Mentoring might seem like a big obligation, but a mentoring relationship isn’t one-way. As a mentor, you can get an immense amount of personal return and satisfaction from guiding a younger professional in your industry. Here are four of the biggest benefits:
You can hone leadership and management skills
Mentoring teaches you to step outside of yourself and think about your mentee’s best interests. It’s your opportunity to take years of knowledge and experience and turn it into helpful guidance for someone just getting started. Mentoring requires you to focus on the bigger picture in order to guide and oversee others. The skills you develop while mentoring someone are seamlessly transferable to your own career.
You’ll further your own professional expertise
There’s a well-known phenomenon called the “illusion of explanatory depth.” Basically, it’s the tendency we all have to think we know much more about something than we actually do. When you begin passing on knowledge to someone else, you face that illusion head-on and begin discovering details you didn’t completely understand before. As a mentor, you can make yourself smarter and more knowledgeable about your area of expertise in the process of teaching someone else.
It’s a chance to learn new things
Regardless of age, anyone can teach you at least a handful of things you wouldn’t have learned on your own. If you mentor someone much younger than you, maybe you’ll finally have the opportunity to discover more about technology and social media. Maybe they’ll give you a new perspective on work-life balance. The opportunities to learn from your protégé are limitless if you have an open mind.
It’s a way to give back to your profession
Very often, we hear members tell us they always appreciate the opportunity to give back to the accounting profession, which is a key reason we devoted time and resources into the newly launched Mentor Match program. Maybe you had a boss or family friend early on in your career whose guidance was fundamental in your own journey toward success. Mentoring is a powerful tool for making your mark in a way that’s meaningful to you.
Want to mentor the future leaders of the accounting profession? Sign up for NCACPA’s Mentor Match program today. Mentor Match pairs up members who are looking for mentors with those who are looking to mentor and lend their career development expertise.