentors feel like they have large shoes to fill (or small ones in Yoda’s case.)

If you’re a mentee, you may feel like you have to open up about all your challenges and failures. The point is, mentorship can feel intimidating. But it doesn’t have to feel that way. 

Benefits of mentoring

The benefits of mentoring are myriad. For individuals, studies show that good mentoring can lead to greater career success, including promotions, raises, and increased opportunities. The truth is that effective mentoring takes effort, and creating successful mentoring relationships requires specific skills, sensibilities, and structure from both the mentor and the mentee. Success happens when both parties take responsibility for making it work.

Under those circumstances, having the guidance, encouragement, and support of a trusted and experienced mentor can provide a mentee with a broad range of personal and professional benefits, which ultimately lead to improved personal performance.

What is a mentor?

A mentor is someone who acts as an advisor to a less experienced individual, known as their mentee. Typically, individuals seek mentors who work in their same or desired field. The mentor helps this individual grow and develop as a professional, often offering advice based on their more advanced knowledge or experience. Mentorship relationships can be built through networking, personal connections or formal mentorship programs.

Mentors encourage and enable another person's professional or personal development.

A mentor can help focus their efforts by setting goals and giving feedback. As a result, companies that want to build employees' skills often create mentoring programs. The mentors' knowledge can help train and create a high-quality and productive workforce. Employees appreciate workplaces that encourage development, as it can demonstrate that their employer values them and wants to see them grow.

Mentors can also provide specific insights and information that enable the mentee's success.

For example, they offer instructions on how to perform particular tasks or develop useful skills. Individuals starting their career can benefit from such guidance, as it helps them feel comfortable in the role more quickly. For example, a mentor can help a person starting a business learn how to develop their initial business plan and budgets.

Validate the mentor’s leadership skills

Being put in the position of a role model can help mentors become better leaders and instill confidence in their leadership ability. The responsibility of helping guide someone’s career and goals requires the senior employee to teach, motivate and offer honest feedback in difficult conversations. All these skills are at the top of the required list for a leader.

Being a mentor boosts interpersonal skills among many beneficial reasons. Your interactions with a mentee offer numerous opportunities to practice and build interpersonal skills, such as communication, active listening, empathy and patience. Communication is especially essential to mentorship, as you may meet regularly to discuss the mentee's goals, ideas or concerns and provide instructions or advice. Beyond mentorship, having strong interpersonal skills can help you develop relationships and collaborate more effectively.

The specific benefits of a mentorship relationship include: career advancement, including a higher rate of promotion; higher salaries; increased productivity and better time management; greater success in achieving external research grants; personal and professional development, including increased job-related wellbeing, self-esteem and confidence, and better work-life balance; and developed networking skills. 

The 8 Habits of Highly Productive People

 

THE 8 HABITS OF HIGHLY PRODUCTIVE PEOPLE

Habit 1: Mercilessly cut away the unimportant:

Focus on the important. The human tendency to focus on too many goals at once can cause a break in focus. The idea of setting important goals is to ensure that the important things still get done even amidst daily activities. Having focus on the important does not mean abandoning all other goals; it means keeping them in mind but only allotting attention to one goal at a time.   

Habit 2: Apportion breaks strategically:

Everybody wants a transformation; everybody wants radical improvement. But we fail to realize that small habits and little choices are transforming us every day already. That the times you make choices, they are slightly better or worse. And that those habits are the compound interest of self-improvement. And so, when you learn to master those habits, you can get time work for you rather than against you. Break down things to do into a smaller task that are achievable. And rest when you are tired.

Habit 3: Remove productivity pitstops:

The fact is that productive people fail more often than unproductive people. Productive people think about solutions. Unproductive people think about problems and difficulties most of the time. As you get better and faster at solving problems, you will attract even bigger and more expensive problems to solve; that can have significant financial consequences for you and others. This is the way the world works.

