8 Ways You Can Strengthen Your Mentoring Relationships

When thinking of mentorships, consider the interaction between Obi-Wan Kenobi and Luke Skywalker in the original Star Wars movie.

Obi-Wan encouraged, instructed and guided the talented—but unpolished—future Jedi warrior and liberator. In other words, he served as a mentor, teaching Luke vital skill sets and providing experience-based knowledge that helped the young Skywalker develop into a Jedi Master. Luke, in return, maintained and expanded on Kenobi's initial teachings.

Mentoring: A long established tradition

Mentoring itself has a long tradition beyond mere fictional Hollywood fare. It’s a critical element recognized for its value in nurturing talent in many fields, including sports, politics, and the humanities. Likewise, its role in successful business organizations is legendary.

 Effective mentoring of talented associates leads to the development of tomorrow's business leaders, and that helps ensure the long-term success of a company. While many businesses merely pay lip service to mentoring, it is a reality in successful organizations with winners and winning teams.

 In effect, a mentor who has "been there and done that" can convey accumulated knowledge and acquired skills, while providing fresh perspective on inner workings of a firm and an industry to other talented associates. Typically, that is how the star performers will align their career aspirations and goals with your organization.

Mentoring is all about giving people broader outlooks, more things to consider. It is for career planning, succession planning and retention. It allows employees to soak up character, judgment and approach. It is the opportunity for them to apprise situations and cultivate their own ways.

 Meantime, the mentor similarly benefits, gaining a personal sense of fulfillment by passing along acquired talents to up-and-coming employees, further facilitating creativity.

 Beyond lip service to efficient practice

The worthiness of the mentor role is well established, but actual practice of certain processes is crucial in achieving a positive result. Mentoring not only includes giving advice, but also showing the colleague how to utilize skills, and—crucially—working in close collaboration with the associate. Mentoring is about doing and it’s about understanding.

Here are eight tips to nurture effective mentoring relationships. (These eight steps will help you stand out and be a greater asset to your company and your co-workers): 

1. Know your work, particularly reflecting on problems you've faced and how you've dealt with them. In turn, this will help you crystallize your understanding of the purpose of mentoring. 
2. Know your organization, especially unique corporate inner-workings such as policies, procedures, and office politics, which can then be explained to a high-quality associate.
3. Become well acquainted with the employee, taking a genuine interest in his or her interests, abilities, character traits, and personal background, thereby conveying a sense of respect. 
4. Learn vital, adult-oriented teaching methods. These can include considering how people think, what motivates them, and how others process information. 
5. Maintain a passionate desire to learn, absorbing new techniques and developments within your field, your industry, your business community, and parallel fields. By staying at the forefront of your vocation, this can help you convey vital information to a worthy associate.
6. Practice honorable character traits, such as patience, tolerance, kindness, and courtesy. Admirable personal qualities can help strengthen the relationship as you give the associate challenging assignments, helping to foster expectations while keying optimum performance.
7. Celebrate successes, praise accomplishments, and recognize milestones. The collaboration should be fun and exciting, as well as rewarding.
8. Think long-term and full-cycle, encouraging the associate to become a mentor. By developing today's great leaders, and prompting them to do the same, you can help foster a talent pool of future business leaders, who in turn can help ensure the continued success of your organization.