I was asked to deliver a short presentation on the merits of mentoring to an organization that I worked with 5 years ago when they started their mentoring program. As I stood before them this morning, I realized that many small business owners are missing a great opportunity by not having, or being, a mentor.
Sixteen years ago when I was first started out in business, I would have benefitted from the privilege of building a relationship with a mentor. Even a discussion on the reality of being a business owner would have been a help. I had no idea what I was getting into. Couple that with the relative newness of coaching as a profession and you start to get the picture of how ‘over my head’ I was when I launched my business. After four or five years, I sought out the advice of a group of advisors who served as mentors for me. I asked each to provide their expertise to assist me in building a stronger presence in the marketplace.
Depending on your needs, mentors can serve several functions, or several mentors can provide their perspective on a particular aspect of your business. Mentors can be your accountability partner, your confidant, your brainstorming partner, and your role model for the type of business owner you want to be. The mentoring relationship can be anything that you and your mentor agree it should be. It can be formal or informal. It can face to face, email, telephone, or Skype based. It can be weekly, monthly, daily. The structure is less important than the dialogue you have before you begin to meet.
Once you get to a point of competence or mastery in your businesses and you look around, you may see the opportunity to mentor someone in our organizations. There may be someone you would like to groom to take over your businesses. Someone who shows the natural aptitude, they just need to understand the dynamics of being the owner and all that involves.
As mentor, you may want to impart your knowledge and experience in one big brain dump. That would probably be overwhelming for anyone, so piece it out in such a way as not to frighten your protégé. The investment you make in the mentoring relationship will reap significant benefits in the future. Mentoring can be a mutually satisfying initiative when both individuals agree to support each other, learn from each other, and provide a safe place to explore better ways to do business.
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I’m learning that this is to be very true. One can spend the next 10 years learning how to run a business through trial and error as well as many costly mistakes. But an experienced mentor will shorten that time frame significantly and prevent many of those costly mistakes I would potentially make. We see such coaching all the time in sports so it makes perfect sense in business as well.