Habit 4: Tune into your artistry:

Your neocortex, your thinking brain, has approximately one hundred billion cells and neurons. Each of these cells bristles like a porcupine with as many as twenty thousand ganglia or fibers that connect it to other cells. These cells are in turn connected and interconnected to thousands and millions of other cells, like an electric grid that lights up and powers a large city. Each cell, and each connection contains mental energy or information that is available to every other cell. This means that the complexity of your brain is beyond belief or imagination. You don’t need a miracle to bring about spectacular results in your life. You only need to use a bit more existing brainpower than you are using today.

Habit 5: Create barriers to Entry:

Don’t make yourself too accessible. Respect everyone’s viewpoints and be assertive; know what you want out of your own life. Speak your own mind, own your hearts’ desires, set clear boundaries without feeling guilty or ashamed.

Habit 6: Optimize Time Resource:

Your future is created by what you do, not tomorrow. The forces of Time and Change are the only elements that are guaranteed in life. Everybody has to deal with Time and they must deal with Change. Time will move with or without you, Change will happen with or without you. productive success of your goals therefore, is always in your hands because of the fact that it is determined by how you will manage Time and Change.

Habit 7: Stick to Deadlines:

Determine the reality of your current situation relative to your major goals. Where are you now? How far do you have to go? The three keys to peak performance in achieving your goals are commitment, completion & closure. Your ability to set goals and stick to deadlines for their accomplishment is the “master skill” to high productivity.

Habits 8: Associations:

Everything in life and business is relationships. The more people you know, and who know you in a positive way, the more successful you will be at your attempt. One person, at the right time, in the right place, can open a door for you that change your life and save you years of hard work. No one does it alone.   

 

 

Human Rights Day: Equality – Reducing Inequalities, Advancing Human Rights

 

Friday, marks the end of 16 Days of Activism against Gender-Based Violence under the theme ‘Orange the World: End Violence Against Women Now.’ The campaign is meant to raise awareness globally in order to prevent and eliminate violence especially against women.

The 16^th day of the commemoration is also Human Rights Day; this year, it is be celebrated on 10 December under the theme ‘Equality – Reducing Inequalities, Advancing Human Rights.’ It is through the commemoration of the day that each and everyone is enlightened that they have the same rights! Human Rights are entitlements of individuals but also obligations of states.

On the day in 1948, the United Nations General Assembly adopted the Universal Declaration of Human Rights to advocate for the rights of all human beings regardless of race, colour, sex, language, political, social background, among others.  

Whether you know exactly who you are, or you are just starting your journey. At your core, you a human being. You exist in the world. And simply by existing you are entitled to certain basic rights: Your “Human Rights.” These are the same rights that every other human has; we all get these rights at birth without exception. Human Rights don’t have to be earned; they are yours. Regardless of who you are, or what you have done.  

The deeper you face your own fears, emotions, thoughts the more vulnerable you become to your own self. The closer you get to your own paradigm, the more you find out that your ideas, beliefs, thoughts, behavior, values, actions are entirely yours to express. And the closer you get to the truth; that above all else, you have the same equal rights as every human being.

These Human Rights exist at three (3) basic levels: International, Constitutional and Statutory. You have heard of the right to shelter, or the right to food or the right to education. These are International Human Rights; they apply to every single person around the world. And they are enshrined in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. 

You also have rights that are specific to your country, these are protected by your country’s Constitution. They include rights such as; the right to vote and the right to freedom of expression. These rights dictate how governments should treat people.

The third level is Statutory and these dictates how people should treat each other in certain situations. Unless there is a justifiable reason, these laws protect you from discrimination from other people and organizations. For example, if you are looking to rent a home, you should not be turned down because of your race. OR maybe if you are interviewing for a job, you shouldn’t be rejected because you are pregnant. 

You have Human Rights, we all do. And we also have responsibilities to respect the rights of others, to recognize discrimination, to speak out against injustice and together to preserve dignity, respect and the experience of being human.